---
title: "The West Runs Short of Rockets as China Sets a Timetable for the Moon"
description: "Analysts see a 150-launch gap to 2030, New Glenn slips to January, Japan funds a startup and China plots a crewed landing"
author: "Jan Sokol"
published: 2026-11-06T13:33:20Z
modified: 2026-11-06T16:48:27Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/the-west-runs-short-of-rockets-as-china-sets-a-timetable-for-f9b5e2
language: en
tags: ["space", "new-glenn", "artemis", "launches", "china", "tech"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# The West Runs Short of Rockets as China Sets a Timetable for the Moon

*Analysts see a 150-launch gap to 2030, New Glenn slips to January, Japan funds a startup and China plots a crewed landing*

By Jan Sokol · November 6, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/the-west-runs-short-of-rockets-as-china-sets-a-timetable-for-f9b5e2

## In brief

- Quilty Space estimates the world outside China will be about 150 launches short of demand through 2030
- Blue Origin moved New Glenn’s return-to-flight mission from December to January while rebuilding its Florida pad
- JAXA selected Interstellar Technologies for launch funding; its Zero rocket is targeting a first flight in 2027
- India’s GSLV launched the NVS-03 navigation satellite on October 30
- China plans a crewed lunar landing before 2030 using paired Long March 10 launches

Outside China, more satellites are waiting to go up than there are rockets to carry them. This is the plain fact under a week of launch news, gathered as usual in [Stephen Clark’s Rocket Report for *Ars Technica*](https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/11/rocket-report-new-glenn-wont-fly-this-year-china-launches-mini-falcon-heavy/), and it governs everything else that happened: who flew, who slipped, who got paid to try.

## The queue

The analytics firm Quilty Space has measured the shortage. Between now and 2030, it estimates, the world outside China will fall about 150 launches short of what satellite operators and civil space agencies want. That figure leaves out the American military. Put the military’s needs back in, and assume SpaceX does not extend the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy programme to meet heavier national security demand, and the gap could double. The findings travelled quickly through the industry; [the AIAA carried a summary](https://aiaa.org/2026/11/02/report-warns-of-global-rocket-launch-shortage-through-2030/) on November 2.

Caleb Henry, Quilty’s director of research, said the firm set out to learn how bad things were and when they would get better. The answer was worse than expected.

> What we learned is that the launch crisis is more severe than we thought and that it will not go away this decade for sure, and it might not abate until sometime late in the 2030s.

Quilty lists the causes. The war in Ukraine removed Russian rockets from the Western market. Amazon Leo is soaking up capacity. A new generation of launchers, among them New Glenn, Vulcan, Neutron, Terran R and Nova, has run late. And, more recently, the Falcon 9 has been retired from commercial service, which is why [rivals are racing to replace it](https://rews.cc/a/relativity-test-fires-rocket-stage-as-firms-race-to-replace--75ba9c).

![A line of cream satellites with orange dishes and dark solar panels follows a winding orange queue barrier toward a rocket against a blue background.](https://rews.cc/img/161da78a60a1f303b47e6cf091476abb2042cc75.webp)

Every shortage has its emblem. This one has a launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, wrecked in a catastrophic explosion nearly six months ago and still being rebuilt. On Thursday Blue Origin said New Glenn’s return-to-flight mission would move from December to January. The delay was minor and widely expected. NASA, Amazon and the Space Force are all waiting for the rocket to fly again. The company used the same afternoon to unveil a new kick stage for New Glenn and [a new engine design](https://rews.cc/a/blue-origin-says-its-next-engine-will-push-harder-than-the-b-593ae2).

When a market runs short, power tends to pass to whoever still owns the means of delivery. That is a reflection, not a finding, but in this queue it is hard to avoid.

## Water

Some are betting on the far future. Three brothers named Carlisle, who worked at SpaceX during the Falcon 9 years, founded Argo Space in late 2022. They want spacecraft that stop depending on propellant lifted from Earth. Their satellites will carry water and use it as propellant, coolant and radiation shield. Water may be harvestable on the Moon and turns up all over the Solar System. In orbit, solar power splits it into hydrogen and oxygen gas, and the two are burned in what amounts to a small rocket.

Their first mission flew in July. One solar array failed to deploy, the spacecraft died, and there was no time to test the thrusters. Two more missions are scheduled for 2027, [as the company tries again](https://rews.cc/a/argo-space-bets-on-water-propulsion-after-its-first-satellit-114f1d).

![A turquoise water droplet shaped like a rocket has cream solar panels on both sides and an orange flame against a bright blue background.](https://rews.cc/img/1a7be91db635f283ad06ba6491d6222409d7ad7d.webp)

## Tokyo’s grant

In Japan the state is putting money into the problem. Interstellar Technologies has won backing from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency for its Zero rocket, [Aviation Week reported](https://aviationweek.com/space/launch-vehicles-propulsion/jaxa-backs-interstellar-zero-launcher). JAXA chose the company for its Acceleration of Commercial Rocket Launch Demonstration programme, part of the Space Strategic Fund, which gives private launch firms grants of up to $76 million each to develop their rockets and fly demonstrations. According to [the trade outlet Space Connect](https://space-connect.jp/ist-spaceone-stand), the programme, known as STAND, offers up to ¥12 billion per project and picked only two firms: Interstellar and Space One, which builds the small KAIROS rocket. Interstellar [announced its selection on its website](https://www.istellartech.com/en).

Interstellar has already raised more than $250 million, about half from the government and half from private investors. Zero is a two-stage rocket meant to put up to 1 metric ton (2,200 pounds) into low-Earth orbit, and its latest schedule points to a first launch in 2027. Satoshi Nakayama, the company’s president and a director on its board, said it had reached “critical technical milestones, including Japan’s first successful firing test of an orbital-class methane engine,” and that it must now “swiftly turn these proven development results into operational commercial services.”

## The naughty boy

On October 30 India launched a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle carrying NVS-03, NDTV reported. It is the third satellite in the country’s second-generation regional navigation network. Some older satellites in the fleet suffered atomic clock failures that left them partly or completely unusable, so NVS-03 carries several clocks of different designs to guard against the same fault.

The GSLV has flown 20 times since its 2001 debut. Six of those flights ended in total or partial failure, most of them early on, and Indian space officials took to calling the rocket the “naughty boy.” This time V. Narayanan, head of the space agency, called the flight the “most precise launch of any rocket in the world.” He did not say how he measured that. The launch did succeed.

![An illustrated satellite with orange housing, three clock faces, dark solar panels on both sides, and a cream antenna dish against a teal background.](https://rews.cc/img/3719d25e77249f229a7193da3d8bbee52bac44a5.webp)

## The desert and the Moon

China, meanwhile, keeps launching. On Tuesday, Monday in the United States, a rocket from a spaceport in the country’s northwestern desert carried another 18 satellites for the SpaceSail internet network, also called Qianfan. The constellation now has about 275 flat-panel satellites from launches going back to August 2024. Its first phase is meant to reach 1,296.

The rocket was a Kinetica 2, built by the startup CAS Space, on its second flight and first operational one. It has three boosters side by side like SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, but at a smaller scale: three kerosene engines per booster where the Falcon has nine, and about 12 metric tons (26,000 pounds) to low-Earth orbit. CAS Space plans to recover and reuse the boosters eventually.

At the Seventh Manned Spaceflight Conference in Beijing, officials including Wang Xiang, chief designer of the lunar exploration programme, gave China’s most detailed public plan yet for landing astronauts on the Moon “before 2030.” The method is the lunar-orbit rendezvous Apollo used in the 1960s and early 1970s. Without a rocket as powerful as the Saturn V, though, China will launch its crew and lander separately.

The sequence is set. A Long March 10A with a single core will carry the new Mengzhou ship on a demonstration flight to low-Earth orbit in early 2027. In 2028 the three-booster Long March 10 will send the Lanyue lander on an uncrewed test flight to the Moon. In 2029 two Long March 10s will launch together, one with an uncrewed Mengzhou and one with a Lanyue, and the two craft will dock in lunar orbit. Then, before 2030, another pair will lift off, this time with astronauts aboard Mengzhou, leading to the landing itself.

On one side of the world the schedules keep slipping and analysts count the missing flights. On the other, officials publish a dated plan for the Moon.