China’s answer to SpaceX – SpaceNews

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Time Markers

00:19 – Guest introduction 00:52 – How has what you have seen at SpaceX and Elon Musk really shaped your path?03:00 – How did your father influence you growing up?04:48 – On Changsha, Hunan Province and Mao07:05 – Star Wars and the Three-Body Problem10:15 – Where do you play role in emerging tech?12:57 – Mars and the Elon Musk companies14:39 – The expanding circle16:46 – Non-zero sum game19:01 – Is there a long-term market?24:51 – Space Takes: DeepSeek29:17 – Chang’e 8 mission32:41 – Nuclear powered rockets37:28 – Space Loop

Transcript – Yao Song Conversation

David Ariosto – Yao Song, who is the co-founder and CEO of Orion space, which is one of China’s just leading commercial launch companies. You have done a lot in your career. I’m not only talking about development of DeePhi Tech in Beijing, which is which has to do with just deep learning computer technologies and increasing processing speeds and servers and and, you know, you and I have talked about, sort of how this, actually, long term, relates to maybe these broader concepts of even consciousness, but also in the building of your own launch company, I can think of at least one other founder. I’m not naming names here, but from South Africa that started in computer systems, maybe in this case, software development, who then moved into rockets. So I was thinking that might be a good place to start. How has what you have seen at SpaceX and Elon Musk really shaped your path?

Yao Song – Well, actually, that’s a big story,you know, I think Elon Musk inspired me and inspired a lot of people, I think in the world, I think millions of or even more people. First of all, you can see, actually, you know, Elon Musk started physics, but he started his career in, you know, internet. So actually, he did not started aerospace or other related, you know, subject, you know, measures. So after my first startup, codify, you can see actually my background is double E, electronic engineering. So I started how to, you know, make EDA software, how to make chips, how to design AI achieves, but eventually I found that my dream or my energy are all about space area. But, you know, I’m not quite confident if I can do that. And I think Elon Musk is a really good example that he shows that you can do it. So actually, I think first of all, he inspired me a lot besides, you know, when I my first startup called DeePhi Tech was acquired by Xilinx in 2018 so I was wondering what I should do for my next step for the next decade. So I found the methodology to fund all this crucial key problems of mankind. So I divide all these three problems. I divide all these problems into three categories. The first of all is the development of the whole mankind, and then is the survival, health and happiness of each individual, and then the efficiency of the society.

David Ariosto – I want, I want to get into all those, these, those three. But first, I kind of want to get into sort of what, what started to propel you into sort of that recognition, because I think it like, but 22 years old you were talking about, like deep compression techniques and the computational bottlenecks of neural networks when it comes to bandwidth and how that sort of recognition can can power AI development, and that ultimately led to rockets. But when we talk about your childhood, and that’s where I want to, where I want to start, you grew up with a father, you know, a lot of us have, you know, read like Peppa Pig to our kids. You grew up with a father who’s reading Stephen Hawking is A Brief History of Time your bedtime reading that your family wasn’t in aerospace but like, how did that factor your family, those readings, these broader concepts of like, the universe in which we live? How did that that sort of factor into so your educational path, that then manifested into these professional aspirations.

Yao Song – I think my family you and you know, especially my dad, helped me a lot. So both my parents, both my dad and my mom, actually, they were born in the countryside, and my grandparents are farmers or farmers. So my my dad and my mom also went outside of the countryside go to university and stay in Changsha city, you know, the captain of Hunan province. So when I was young, you know, maybe I was just two years old, or three years old, my dad bought me a lot of books. I know, I remember that there are serious books called One Hundred Thousand Whys, you know, about Earth, about mathematics, about physics, and also about aerospace. So I read that book over and over again, and it turns become broken. And also, my dad brought me a series of sign you know, some, you know, science books, for example, Brief History of Time, written by Stephen Hawking.

David Ariosto – Let’s get into into Changsha. Because, I mean, that’s Hunan province. I think this is, this is really fascinating, because, you know, this is where Mao Zedong would attend Hunan Teachers College. It’s where he became politically active. Many of Mao’s generals in the early army came from Hunan. There’s a giant statue of young Mao in the city, you yourself have talked about the influence of the military and sort of your early life, and how that continues on, sort of your fascination with tanks and planes and all of these things. I’m wondering how, where you’re from, what you saw, in terms of growing up, that giant statue, the history of of Hunan, generally. How did that sort of influence your early life, and then sort of manifest in terms of what, what you’re doing with regard to your companies.

Yao Song – Yeah, I think, first of all, you can see, if I think nearly half of the generals when the People’s Republic of China was founded comes from Hunan province. Yeah, that’s, I think, because in the, I think in 860’s or 870’s there is a Hunan army led by some Guo Feng, you know, they come back to Hunan, and they started, they founded hundreds of, you know, schools so like it helped educate a lot of people, including Mao Zedong. So even they are poor, they cannot afford all this cast, but they can go to school freely. So I think first of all, in Hunan promise, we emphasize the importance of education a lot. Yeah, so my father and my mother did a lot desperately to pursue a higher degree, to pursue my dream. Besides, you can see a lot of generals from Huna, especially in Changsha, and there’s a National University of Defense Technology also in Changsha. So I think there’s quite good atmosphere. You can you can buy a lot of different books, but gas tanks, you know, aircrafts in the bookstore. Yeah, there’s so many comic books.

David Ariosto – This is the last question I want to ask you about the books, because I think this is fascinating, because three bottom three body problem, that’s science fiction novel. I think it came out around 2008 if I’m not mistaken. And it was another big influencer. You know, 2008 was just like a formula, formative time in your life. But it’s, it was a book, and, you know, later it was adapted into a Netflix series. People very considerations about that, how that sort of went, but it, I think, at its essence, it sort of brought these frontier concepts in physics to the mainstream in a way that really, I haven’t seen done much, frankly, in the landscape, speak to me a little bit about that the influence of science fiction. Because we know, whenever I’ve talked to other people in the space industry, you know, questions about Star Trek or Star Wars come up, or, you know, questions about Jules Verne, or, you know, any, any number one of these sort of sci fi thrillers have often just sort of spawned this, this, this, this series of things that they take place, that propel them into, into the industry. So I’m just curious when it comes to three body problem, both with your tech company, but also with rockets, like, there’s a nexus there, is there not?

Yao Song – First of all, you can see the first movie I saw ever in my life. I think it’s Star Wars. So I’m a big fan of Star Wars. So I was quite attracted by Star Wars, you know, not just by the newest ones, but also I then found all. This episode one, episode two. You know, by in, I think in that’s in 1970s or 1980s right? So first of, I think it’s truly inspired me to see all the wideness of the space and etc. Besides, you know, when I, when I was reading the three body problems, I found that sometimes you are really shocked. For example, in episode three of three bar problem, so you can see the the alien send an or an weapon to to the solar system to you. You know, make everything in two dimensional. Make this three dimensional world into two dimensional so there’s note by the author says it reminds me something which means you cannot detect, you cannot see it because it’s two dimensional. It has no height, right? So you cannot stop the light, but you can feel it by gravity. So as I think, Whoa, I was truly, you know, being shock, being hit by this note, because it’s similar to something like the dark matter, you know, the dark energy and also dark matter. So it make me, you know, still, you make me keep my energy and my, you know, pursuing this area. So before, you know, before the acquisition of defy technology, I never thought that I can make a company in this area. I just quite interested in this area, curious about this area. But eventually, when I get the opportunity, I think, oh, that’s the time to do it.

David Ariosto – Well, I mean, it came out in 2008 and now here we are in 2025, and it, it seems more than ever, you know, you’re seeing this confluence of technologies, whether it’s, you know, exploration technologies, quantum AI, even things like bio engineering and some of the stuff that we’ve talked about in terms of some of these neural networks, both both in computer systems, but also a biological networks that are starting to sort of blend, that those human computer interfaces in meaningful ways, I wonder, in the context of, sort of the here and now, when, when you’re, you know, you’re overseeing Orion space, gravity one had had their had their big launch not too long ago. You’re looking at gravity two, which is, you know, sort of a bigger rocket or launch provider that’s meant to rival the Falcon nine. But when you when you look at these, and you have sort of the broader construct of these mega satellite constellations that are going up, and how they work with space and stratosphere based systems and new ecosystems and these ultra fast networks and AI power technologies and Internet of Things. And there’s sort of this emerging technosphere that Earth is sort of in the nascent stages of, like, where do you play a role in that?

Yao Song – Whoa, that’s a really good question, and also big question, yeah, you can see there are so many changes in different area. For example, in AI, you can see embodied AI like Tesla Optimus 2, like Boston Dynamics. And also you can see a new company called World Labs, founded by Professor Li Fei Fei in Stanford University. So there’s a lot of changes in this area, in large language model, in AI, and also you can see a lot, a lot of changes in satellite constellation like Starlink, and also the Chinese version Starlink. And you can see starship is the largest rocket ever we built in human history. But eventually, I think everything will intersect when you want to immigrate to Mars or to other planet. You can see if you are going to Mars, actually, you cannot live on the surface of the Mars, and you cannot, you know, have a lot of people from Earth and Mars.

David Ariosto – You’re talking about the caves underneath.

Yao Song – Yeah, yeah, we need to build the holes, build the caves on Mars. So that’s, I think, why Elon Musk founded Boring Company and, and we need a lot of the robots to dig the holes to, you know, build all these buildings on Mars.

David Ariosto – It’s interesting how all of these different Musk companies seem to be oriented in some ways. I mean sort of the hypothesis that orient ways and Mars. I mean not only Boring Company, but Neuralink and SpaceX and even Tesla and Solar City and all of these things sort of have foundational building blocks of that which you would need on the Red Planet. I mean that, I imagine there’s a very similar tact within China.

Yao Song – Yeah, and you can see China, actually, we, everyone calls China as the world factory, right? You can see the most you know, compliments, plan train and you, when you building some industrial applications, actually you can achieve the lowest cost in world. So I think maybe there’s a different way to do the similar thing, or we can have different people with the same vision or same dream. So you can do that in United States. I could do this in China. So I think I have a very, you know, broad, broad background of AI chip, and for now space and maybe for the next step, for next decades, I will study more about bio. You know, biomedical things, right? Everything intersects you need. You found that revolutionary innovation comes for all this intersected area, not just a single department, not double E, not just as computer science, but double E plus computer science plus maybe space area, maybe biology, maybe biomedical engineering. All this together, we can make really, real, revolutionary, uh, innovations.

David Ariosto – Why, you’ve talked to me about expanding the circle, so to speak, right? And why space is important, particularly in the context of finite resources on Earth, growing populations, you know, the nature of sort of the the limitations that that we may or may not have on this planet, and also how that plays into whether or not you know there are growing incentives for conflict when it comes to this, the circle that will or will not be expanded, so to speak, if you can maybe explain that to the audience a bit more.

Yao Song – Yeah, so, so I just say that I divide all these problems that the man can need to solve into three categories. The first one is, we draw a circle. That’s the area that people live. So we need to expand that circle. So we need to, you know, live not just on the surface of Earth, but also on the moon, but also on Mars and even other planets. And within this circle, you can see there, there are a lot of thoughts. All the thoughts are individuals. So I just say there are another category of things to solve this, the survival, health and happiness of each individual. And then all these thoughts are connected in this circle. That’s the society. So we need to improve the efficiency of the whole society, and especially for the circle thing you can see when you are running a startup or you are making any plan, you need plan A and plan B, right, yeah. But for each thing, you need a backup plan. So I think for humankind, yeah, we need also a plan B. For example, there is some hypothesis that there’s a big filter for every races, for each planet. Maybe we will hit that big filter, for example, their nuclear weapons, nuclear wars. So it erase the surface, the the surface of Earth. So we need another planet. So maybe Mars will be the second home, second planet, the plan B of the human plan.

David Ariosto – You know, when you talk about, sort of the bigger circle it, to me, it sort of has, there’s almost like this tie into Confucian thought, in a way, in terms of all these different pillars, in terms of happiness, and you know, what you’ve just sort of outlined, and that is a distinctly different sort of perspective and philosophical approach than sort of the, you know, the Enlightenment thinkers that came out of, sort of the Western approach. So it does seem that like, not only is this this, you know, quote, unquote, space race. And you know, there’s different questions about how that sort of manifests. It’s not only that it’s happening on, see that either sides of the Pacific in a way, but also that there’s these, these, this philosophical difference in terms of its approach that are rooted in two very different schools of thought and traditions. And, you know, I wonder how that manifests in Cosmos world. Things are are heightened. You know, the impacts of all these things are heightened to such an extent. But also whether this, that space is, is a zero sum game where there’s, there’s room for sort of coexistence in that, that sense, whether space is big enough, so to speak, or or it truly will kind of boil down to this geostrategic competition that we find ourselves in.

Yao Song – Yeah, I think you just mentioned that. I think the space actually, there’s not zero sum game, right? So we, we’re not being, you know. So there will be both United States and China and Europe and other countries like India, Japan, Korea and etc. But you can see that actually specific, I think, is a really expensive area. It costs a lot. For example, if you want to build a rocket like Falcon 9, I think to do the R and D in China, we need to spend over 2 billion on Chinese Yuan, I think that’s over $300 million US dollar. And if you you want to build Starship, and think SpaceX spend, I think over $10 billion US dollars. So if you want to move 1000’s of people to Mars, to, you know, to other planets, I think the cast will be trillions or 1000’s of trillions of US dollars. So I think I found out there are also some other startups.

David Ariosto – Is there a market for that? I mean, there’s just long term. Is this just not the purview of, sort of, like, governments, and because when you start talking those numbers, you know, even sort of billionaire classes, this is the really mega projects have to have, sort of the basis of federal funding. And I just, you know, I wonder about, sort of, like, the long term, when people use terms like lunar economy and Martian an economy, it all sounds great, and it sounds fascinating and interesting, but until you start to have, you know, sort of that sense of boots on the ground, I wonder what the wherewithal is, both in terms of those markets, but also, Just like the growth and importance of the commercial sector when it comes to China. So, like, maybe a question there is, like, and this would kind of be the last one here, is like, where, where do you see all of this going?

Yao Song – You mean the going of the space industry, industry worldwide, or the going?

David Ariosto – Yes, I mean, just in terms of the commercial space sector within China, and of which Orienspace is a part. But you know, if you kind of look into your crystal ball a little bit and extrapolate down the road, you know, looking at 5-10 years, and sort of looking at these plans that various space agencies are endeavoring on all these different celestial bodies, like, where does that put us?

Yao Song – Yeah, I think, first of all, I think for national, you know, you know, I can not speak, I asked the representative, but I can just say my personal accounts about that. First of all, I think being the second in this industry, actually, we have an advantage. The advantage is that SpaceX shows the right rate right away. The right road towards success, right so we need to see, oh, okay, Starlink works. Well, I think Starlink works. We say, satellite constellation, satellite internet will be the most important candidate of 6G network. So I think when Starlink shows the efficiency of Starlink, so China will surely follow this path and build their own satellite internet, right? So we have some, you know, state owned enterprise, enterprise doing this. And we also have some private companies, like GalaxySpace, they’re also doing in this way. Besides, you can see, not just not like in United States, they’re both national team and private teams in China or in United States, you can see NASA is not building rocks anymore. So in United States, you have ULA, you have Blue Origin, you have SpaceX and Rocket Labs in New Zealand and in China, you can see we have our national team, and also like our company, Orienspace, Space Pioneer, LANDSPACE, and Galactic Energy and etc. So we will put all this energy together to support the one goal, for example, to build the low orbit satellite internet in the recent three to five years. So I think for the commercial industry, commercial space industry in China, I think by 2030 maybe together, we can have the same capability as that of SpaceX. By this is a combination of both national team and private companies. And I think also by 2030 I think we can build the first generation of Chinese version Starlink, so we have, you know, in China, we have the 60% of 4G or 5G base stations, and then, plus 6G, the satellites, we can have a much, much better communication system. So we can support a terminus, you know, self driving, cars, self driving, you know, drones. And also you can see all this embodied AI, or we see self behaving, self driving robots. So I think if I ran 10 years, we can catch SpaceX. But for our company, you can see we, we are now doing our Gravity 2, you know, the reusable, reusable rocket, which is similar to Falcon 9, I think we, we’re going now into the experiment stage, and we are need to do down, I think, over 500 different experiments, for example, running all these engines to, for example, some experiments about structure and etc. And I think we are going into fully prepared, I think, by the end of 2025 and we’re going to launch that, I think, in next year, in 2026 in this year, actually, I think will be, it will be a big year for Chinese space industry, because all these Falcon 9, similar rockets, you know, the Tianlong-3, made by Space Pioneer, and other similar liquid engine rockets will all be launched, I think, by the end of this year.

David Ariosto – I think, I think this year is going to be a big year across the industry, almost irrespective of a country. Well so let’s leave it there. Yao Song, thank you so much for joining us. For the co-founder, co-CEO of Orienspace, and some doing some, some very interesting things there in Beijing. So thank you again for joining us.

Yao Song – Yeah, thank you. That’s my pleasure.