October of this year marked a significant turning point for China's aerospace industry.
After three consecutive days of closed-door meetings at the aerospace bureau, a major overhaul was made to the entire subsequent development plan.
First and foremost, the bureau affirmed the need to swiftly develop their own reusable launch rockets.
Especially since the future CZ-5, CZ-6, CZ-7, and CZ-8 all had about one or two years left until their maiden flights, allowing some room for modification.
Unfortunately, except for CZ-6, the rest of the rockets weren't suitable for first-stage recovery.
Because apart from the CZ-6's first stage, which used a single YF100 engine, the core stages of the other three rockets all employed two YF100 or YF77 engines in parallel.
Such a parallel configuration significantly increases the difficulty of vertical recovery, making it much harder to control than a single engine.
