--- title: "Alibaba Exploring How to Deliver Cheap Plastic Garbage Via Space Rocket" description: "Chinese rocket maker Space Epoch has announced a partnership with Alibaba-owned Taobao to make global rocket deliveries in just one hour." date: "2024-04-03" modified: "2024-04-03" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/alibaba-deliver-space-rocket" categories: - "Space" tags: - "china" - "delivery" - "reusable rockets" - "the digest" --- # Alibaba Exploring How to Deliver Cheap Plastic Garbage Via Space Rocket ![Chinese rocket maker Space Epoch has announced a partnership with Alibaba-owned Taobao to make global rocket deliveries in just one hour.]() *\Image: Space Epoch\* ## Specious Delivery Chinese rocket maker Space Epoch has announced a partnership with e-commerce platform and Alibaba-owned landfill generator Taobao to make deliveries via rocket around the world in just one hour — and to be entirely honest, the concept is so outlandish that we can't quite tell if it's an early April Fool's joke. The [announcement](), posted to Chinese social media platform WeChat on March 31, details a new rocket dubbed "Yuanxing-1" that's designed to launch up to ten tons of cargo inside a 120 cubic meter container into orbit. An animation shows a package being loaded into a rocket and shooting into space and then back down, spending just 25 minutes to traverse all of China before its cargo is emptied into a waiting van. It's vaguely reminiscent of SpaceX's much-larger and more capable Starship. The [US Air Force is hoping]() to make use of the launch platform to ferry cargo across the globe as well. But whether it's feasible, let alone economically viable, to make global rocket deliveries — especially if we're talking about the bottom-shelf cheap plastic junk that Alibaba's known for selling in huge quantities — remains dubious at best. ## Space Junk Space Epoch's rocket has already completed early ignition and offshore recovery tests last year, [*Reuters* reports](). But getting to the point of making global deliveries for Alibaba will still require a number of major breakthroughs, effectively leapfrogging SpaceX's established tech. To pick one glaring example, no Chinese entity has yet pulled off the Elon Musk-led company's party trick of landing one of its rockets after launch. At the same time, China's space program has [already made significant progress]() over the last few years, including 17 commercial launches and just one failure out of 67 orbital launches total last year, per *Reuters*. The state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology also recently showed off early prototypes of a [massive reusable rocket]() that could play a key role in the country's ambitions to send astronauts to the Moon by 2030. But whether making global deliveries for Taobao will ever become a profitable venture remains to be seen. Even delivery by drones has failed to take off. As [*The Register* points out](), it's been [over ten years]() since Amazon first suggested making deliveries via drones — and as far as we can tell, the concept has been [dead in the water for years now](). **More on China's rockets:** *[Videos Show Chinese Rocket Parts Raining Down, Exploding]()* ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()