Space Transportation

Space Transportation (凌空天行, Lingkong Tianxing) is a Beijing-based Chinese commercial aerospace company founded in 2018 developing a family of reusable winged rocket-powered vehicles for suborbital cargo transport, hypersonic point-to-point passenger transport, and eventual low Earth orbit access — pursuing an alternative architecture to vertical-launch rockets by leveraging the aerodynamic efficiency and runway landing capability of spaceplane designs. The company's Tianxing vehicle family is designed for horizontal runway landing, recovering the vehicle for rapid reflight similarly to an aircraft. The near-term commercial target is hypersonic point-to-point (P2P) cargo and passenger transport: a suborbital trajectory that reaches Mach 5-20 enables cargo delivery from China to Europe in 1-2 hours, or passenger transport in 3-4 hours compared to 10-12 hours by conventional aircraft — a market Space Transportation is targeting alongside competitors Sierra Space's Dream Chaser and Hermeus in the West, and Rocket Cargo and DARPA's DRACO for military applications. Space Transportation has conducted multiple hot-fire tests of its rocket engines and vehicle flights, with significant Chinese venture capital backing from investors including Shunwei Capital and other top-tier Chinese funds. China's civil-military fusion (CMF) industrial policy means Space Transportation's hypersonic spaceplane technology has dual defense significance for the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force alongside its commercial transport applications. The company competes within China's commercial spaceplane sector alongside Lingkong Hypersonics and the Beijing-based teams developing winged reusable launch vehicles, and internationally with Sierra Space, Rocket Lab's future reusable plans, and Hermeus.