The number is expected to rocket to 1 million by 2035, said the China Society of Automotive Engineers.

中国汽车工程师学会表示，预计到2035年，这一数字将飙升至100万。

The partnership between McDonald's and CLEP started in 2020 with a "Light Up Your Dreams" program at restaurants collecting children's drawings of dreams and rocket designs.

麦当劳和CLEP的合作始于2020年，在餐厅开展了一项“点亮你的梦想”计划，收集儿童的梦想绘画和火箭设计。

In addition to being invited to the launch site, CLEP will also provide the exclusive customized 1:15 large simulation rocket for children to launch.

除了受邀前往发射场，CLEP还将提供独家定制的1:15大型模拟火箭供儿童发射。

The first of three billionaires planning commercial space voyages took flight on Sunday as Richard Branson rose more than 50 miles above the New Mexico desert aboard his Virgin Galactic rocket plane, safely returning in the vehicle’s first flight to space with a full crew.

Reaching its peak altitude at about 46,000 feet, the rocket plane was released from the mothership and fell away as the crew ignited its rocket, sending it up at supersonic speed.

At the apex of the climb with the rocket shut down, the crew then experienced a few minutes of microgravity, before the spaceplane shifted into re-entry mode and began a gliding descent.

- Private Chinese rocket maker LandSpace has completed its series C+ funding worth 1.2 billion yuan (about $175 million), the company announced on Wednesday.

The latest round of funding will support the development of the ZQ 2 liquid-propellant carrier rocket, as well as the research and production of medium and large liquid oxygen-methane carrier rockets.

By the end of August, the company had completed hot firing tests for 80-tonne and 10-tonne TQ rocket engines.

The ZQ-2 liquid-propellant rocket has undergone a series of ground tests, with key components delivered.

"Musk said he believes China's future to be very impressive and is happy to see some substantial progress on some entrepreneurial rocket companies in China whose rockets have made orbits.

As China's private rocket enterprises strive to expand their presence in the Chinese space sector, they have also started tapping the international market.

LandSpace, a Beijing-based space startup and one of the leading private rocket makers in China, announced on Wednesday at the International Aviation and Space Salon 2019 in Russia that it has begun inviting payload partners from around the globe to consider using its ZQ 2 liquid-propellant, medium-lift carrier rocket.

OneSpace, another rocket startup headquartered in Beijing, has attended two international expos since 2018 to promote its commercial launch services.

It will be propelled by LandSpace's TQ-12 oxygen-methane rocket engines, the first of their kind in China.

Compared with traditional types of rocket engines, oxygen-methane engines are reusable.

Zhang Changwu, founder and CEO of LandSpace, told China Daily in May that his company "is focused on the development of the ZQ 2", calling it "the largest and most powerful carrier rocket designed and built by a Chinese private rocket company".

The founder said mass production of the TQ-12 engine and the ZQ 2 rocket "will begin later this year at our Huzhou plant", the first privately owned carrier rocket factory in China, and the largest of its kind in Asia.

The Xinjiang Oilfield Company said that it produced 4.32 million tons of heavy crude oil last year and has become China's largest production base for high-quality naphthenic base heavy oil, a rare raw material for industrial products such as rocket propellant and cold-resistant engine oil.

In the latest attempt from the private sector, OneSpace Technology, a space startup based in Beijing, announced on Tuesday that it has finished the construction and testing of its first carrier rocket, the OS-M, and is ready to transport it to the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China for the model's debut mission in late March.

If the mission is successful, OS-M will become the first carrier rocket designed and built by a private Chinese company to fulfill an orbital launch.

In October, LandSpace, another private space company based in Beijing, launched a carrier rocket, the first of its ZQ 1 series, at the Jiuquan center, aiming to complete an orbital mission.

However, the rocket, which carried a small satellite, failed to reach orbit due to mechanical malfunctions.

OneSpace said in a statement on Tuesday that OS-M is a type of solid-propellant rocket with four stages.

Zhang Jie, chief designer of OS-M, said engineers have examined and tested the compatibility and stability of equipment mounted on the rocket and the launchpad.

Established by Shu Chang, who has been dubbed China's Elon Musk, and several companions in 2015, OneSpace Technology has carried out two successful suborbital launches of its OS-X sounding rocket and has received huge amounts of investment from the capital market.

As a result, nearly 10 private rocket firms have come into existence in China over the past three years.

"The firm has also used celebrity influencers, such as three members of Rocket Girls 101, an 11-member pop group from the Chinese reality show Produce 101, as a way to exploit the potent power of social media.

While he has financially supported cancer research and scholarships for immigrants, among other causes, Bezos has primarily devoted his fortune to his Blue Origin rocket company, which he described Thursday as an "investment in the future of our planet through the development of foundational space infrastructure.

"China's high-speed railway is as fast as a rocket, but the nation's progress is even faster," said Palestinian businessman Yahya Saleh.

The satellite will be launched on the Indian Space Research Organization's Polar rocket in August.

LOS ANGELES - US aerospace manufacturer Rocket Lab reached orbit for the first time with its second test flight of the Electron orbital launch vehicle, dubbed "Still Testing," the company announced Sunday.

We're thrilled to reach this milestone so quickly after our first test launch," Rocket Lab CEO and founder Peter Beck said in a statement.

"Reaching orbit on a second test flight is significant on its own, but successfully deploying customer payloads so early in a new rocket program is almost unprecedented," said Beck.

It was the first orbital-class rocket launched from a private launch site in the world.

Rocket Lab currently has five Electron vehicles in production, with the next launch expected to take place in early 2018, according to the company.

SHANGHAI — China's first commercial rocket launch company has raised 1.2 billion yuan ($181.5 million) for the development and launch of its Kuaizhou series carrier rockets.

CASIC Rocket Technology Company, based in the central city of Wuhan, said it signed fund raising agreements with eight investment institutions at the Shanghai United Assets and Equity Exchange Monday.

Zhang Di, vice president of China Sanjiang Space Group and chairman of CASIC Rocket Technology, said the original shareholders did not participate in the capital raising.

"The fund will be mainly invested in the development of Kuaizhou series carrier rockets, the rocket assembly facility and other upstream and downstream commercial space businesses," Zhang said.

CASIC Rocket Technology was jointly established in February 2016 by China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation Limited (CASIC) and China Sanjiang Space Group.

Kuaizhou-11, the company's latest carrier rocket, has entered the testing and debugging phase and is scheduled to embark on its maiden flight carrying six satellites in the first half of 2018.

The management team and Temasek Holdings Pte are the only remaining investors left after Rocket Internet SE and Investment AB Kinnevik sold their shares last week.

Last year, Alibaba took a sizeable stake in Lazada from Rocket in a $1 billion deal－its largest overseas move to date.

It made a number of components of the new Long March 7 Y2 rocket, which lifted China's first cargo spacecraft, Tianzhou 1, into orbit on April 20.

The company's materials also played a key role in the Long March 7 Y1 rocket, the Y2's predecessor and an important milestone.

Rocket engines use TISCO stainless steel that is resistant to high temperatures.

In February, China's Long March 8 rocket set a new record at the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan.

A rocket transported 22 satellites into orbit during its debut flight.

"We will invite investment in rocket, satellite and data chains, attract more key projects home and abroad to settle in the park, and build a world-renowned park with aerospace high-tech industries," said Liu Chong, mayor of Wenchang.

"COVID-19 put rocket fuel under an already powerful tech boom, resulting in a concentration of massive economic power," said Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman and chief researcher of Hurun Report.

Chinese private carrier rocket company LandSpace Technology Co Ltd displayed a model of its Zhuque-2 carrier rocket, the first methane-fueled rocket launched into orbit.

The base, owned by CAS Space, a Beijing-based rocket company under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is intended to help drive upstream and downstream industries — including aerospace power and satellite and rocket satellite measurement — to gather in Nansha, in the heart of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

After launching its PR rocket series in Nansha, CAS Space signed launching agreements worth of 1.6 billion yuan ($236.1 million) with seven partners, according to the company.

The themes of study camps this summer include Winter Olympics, the Silk Road, desert hikes, rocket launches, agriculture and military.

The port city of Ningbo in Zhejiang province is building a 20 billion yuan ($3.05 billion) rocket launch site to meet surging demand for putting satellites into orbit and further develop the industrial cluster of the commercial aerospace sector, according to the local authorities.

The launch site will consist of a commercial space launch site, assembly and test center, docking center, command and control center, while the industrial base will include a rocket satellite research and development and manufacturing base and satellite data application industrial base.

China has three inland rocket launch centers in Gansu province's Jiuquan, Shanxi province's Taiyuan, Sichuan province's Xichang as well as a coastal rocket launch center in Hainan province's Wenchang.

Those who purchased the rockets can paint the rocket shell with a motif/shade of their choice before it is launched into space.

It covers the research, development, production, testing, launch, safety and technology control of a "commercial carrier rocket", which is defined as a rocket designed and built from non-State funds intended to make a profit.

The regulation says that makers of the rocket, engine or any part containing explosive or inflammable substances must obtain approval from related authorities before starting their operations.

Yao Bowen, a spokesman for the Beijing-based, private rocket maker i-Space, said on Tuesday that the regulation will provide a statutory foundation for China's commercial space sector and help nurture innovation by private companies.

Lei Jun, chairman of Xiaomi, and a deputy to the 13th National People's Congress, said despite being a relatively new entrant to the global commercial space arena, China has seen strong momentum in recent years with nearly 100 startups established to engage in fields such as rocket or satellite design and production.

Another startup, LandSpace, launched its first orbital rocket carrying a small satellite in October, but the cargo did not reach its target orbit.

In 2018, these three rocket startups held a fundraising round, with each raising 700 million yuan ($101.95 million) to 800 million yuan.

Hu Shengyun, a senior rocket designer at China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp, and a deputy to the 13th NPC, said after years of preparation and development, China's aerospace sector is seeing more players in addition to the country's big two State-owned tech giants CASIC and China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. Ma Chunfeng, general manager at Shenzhen-based Qianhai Wutong Mergers and Acquisitions Funds, said private space companies are working hard to reduce costs and improve the efficiency of rocket launches, which would enable China's commercial space sector to have broad opportunities and scope for growth, although it won't yield profits in the short term.

For instance, Foshan Blue Rocket Electronics, a chip packaging company listed in Shenzhen, saw its shares rise by the maximum daily limit of 10 percent for the second consecutive day.

Musk has reportedly been happy with Texas, where his SpaceX rocket company has operations in Brownsville and in McGregor north of Austin.

We are like a rocket that has taken off and needs some more fuel," said Li.

The company's shares jumped 3 percent to close at $345 on Wednesday after SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon Heavy rocket with Musk's cherry red Roadster as its cargo.

"Electric cars are not rocket science and there is no need for the government to make an exception," he said.

On Wednesday, Star Trek actor William Shatner became the oldest person ever in space after he blasted off on board Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rocket.

Mobile phones, steel are among the sectors going fully automatedBEIJING－From steel plates and mobile phones to household motors and rocket ignition device parts, more business lines in China are using artificial intelligence to power their production and have introduced "dark factories" with their 24-hour uninterrupted and unattended production capabilities.

The Xi'an Aerospace Propulsion Institute is a research base for China's solid-fuel rocket engines.

Without sufficient human and material resources, the institute achieved a 24-hour production mode for rocket ignition parts.

The rocket industrial park in the Wuhan National Aerospace Industry Base has the capacity to produce 20 solid-fuel launch vehicles per year.

"If the smart economy is like a rocket, the new infrastructure is the fuel chamber that will accelerate its launch.

The self-made Tiantong-1 satellite was launched into space via a Long March rocket in 2016.

Sales of 5G smartphones are expected to rocket at the beginning of next year.

The move came after rocket startup Beijing Interstellar Glory Space Technology said in January that it planned to be listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board or the STAR Market on the Shanghai bourse.

"Private enterprises play a more important role in the commercial aerospace sector as they are encouraged to tap into space-related manufacturing and applications," said Jiang, who is also a senior rocket scientist at the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology and an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.