By Blaine Curcio

A western luxury hotel brand is perhaps not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of a Chinese People’s Liberation Army-controlled launch site. The space industry in China has generally been not so commercial, not so western, and pretty much austere. To envision an iconic American brand benefiting from the construction of such a launch site is counterintuitive. And yet, on Hainan Island, such an unlikely scenario has played out at China’s fourth launch site, Wenchang.

Wenchang is located on Hainan Island, with the island also being a province, located off the far southern coast of China. Due to its location on the sea, and also near the equator, Hainan island had long been identified as a possible launch site. As the Chinese space program’s ambitions grew larger, its requirements for heavy launch vehicles, and the desirability for a more equatorial launch site, became too much to ignore, so in the late 2000s, the Chinese State Council approved the construction of the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site.

Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site

Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site is China’s southernmost launch site. Given its proximity to the equator, Wenchang has been tasked with launching China’s heavy-lift Long March-5, which will be the primary heavy-lift rocket for China’s current and future Moon missions, Mars missions, and much of the Chinese Space Station. To now, Wenchang has two launch pads—one designed for the Long March-5, and one designed for the Long March-7, with plans for a third launch pad in the future.

With its inaugural launch in 2016, Wenchang has seen relatively fewer, but bigger launches. The location is convenient from the perspective of logistics, with Wenchang’s seaside location allowing for barges to bring rocket pieces from the coastal city of Tianjin in the north—where they are manufactured—to the south. This is especially true when compared to China’s inland launch sites, which tend to be located in the mountains or desert. The July 2017 failure of the Long March-5 means that Wenchang experienced a hiatus in launch, with the failure having been its most recent, however 2019 is likely to see the return of the Long March-5 from Wenchang, and subsequent years will see an increase as China conducts more heavy launches. The provincial government of Hainan has seen space launch as an opportunity to develop the economy, with this inevitably being linked to the province’s economic wheelhouse—tourism.

Hainan Island — China’s Hawaii

Hainan is one of China’s less-developed provinces economically. Located far from the industrialized Eastern seaboard, Hainan’s economy is largely reliant on tourism, agriculture, and some industry. With that said, tourism is probably the single most important industry on the island, with a combination of retirees from China’s cold Northeastern provinces, Russian tourists, and a variety of others contributing to over 70 million total tourist arrivals in 2018, in a province of 9 million. Beaches, famous coconut milk, and more recently, world-class golf courses have made Hainan a tourist Mecca within China, and have also contributed to the local government primarily seeing things through the lens of tourism.

The unique obsession by the Hainan government shows up in many ways—for example, the Bo’ao Lecheng International Medical Tourism Pilot Zone, a project that aims to capture a market of wealthy Chinese who would otherwise go abroad for medical requirements.

Turning Space Launch into Tourism

Hainan is far from the first place to see the tourism potential of hurling massive payloads of metal into space. Florida’s Space Coast, for one, is a clear inspiration for any subsequent space tourism development centered around a coastal launch site. In the case of Hainan, where the government is particularly keen on industries that have relatively high value-add with relatively low environmental impact, space has been seen as an attractive choice for incentives and government emphasis.

In typical Chinese style, however, Hainan has gone big. Several miles from the launch site is a world-class Hilton Hotel, with balconies that can see the launch site off in the distance. Given the rarity of launches from Wenchang to now (only around 2 per year on average), getting a hotel room with a view during a launch would presumably require either a lot of money, or a very high position within the company launching the satellite.

Separate to the Hilton Hotel, Wenchang is home to observation centers with a combined capacity of 25,000 people, allowing for a stadium-sized viewing audience for launches, as well as a space exhibition primarily catering towards students. In this way, Hainan has an opportunity to bring space to a wider audience, through creating experiences that the average person can have that relate to space.

The Future of Wenchang

As China’s space program becomes more ambitious, Wenchang will only grow in importance. More launches will bring more tourists, and the increasingly high profile of China’s various space missions may bring more attention to the launch site. In the very long-term, China’s super-heavy launch vehicle—the Long March-9—might very well be launched from Wenchang given the proximity to the equator, though certainly a dedicated new launch pad would need to be built. For the meantime, the return to flight of the Long March-5, and the continued increase in Chinese space activities more generally are likely to contribute to a growing Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site.