By now you’ve heard the news: SpaceX is set to IPO in 2026 at a valuation of $1.5 trillion. CEO Elon Musk personally owns 42% of the company. Coupled with Musk’s already worth $484 billion, SpaceX’s valuation reaches $1.5 trillion, making him officially the world’s first trillionaire.
Wow.
Despite all the talk right now about how people don’t like billionaires, investors seem more than happy to help Musk achieve 1,000x that goal. They were lining up for the SpaceX IPO and couldn’t resist the prospect of owning a piece of the world’s largest and most successful aerospace company.
Personally I think this is a bad idea. As I said last month, SpaceX is likely to go public at a sky-high price of nearly 70 times annual sales, which I call a “hard-to-defend valuation.”
But what if you could buy a stock that was very similar to SpaceX and priced 1,500 times less?
Image source: Getty Images.
No, I’m not talking about Aerospace Corporation rocket lab(NASDAQ: RKLB) Or Blue Origin today. (Although Rocket Lab have It’s a great investment, and I happen to think Blue Origin might be one of them, too. )
Instead, today I want to talk about Blue Arrow Aerospace, arguably China’s best private space company and the closest thing China has to its own version of SpaceX.
China has many aerospace start-ups, including iSpace, Galaxy Energy, Aerospace Pioneer, etc. However, it can be said that Blue Arrow Aerospace is in a leading position in China.
Blue Arrow Aerospace was founded in 2015, 13 years younger than SpaceX. From a development perspective, it may be more than ten years behind SpaceX. Nonetheless, I think this is the best in China right now.
Blue Arrow, best known for its Suzaku 2 rocket, which is fueled by liquid oxygen and liquid methane, first entered orbit in 2013; it has launched four more times since then. Blue Arrow Aerospace’s latest project is the Zhuque-3 rocket. It’s not an original name – or an original idea. Suzaku 3, modeled after SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9, entered orbit in December 2025 but crashed during a landing attempt (like previous Falcon 9 reusable rockets).
Blue Arrow Aerospace aims to perfect this process by 2026. Twelve launches are planned for this year, and perhaps as many as 12 landing attempts. If the company’s performance is similar to SpaceX’s, at least one of them should be successful.
Blue Arrow Aerospace’s performance may be Very Just like SpaceX’s. Consider the similarities:
Like the Falcon 9, the Suzaku 3 is a two-stage rocket with nine first-stage engines for launch, and grid fins and legs for landing. Like the Falcon 9, it’s designed to be reused 20 or more times before needing replacement. Suzaku 3’s payload is similar to that of Falcon 9, but slightly lighter – 8 to 12 tons in low-Earth orbit. Like SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft, it is made of stainless steel to improve structural integrity and thermal performance during reentry.
If all goes well and Blue Arrow successfully lands and carries Suzaku 3 in 2026, it will be 11 years after SpaceX’s Falcon 9 first landed – not a bad performance for a company 13 A few years younger than SpaceX. In fact, it could be argued that this would indicate that Blue Arrow Aerospace is catching up to its mentor.
Granted, one hopes Blue Arrow Aerospace can catch up hurry up. After all, SpaceX has done it all, has proven that reusability works, and has made all the mistakes (that Blue Arrow can now avoid) and achieved all of the successes (that Blue Arrow can now imitate).
It is undeniable that if Blue Arrow Aerospace wants to reach the level of SpaceX today, successfully launching more than 150 Falcon 9 rockets every year, while also taking into account the development of lunar landers, test-flying a fleet of giant starships, and building the world’s largest broadband Internet satellite constellation, then Blue Arrow Aerospace still has a long way to go. Still, using SpaceX as a roadmap gives space investors a good idea of ​​where LandSpace is headed, even if it’s still a decade or so before they get there.
If you’re interested in investing in the Blue Arrow Aerospace IPO, here’s what we know:
The Shanghai Stock Exchange’s Science and Technology Innovation Board has approved Blue Arrow Aerospace’s public listing in early 2026. The company is not yet profitable, with revenue of only 36.4 million yuan ($5 million) in the first half of 2025 and a loss of $87.6 million. On the bright side, revenue in the first half of 2025 is up eightfold from the first half of 2024. The company’s IPO valuation target is $1 billion.
LandSpace may not be as good a rocket company as SpaceX. It may be unprofitable and a decade behind the US aerospace giants in technology – but hey, at least Blue Arrow costs 1,500 times less!
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Rich Smith works at Rocket Lab. The Motley Fool has jobs and recommendations in Rocket Lab. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Forget the SpaceX IPO in 2026. This space stock is 1500 times cheaper. Originally posted by The Motley Fool
