South China University of Technology's young graduate, Hu Zhenyu and his team has successfully launched liquid-propellant rocket engine at a courtyard in a suburb of Gaoyou City in east China's Jiangsu Province. It is very different from the kind of launch vehicle that carries heavy satellites into space.

Hu is the founder of China's first private rocket firm, Link Space. Last year on July 29, his team has already launched a rocket with a payload of 50 kg in northwest China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

Link Space has cut the price of launching its commercial rocket by 1 million from average price 3 million. Hu is offering 16%of the company for 16 million Yuan (2.6 million U. S. dollars) to venture capitalists, valuing the enterprise at a highly speculative 100 million Yuan. He claims that 6.7 million Yuan from several investors has already been offered to him.

Link Spaces rocket is designed with an objective to take measurements and to perform scientific experiments during sub-orbital flight. The rocket will carry instruments to an altitude of up to 200 kilometers.

Hu expresses that there is no doubt that space system demands heavy investment and he says that he is quiet familiar with Space X, California's commercial space venture. They have rockets of 1.7 meters and 3.5 meters, which are Falcon 1 and Falcon 9. However, Hu's team has no plans to copy their ventures. They plan to produce rockets with a diameter of 7 meters by 2020.

He says, "The domestic rocket market is worth tens of millions of Yuan but will grow to hundreds of millions soon if we can provide more value. Though we cannot catch up with the major state-owned players on technology in the short term, our presence will be a positive stimulus to the industry".