Shanghai.
Inside Deep Space's office building in the High-Tech Industrial Park.
Having just finished a board meeting, Xu Gui returned to his office, tossed the meeting minutes—whose corner he had crumpled in his hand—onto his desk, and dropped heavily into his chair. He pressed his aching brow, his face clouded with gravity and gloom.
Since 2020, when Hua Nation incorporated aerospace into its national strategy, a large number of private aerospace companies had been swept skyward by the tide of military-to-civilian conversion, like pigs standing in the path of a gale.
As one of the era's lucky beneficiaries, Deep Space happened to be among them.
Ordinarily, capital and policy support alone were not enough for a company at the end of the industrial chain. It also needed sufficient time to accumulate technical expertise.
However, this company was rather unusual.
It had caught the policy allowing aerospace companies to jump the queue for A-share listing approval. With billions in capital at work, it had taken only a year to package itself, transforming from a supplier mainly dealing in aerospace food ingredients into a "high-tech enterprise" primarily engaged in "launch services."
It had also happened to coincide with the sweeping success of Hua Nation's Lunar Landing Project. As private and state capital rushed in, Xu Gui partnered with Sea Breeze Capital. Following meticulous packaging, he successfully took Deep Space public through a backdoor listing on the A-share market under the identity of a participant in the Moon Landing Program, thriving in the capital markets.
But good times did not last. The delay of the Tiangong project, along with the rise of the Moon Palace project that replaced it, caused expectations for Low Earth Orbit launch demand to plummet, dealing a massive blow to Deep Space's projected earnings.
After all, only Starry Sky