Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has confirmed exploring one-hour deliveries worldwide through a rocket-based delivery system. 

The company has partnered with Beijing-based Epoch Space to work in this direction. The announcement was made over the Chinese social media platform WeChat.

The Chinese corporate group hosts the Taobao marketplace, which has seen intense competition at home and abroad. To retain its grip over the e-commerce business, Alibaba has introduced a five-day delivery service to some of its important global markets. 

The service, introduced last year, is available to customers in various markets such as Germany, France, Portugal – Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and more recently, the US. The deliveries are handled by Alibaba’s logistics business unit, Cainiao Smart Logistics Network, the South China Morning Post reported.

Now, the company is looking to shorten the delivery timeline further and is prepared to use the fastest known mode of transportation – rockets. 

AI image: Parcel tied to a rocket soaring over the skies. Image: Microsoft Copilot.

How will the rocket-based delivery system work?

As per the social media post, Epoch Space will provide a cargo cabin with over 4,200 cubic feet on its Yuanxingzhe 1 for this service. This cargo cabin has a diameter of 4m and a capacity not exceeding 10 metric tonnes.

Interestingly, the Yuanxingzhe 1 (YXZ -1) has yet to complete its maiden flight, so the service is unlikely to start anytime soon. However, animations shared by the space startup show the liquid-fuelled rocket linked to a conveyor belt to load smaller parcels into the cargo cabin. 

Like SpaceX’s rockets, the YXZ-1 is designed to be reusable and has been simulated landing on vessels at sea.

In the animation, the rocket takes off from the eastern province of China and lands in the west after 25 minutes, including a short space trip.

Upon landing in a silo, another conveyor belt emptied the cargo cabin into a parcel van which then made its way to a customer. 

Will such a system work?

The timing of the social media post, just a few hours before April 1, made the internet wonder if the companies were playing a prank like most tech companies do today.

However, officials at Alibaba, which also owns the SCMP, told the media outlet that the company was exploring this option. “Many great endeavours seem like a joke at first,” officials told the SCMP.

But loading a rocket with individual parcels moments before blastoff isn’t practical either. The space startup has claimed that its rocket can carry a car-sized payload. Weight distribution in such a payload is well known and more likely better suited for a rocket courier. 

The Register also noted that pricing was missing from the announcement, which would be a decisive factor if the service were aimed at commercial customers.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which allows ridesharing for payloads into space, charges nearly $5m for a payload slightly less than a tonne. So, the courier would have to be worth so much more to warrant a $5m delivery charge to get it quicker.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out for all the ambitious moves. Another e-commerce giant, Amazon, promised drone-based delivery in 2013.

More than a decade later, we are still waiting to see it deployed for all parcel deliveries. Perhaps Alibaba also has similar plans with the rocket-based service.