A high school student's rocket dream

Wang Yuning, a high school student who turned 17 this month, is already known as “big brother” in China’s amateur rocketry community.

When he was a high school freshman, he won first prize at the National Youth Aerospace Innovation Competition. He founded his school’s aerospace club and serves as the rockets’ chief designer — this is no child’s play. And this year, on May 27, out on the Gobi Desert in Qinghai Province, he personally launched a rocket he designed, which reached an altitude of tens of thousands of meters.

When I posted a short video of that launch, the reaction online was instantaneous: more than 10 million views in 24 hours, and numerous media outlets turned their attention to the teenage “rocket chief.” That short clip has since surpassed 95 million views on a single platform. Comments ranged from applause — “If the young people are strong, the country will be strong!” — to doubt: “Can a high school student really build a rocket?”

The rocket, called Feiyan-1, is China’s first sounding rocket developed by secondary school students, an “8-kilometer-class” design. It’s an endearingly small machine, barely 1.5 meters tall — but the technical demands behind it are anything but small. I opened Wang’s notebook and found pages dense with formulas and parameters: avionics and telemetry, aero structures, engines, payloads subjects far beyond a typical high school syllabus. And what about his parents — would they let him neglect schoolwork to pursue this? How are his grades? Curious and full of questions, I went to find him.

My first stop was Wang’s home. We squeezed into his tiny bedroom for the interview — the space between the bed and wardrobe left only a narrow passage. Most of the time he sits on the bed drawing and studying. An old TV sits by his pillow; in 2012, as a preschooler, Wang watched the live broadcast of Shenzhou-9 on that set. The program left a deep impression: the stars and space suddenly felt close, not distant. China’s rapid advancements — the Tiangong space station, the Chang’e lunar program, the global BeiDou network — stoked his youthful imagination.

Wang’s mother, Tao Sihong, is a kindergarten teacher; his father is a residential property manager. Both come from rural backgrounds and came to Shenzhen more than 20 years ago, building their lives by hand. The three of them live in a secondhand flat of less than 70 square meters that’s cluttered with parts, models and books. Tao told me the balcony is often blackened from Wang’s experiments; once he even set some drying clothes on fire. Still, she never tried to snuff out what seems like an impractical “dream of flight.” She only keeps reminding him: be safe.

A family without advanced degrees, special resources or wealth — could Wang really, by self-study, build a rocket?

He then took me to his “main battleground”: Yanchuan High School. From home it’s four Metro transfers and nearly three hours across Shenzhen. The school is barely three years old and not a prestigious name, but Wang insisted he had to attend it. Stepping onto campus, I understood why: there’s an aerospace tech experience center, a space engineering practice lab and a satellite engineering workshop. The school runs regular aerospace courses as a way to identify and nurture young innovators early. Wang arrived two years ago, and the teachers quickly recognized his talent and threw their support behind him.

Last June he brought his hand-drawn rocket plans to aerospace expert Zhou Xiubin, who’d been invited to give a science talk. “Abroad, some middle school students have successfully launched 8-kilometer-class sounding rockets,” Wang told him. “We haven’t done that here. We want to try something harder.” With the school and Zhou’s backing, Wang and his teammates began systematic study. Feiyan-1 took 11 months from design to launch; the student team handled the core stages themselves, revising the overall plan 30 to 40 times and fine-tuning more than 200 details. Zhou called them “a group of dream-chasing youths who dare to aim at the sky.”

On May 27, the countdown ended, engines ignited and Feiyan-1 rose, surpassing a 10-kilometer altitude. The launch site erupted; school mates leapt from their chairs in excitement. Wang, however, stared at the screen until the telemetry confirmed all systems were normal, then allowed a calm, measured smile to appear — the composed confidence of a young “rocket chief” forged by repeated trials.

Our coverage propelled Wang into the spotlight and brought attention to this band of skyward dreamers. Soon an aerospace company approached them, offering a 40-kilometer-class engine — a step closer to their ultimate goal of breaching the Kármán line at 100 kilometers.

This high school student who lit his rocket dream on a balcony has pushed his homemade rockets from zero to 100 meters, to 1,000, to 10,000 — constantly setting new personal records. I record his story, and with it the larger possibility this era opens up for ordinary dreams.

A nation’s hope and its future rest with its youth. In the three years since I became a reporter, I’ve covered many stories about young people: some using AI to help farmers raise chickens and geese, contributing to large-scale rural development initiatives; some building DIY electric formula race cars and bringing “speed and passion” to the track; others proudly wrapped in the national flag in Lyon, France, winning gold at the World Skills competition. There’s no single right answer in life — these young people, in the prime of their youth, pursue their dreams with courage and grow freely. My job is to use my camera and pen to bring these inspiring stories to you.