In 2025 the worldwide revolution in rocketry that began about a decade ago continued. Across the globe new private commercial rocket companies are forming, not just in the United States. And across the globe, the three-quarters-of-a century domination by government space agencies is receding, though those agencies are right now pushing back with all their might to protect their turf.

Dominating this revolution in 2025 in every way possible however were two entities, one a private American company and the second a communist nation attempting to imitate capitalism. The former is SpaceX, accomplishing more in this single year than whole nations and even the whole globe had managed in any year since the launch of Sputnik. The latter is China, which in 2025 became a true space power, its achievements matching and even exceeding anything done by either the U.S. or the Soviet Union for most of the space age.

The table above shows all successful launches globally since 1986. I picked that year because that was when, following the Challenger accident, that President Reagan ended all commercial flights on the space shuttle, declaring that future commercial launches must be done by private enterprise, not a government agency.

Since then there has been a slow growth of American rocketry, though Reagan would certainly have been disappointed at how long that growth took to get started. For three decades following Reagan’s edict only one new American rocket company appeared, Orbital Sciences, while the other established big space companies either consolidated or disappeared. Above all, none of these old companies seemed at all interested in innovating or lowering costs. Instead, they almost completely relied on big government contracts from the military and NASA, allowing the commercial market to drift across to Russia and Europe.

And then came Elon Musk and SpaceX in the late 2000s. Though it took a decade, by the mid-2010s SpaceX’s launch rate began to take off. And in 2025, that launch rate exploded. The graph to the right illustrates this. While the U.S. in 2025 smashed its previous annual launch record with 195 launches (almost triple the 1960s record of 70 that had lasted until SpaceX came along), 86% of those American launches were by SpaceX.

Nor did SpaceX dominate just the American launch industry. Its 168 launches in 2025 exceeded that of the rest of the world combined. Moreover, it put into orbit more than 70% of all payload.

In many ways the effort by space agencies and governments worldwide acts to hide SpaceX’s dominance. News outlets tend to focus on government space programs as if only those programs really count. Thus, the media sees the race between China and NASA to get humans back on the Moon as the whole story.

Superheavy captured safely yesterday by the chopsticks,
for the third time in four attempts, on March 2025

In reality, the real American space program right now is SpaceX’s, and it is the one truly racing China in space. It is not only building the biggest rocket ever (Starship/Superheavy) to create its own Mars exploration project (with a side effort on the Moon), it is doing so on its own dime. SpaceX presently is almost entirely funded these days by revenue produced by its rockets and its Starlink constellation. The latter is adding about 20,000 new subscribers per day, and is pulling in revenue in excess of $8 to $9 billion per year. Combined with previously raised investment capital, SpaceX actually has a real budget almost comparable to that of NASA’s. It might be about half in total, but that half is far more effectively spent.

If the U.S. is going to beat China in space, it is only going to do at this time with SpaceX. NASA’s effort is not only irrelevant, it is trivial in comparison. The best its Artemis program will do is repeat an Apollo 11 landing, an achievement that historians will consider a minor footnote in the settlement of the solar system. It will be what SpaceX does in the next decade that will go down in history as historic and significant.

Before moving on to China, 2025’s other dominant player, we must note the pluses and minuses of the rest of the American rocket industry. Rocket Lab for example finally began to achieve a reliable and fast launch rate for its Electron rocket. All signs indicate that it will likely begin launching twice and even three times a month in 2026, especially because it plans the first launch of its larger Neutron rocket early next year. Blue Origin in turn finally got its New Glenn rocket off the ground, with two successful launches and a successful landing of the first stage on the second launch. Expect it to slowly ramp up launches in 2026, though it is not likely it will match Rocket Lab’s launch rate for several more years. Finally, ULA got its new Vulcan rocket operational in 2025, and appears poised to finally begin a steady launch rate of more than once a month in 2026.

The remainder of the American rocket industry remains an unknown. Firefly had one launch failure and lost a second rocket during a static fire test, so it completed no launches in 2026. Similarly, Northrop Grumman’s plans have been stymied because its Antares rocket is grounded until Firefly (which is providing a new first stage) can get off the ground.

The other rocket startups are either dead, or in development. Though no launch dates have been set for either, it is expected that both Relativity and Stoke Space will attempt a first launch in 2026. Their entrance into the market — along with the addition of Rocket Lab’s Neutron and the ramp up of Blue Origin’s New Glenn and ULA’s Vulcan — might finally force SpaceX to face some competition.

One last point about the U.S.: For the first time in years, in 2025 government regulation and red tape became a non-issue. The Trump administration has effectively shut down the effort by the administrative state — enthusiastically encouraged by the unknown players who ran the Biden administration — to impose its will on everything and everybody. In the U.S. freedom ruled more than anything last year, and for this reason we saw real progress across the entire industry. Sadly, that progress was mostly an effort to make up lost time.

China and Russia

For the past decade the rocket industries of China and Russia have been like two elevators moving in opposite directions, one going up and the other down.

As the graph to the right shows, Russia (before the fall of the Soviet Union) once dominated the global launch industry. Many of the those Soviet launches however were done to maintain ineffective jobs programs. When the Soviet Union fell those launches ended.

Beginning in the mid-1990s and into the first decade of the 21st century Russia’s launch industry however experienced steady growth, partly because it was now free to compete for satellite business in the west, and the American launch industry had no interest in fighting for that market share.

That growth ended under Putin, for two reasons. First, Putin consolidated the industry into a single government-owned corporation, Roscosmos, ending all competition and thus squelching any incentive for innovation or efficiency. Second, Putin invaded the Ukraine, ending Russia’s access to the western satellite market, losing in one fell swoop billions in income.

In the past decade most of Russia launches have been limited to maintaining (barely) its domestic and military satellite constellations, and flying a few manned and unmanned missions each year to ISS. And though it claims it will launch its own station after ISS is retired, don’t bet on it. Without a major reformation, it is very possible Russia’s participation in space will shrink to practically nothing in the coming years.

China’s rocket industry meanwhile has boomed, and it has done so by adopting policies directly opposite to that of Putin. It has allowed the formation of what I call pseudo-companies, which mimic capitalism by working independently while competing for contracts and profits. All are under close supervision and control by the communist government, which can take them over at any time, but this system allows for competition which thus encourages innovation and efficiency.

As a result China in 2025 set a new record of 90 launches. Furthermore, two different rocket designs attempted to land their first stages for later reuse. Both attempts failed, but we should expect China to successfully land one or more rockets vertically in 2026. It also has its own functioning space station, continually occupied, and has been encouraging independent pseudo-companies to develop their own capsules and cargo freighters to supply it.

Whether China’s success will continue remains uncertain. As a top-down political system, it could all end in an instant if there is a major change in leadership and policy. Barring that, its space program is well thought out, carefully planned in a very rational manner, and has been hitting its planned milestones now with some regularity and few delays for more than a decade. Expect that to continue in 2026 and at least the next few years. Beyond that no one can predict.

On the periphery

The rest of the world’s rocket industry falls into three categories: Europe, India, and everyone else.

In Europe the last three years have seen a major change, with Germany, France, Italy, and Spain all abandoning support for the European Space Agency’s (ESA) government-run Arianespace operation by taking management of the French Guiana spaceport and the Vega-C rocket from it. It is also no longer involved in designing or building new rockets. Instead, these European countries have thrown their support to new private competing rocket startups. None have yet launched, though the German startup Isar had a failed launch attempt in 2025. Isar has a second attempt scheduled in only two weeks, while the Spanish startup PLD is targeting a first launch in ’26. The German startup Rocket Factory Augsburg was close to launching in 2024, but after an explosion during a static fire test destroyed the rocket little has been heard from the company.

The one operational private rocket company in Europe right now is Italy’s Avio. Its regained control of its Vega-C rocket from Arianespace as part of this shift in policy, and has been winning launch contracts since. Expect it to show major progress in the next two years.

Arianespace still manages the Ariane-6 rocket, but as an expensive expendable rocket its future is limited. It has a multi-launch contract to place many of Amazon’s Leo satellites in orbit, but after it completes that work it will be difficult for it to garner new business.

Whether Europe will succeed in this transition to the capitalism model remains unclear. Its bureaucracy is very firmly entrenched, and appears working hard to make sure it controls everything the new private companies do. I suspect the real turning point will be when one of these rocket startups successfully launches. That was the turning point in the U.S., when SpaceX finally succeeded.

In India, the situation is very similar to Europe’s. The Modi government has been pushing to reduce the power of its space agency ISRO, demanding it transfer ownership of rockets and operations to the private sector. That bureaucracy however has done a good job maintaining control, cleverly restructuring programs designed to shift ownership to the private sector so that the shift really doesn’t happen.

Meanwhile India has a handful of rocket startups, with two (Skyroot and Agrikul) appearing to be close to a first launch. It will likely take a launch success in India as in Europe to make real change possible.

Finally there is everyone else, most of which are third world countries publicizing grand plans with little likelihood of success. In Arabia both Saudi Arabia and the UAE have made progress, but both are far from becoming space-faring nations.

Japan is likely the world’s biggest disappointment. Despite being a first world nation of high technical capabilities, its entire space industry is controlled by its space agency JAXA, which has done a very poor job building rockets and spacecraft. The few private startups that exist have had trouble getting off the ground, with only the lunar lander startup Ispace having any success, though that success has only been in garnering investment capital and contracts. Its only two lunar missions both crashed on the Moon.

Conclusion

The graph to the right shows us that, unless some unforeseen catastrophe occurs, the future of space travel is now brighter than it has ever been. The graph might suggest everything is now controlled by SpaceX and China, and that little else is happening, but that is wrong.

Competition fuels everything, and right now the competition between SpaceX and China quickens everything they do. In addition, China’s successful space program to return to the Moon is spurring the U.S. government to promote its own space effort, if only to feed the egos of the blowhards in office.

SpaceX’s domination in the U.S. is also spurring the nation’s many new and old companies. They want a piece of the pie, and if SpaceX can make so much money from its space assets, why can’t they?

The success of both SpaceX and China is also inspiring governments and entrepreneurs worldwide. There is both literally and figuratively a vacuum in space, and every nation wants in. And since SpaceX and China have demonstrated that competition and private enterprise are the way to go, every nation in the world is trying to copy that model, in some form or another. This competitive urge even applies to the small peripheral nations. Many might not be close to success, but all are pushing hard to get there. Under these conditions, success is sure to follow.

In creating this last graph this week, I found I had to expand the vertical axis, since 2025 was the first time the world had ever exceeded 300 launches in a single year. I fully expect to have to expand that axis again and again in the coming years. In fact, I fully expect the numbers to easily top 400 before we reach 2030.

And that’s only the beginning. From that moment these numbers should truly skyrocket, to a point it will no longer be practical keeping count. Only then will humanity truly become a space-faring civilization.

Hold on tight. It is going to be quite a ride.