5 comments

• Rockribbed1

  August 25, 2025 at 12:40 pm

  I am impressed.
  Rocket lab launches may exceed China in the future
• Dick Eagleson

  August 25, 2025 at 3:14 pm

  Well, RL is already ahead of Russia – though that is a fairly low bar to get over these days. But, yeah, once the mostly-reusable Neutron enters service, exceeding PRC launches of expendable rockets would definitely be a possibility.
• Edward

  August 27, 2025 at 4:26 pm

  Dick Eagleson,
  You wrote: “Well, RL is already ahead of Russia – though that is a fairly low bar to get over these days.”

  It may be a low bar, but it still puts Rocket Lab in third place on the leader board. How many competitors are there on the whole board? From Robert’s last Rocket Report, it looks like ten governments and ten other U.S. companies.
  https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/essays-and-commentaries/the-global-launch-industry-in-2024-a-year-of-amazing-highs-and-depressing-lows-with-the-best-yet-to-come

  Third place is pretty good, even if you don’t count the entire national space programs.

  Once Europe and India get their commercial launch companies operational, Robert’s annual rocket report may have to divide those countries into government and commercial launches, just as he does with the U.S.

  Welcome to The Space Age mark II.

  Hopefully, other launch companies will put themselves in the running for third place. Well, maybe next year.
• Edward

  August 28, 2025 at 5:19 pm

  Dick Eagleson,
  That got me thinking. There are about ten government orbital launch programs and about twelve* or so operational private, commercial orbital launch companies. Of these twenty-two or so entities, only four have more than ten launches, so far this year. The average (191 launches, after three more SpaceX and one more China launch since this post of Robert’s) is about eight or nine per launch entity.

  Four launch entities are on the leader board with a total of 178 launches spread among them, leaving thirteen launches spread among the remaining eighteen launchers. 93.2% of the worlds launches were performed by 18% of the launchers. It looks to me that the state of most of the launch industry is poor.

  The one entity that reuses its booster stages is the one leading all the rest combined and is 56% of all the world’s launches, so far this year. Reusability clearly makes for a superior rocket in availability but also superior in price and reliability (all those launches makes for a higher quality rocket).

  107 SpaceX 56%
  48 China 25%
  12 Rocket Lab 6%
  11 Russia 6%
  13 All others 7%
  —-
  191 Total

  Then there is the space operations industry, the countries and companies that operate satellites and probes in space. There are dozens of countries that operate satellites, and many of them have had communication satellites in orbit for decades. There are now scores of companies that have put satellites in orbit, and many of them still have operational satellites. I would say that I lost count of how many countries and companies operate in space, but I never really kept track. There are six or seven thousand operational satellites in Earth orbit in addition to a similar number of Starlink satellites.

  There is an unknowable number of governments, universities, and citizen scientists who are using data from satellites and probes for study and research, as well as companies and others making money from the information coming from satellites and probes. We don’t have to be spacefaring to do science, to make money, or to do extraordinary things from space operations. The number of orbital launchers (and annual launches) may be limited and known, but the number of users of those launches is tremendous and unknowable.

  The launch industry supports all these other activities, making this an exciting time, now that so many launches occur at lower prices than during the first six decades of the Space Age (Space Age mark I, the government-control mediocrity era). We are now in a second era of the Space Age, in which we are just beginning to receive the benefits of space, benefits that the space-fairing governments had failed or refused to let us avail ourselves of, but commercial interests are willing to make profits by providing us with space benefits that bring us additional prosperity.

  Rocket Lab is rapidly becoming an important part of the Space Age. Good for them and their tenacity through the red tape.
  _______________
  * After writing my previous comment, I realized that Blue Origin has gone from a suborbital launcher to an orbital launcher, this year, and an Italian company, Avio, will soon independently launch Vega rockets out of French Giana, so there are more entities than the twenty-one I gleaned from Robert’s 2024 annual Launch Industry Report, which I referenced in my previous comment. Next year should see several more launch companies become operational.
• Robert Zimmerman

  August 28, 2025 at 7:23 pm

  Edward and Dick: My plan has always been to start listing the separate companies in Europe and India and Australia once they succeed in their first launch. Expect therefore that the 2026 table to be expanded somewhat.