Pick up to 4 launch vehicles to compare side-by-side. State lives in the URL — share the link and the comparison loads exactly as you left it.
The global launch market reached $14.1 billion in 2024 — up 34% since 2021.
| Attribute | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Company | United Launch Alliance | Galactic Energy | LandSpace |
| Country | 🇺🇸 USA | 🇨🇳 China | 🇨🇳 China |
| Status | Retired | Active | Active |
| Vehicle class | Heavy | Small | Medium |
| Propellant | LH2 / LOX | Solid (stages 1–3) + hydrazine liquid upper stage | Methalox (LOX / liquid methane) |
| Reusable | No | No | No |
| Stages | 2 | 4 | 2 |
| First flight | 2004 – 2024 | 2020 | 2024 |
| Payload to LEO | 28,370 kgas of [1] ↑ Best | 400 kgas of [1]300 kg to SSO. | 6,000 kgas of [1]4,000 kg to 500 km SSO. Enhanced variant of the base Zhuque-2 with a common-bulkhead tank, TQ-15 thrust-vectoring engine on stage 2, and a niobium-alloy nozzle extension. A further-improved Block 2 first flew 2026-05-14 with subcooled propellant loading and a 3-ignition second stage. |
| Payload to GTO | — | — | — |
| Height | 70.7 mas of [1] ↑ Best | 20 mas of [1] | — |
| Liftoff mass | 733 tas of [1] ↑ Best | 33 tas of [1] | — |
| Success rate | 93.75% (15/16 full success, 1 partial failure)as of [1] | 91.3% (21/23)as of [1] | 100% since 2024-11-27 debutas of [1] ↑ Best |
| Total flights | 16as of [1] | 23as of [1] ↑ Best | 2+ (2E variant)as of [1] |
| Cost / kg LEO | — | ~$4.5M per launchas of [1]Total launch price, not a per-kg figure. ↓ Cheapest | — |
| Summary | ULA's triple-common-booster-core heavy-lift launcher, retired 2024-04-09 after its final flight; superseded by Vulcan Centaur, which ULA states offers similar heavy-lift capability at lower cost. | Galactic Energy's workhorse small-lift solid rocket — one of the most-flown Chinese commercial launchers — with a sea-launch variant (Ceres-1S, debuted Sep 2023) and a larger Ceres-2 in development. | LandSpace's enhanced methalox launcher, the higher-performance successor to the original Zhuque-2 (the first methalox rocket ever to reach orbit, in 2023) — see slug 'zhuque-2' for the original vehicle already in our database. |
48 launch vehicles across 10 countries — active, retired, and in development — with primary-source citations from manufacturer user guides and agency press kits. Pure URL state: bookmark or share the link and the comparison reproduces exactly.