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The global launch market reached $14.1 billion in 2024 — up 34% since 2021.
| Attribute | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Company | United Launch Alliance | CASC / SAST | Isar Aerospace |
| Country | 🇺🇸 USA | 🇨🇳 China | 🇩🇪 Germany |
| Status | Retired | Active | In Development |
| Vehicle class | Heavy | Medium | Small |
| Propellant | LH2 / LOX | UDMH / N₂O₄ (hypergolic all stages) | LOX / kerosene (~80% manufactured in-house) |
| Reusable | No | No | No |
| Stages | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| First flight | 2004 – 2024 | 1992 | 2025 |
| Payload to LEO | 28,370 kgas of [1] ↑ Best | 3,500 kgas of [1]SSO capacity ~1,300 kg; standard LEO 3,500 kg | 1,000 kgas of [1] |
| Payload to GTO | — | — | — |
| Height | 70.7 mas of [1] ↑ Best | 41.06 mas of [1] | — |
| Liftoff mass | 733 tas of [1] ↑ Best | 232 tas of [1] | — |
| Success rate | 93.75% (15/16 full success, 1 partial failure)as of [1] | 98.7%as of [2]~77/78 successes; one known failure (CZ-2D Y7, Mar 1995 upper-stage anomaly) ↑ Best | 0/1 (first flight failed)as of [1]First flight from Andøya Spaceport (2025-03-30): liftoff succeeded but the rocket was terminated ~30 seconds in after a vent valve opened unexpectedly, causing loss of attitude control. Second flight ('Onward and Upward') repeatedly delayed through 2026 (weather, a safety-zone fishing vessel, a composite pressure vessel leak, then off-nominal fluid-system behavior as of 2026-06-15) — not yet flown as of this research. |
| Total flights | 16as of [1] | ~78as of [2] ↑ Best | 1as of [1] |
| Cost / kg LEO | — | — | — |
| Summary | ULA's triple-common-booster-core heavy-lift launcher, retired 2024-04-09 after its final flight; superseded by Vulcan Centaur, which ULA states offers similar heavy-lift capability at lower cost. | China's most-used sun-synchronous and polar orbit workhorse for small-to-medium military and commercial Earth observation satellites. Launched from Jiuquan and Taiyuan. Uses storable hypergolic propellants for high launch-readiness but produces toxic exhaust. | Germany's first orbital-class launcher attempt; its first flight in March 2025 was Western Europe's first orbital launch attempt from the European mainland. A qualification second flight carrying CubeSats and ESA experiments has slipped repeatedly through 2026. |
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.