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 | LandSpace | ExPace (CASIC subsidiary) |
| Country | 🇺🇸 USA | 🇨🇳 China | 🇨🇳 China |
| Status | Retired | Active | Active |
| Vehicle class | Heavy | Medium | Small |
| Propellant | LH2 / LOX | Methalox (LOX / liquid methane) | Solid (3 stages) + liquid upper stage |
| Reusable | No | No | No |
| Stages | 2 | 2 | 4 |
| First flight | 2004 – 2024 | 2024 | 2020 |
| Payload to LEO | 28,370 kgas of [1] ↑ Best | 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. | 1,500 kgas of [1] |
| Payload to GTO | — | — | — |
| Height | 70.7 mas of [1] ↑ Best | — | — |
| Liftoff mass | 733 tas of [1] ↑ Best | — | 78 tas of [1]Transporter-erector-launcher (TEL) capable. |
| Success rate | 93.75% (15/16 full success, 1 partial failure)as of [1] | 100% since 2024-11-27 debutas of [1] ↑ Best | 80% (4/5)as of [1]Debut flight (2020-07-10) failed; returned to flight 2022-12-07 successfully. |
| Total flights | 16as of [1] | 2+ (2E variant)as of [1] ↑ Best | 5as 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| Summary | ULA's triple-common-booster-core heavy-lift launcher, retired 2024-04-09 after its final flight; superseded by Vulcan Centaur, which ULA states offers similar heavy-lift capability at lower cost. | 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. | The larger sibling of Kuaizhou-1A, roughly 3.75x the payload class, road-mobile and solid-fueled, recovering commercial cadence after a 2020 debut failure. |
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.