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 | Firefly Aerospace / Northrop Grumman | ExPace (CASIC subsidiary) | LandSpace |
| Country | 🇺🇸 USA | 🇨🇳 China | 🇨🇳 China |
| Status | In Development | Active | Active |
| Vehicle class | Medium | Small | Medium |
| Propellant | RP-1 / LOX | Solid (3 stages) + liquid-fueled 4th stage | CH₄ / LOX (Tianque-12 + Tianque-15 upper stage) |
| Reusable | Yes | No | No |
| Stages | 2 | 4 | 2 |
| First flight | 2027 | 2017 | 2022 |
| Payload to LEO | 16,000+ kgas of [1]5 m fairing. Renamed from 'Medium Launch Vehicle' (MLV) to 'Eclipse' in May 2025 alongside the Northrop Grumman partnership. First stage (7 Miranda engines) designed for reuse from roughly the 6th flight onward; second stage uses one Vira engine. First flight targeted 2027 — stated plan, not yet flown. ↑ Best | 400 kgas of [1] | 6,000 kgas of [1]SSO capacity ~4,000 kg |
| Payload to GTO | — | — | — |
| Height | — | 19.4 mas of [1] | 49.5 mas of [1] ↑ Best |
| Liftoff mass | — | 30 tas of [1]Transporter-erector-launcher (TEL) capable — road-mobile solid launcher. | 219 tas of [1] ↑ Best |
| Success rate | — | ~85% (23 successes, 3 failures, 1 partial failure of 27)as of [1] ↑ Best | 75%as of [2]3/4 full successes; ZQ-2 Y1 (Dec 2022) reached orbit on stage 1 but 2nd stage failed; ZQ-2 Y2 (Jul 2023) SUCCESS — world's first methane-fueled rocket to reach orbit |
| Total flights | — | 27as of [1] ↑ Best | 4as of [2] |
| Cost / kg LEO | — | — | — |
| Summary | A medium-lift successor to Firefly's Alpha, co-developed with Northrop Grumman, aimed at the national-security and commercial medium-lift gap between small launchers and heavy-lift vehicles. | CASIC's road-mobile, quick-response small solid launcher, operated commercially by ExPace since 2017 — one of the higher-cadence Chinese small-lift vehicles. | The world's first methane-fueled rocket to achieve orbit (July 12, 2023), beating SpaceX Starship to that milestone. A commercial Chinese rocket built by LandSpace with vertically-integrated methane propulsion — the same propellant strategy as Starship, Neutron, and Terran R. |
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.