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 | SpaceX | Arianespace / ArianeGroup | CASC / SAST |
| Country | 🇺🇸 USA | 🇪🇺 Europe | 🇨🇳 China |
| Status | Active | Retired | Active |
| Vehicle class | Heavy | Heavy | Medium |
| Propellant | RP-1 / LOX | LH₂ / LOX (Vulcain 2) + solid HTPB boosters | UDMH / N₂O₄ (hypergolic all stages) |
| Reusable | Yes | No | No |
| Stages | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| First flight | 2018 | 1996 – 2023 | 1992 |
| Payload to LEO | 63,800 kgas of [1]Expended side boosters. Fully reusable ~27,500 kg LEO. ↑ Best | 21,000 kgas of [1]Ariane 5 ECA configuration | 3,500 kgas of [1]SSO capacity ~1,300 kg; standard LEO 3,500 kg |
| Payload to GTO | 26,700 kgas of [1]Expendable configuration; reusable ~8,000 kg ↑ Best | 10,865 kgas of [1]ECA configuration. Ariane 5 ES (ATV) variant: 21,000 kg LEO | — |
| Height | 70 mas of [1] ↑ Best | 54 mas of [1] | 41.06 mas of [1] |
| Liftoff mass | 1,421 tas of [1] ↑ Best | 777 tas of [1] | 232 tas of [1] |
| Success rate | 100%as of [2]12/12 mission successes through Falcon Heavy ViaSat-3 F3 (Apr 29, 2026) ↑ Best | 97.5%as of [2]113/117 successes. Failures: V501 (Jun 1996, first flight), V63 (Dec 2002, off-course but payload recovered). 2 partial successes. | 98.7%as of [2]~77/78 successes; one known failure (CZ-2D Y7, Mar 1995 upper-stage anomaly) |
| Total flights | 12as of [2] | 117as of [2]VA261 (Jul 5, 2023) was the final Ariane 5 flight. Launched the James Webb Space Telescope (Dec 2021). ↑ Best | ~78as of [2] |
| Cost / kg LEO | ~$1,400/kgas of [1]Based on ~$97M list price / 63,800 kg (expendable configuration) ↓ Cheapest | — | — |
| Summary | Currently the most powerful operational rocket in the world. Three Falcon 9 cores sharing propellant cross-feed produce 5.1 MN of sea-level thrust. Primary mission profile: DoD/NRO GEO payloads and planetary science. | Europe's dominant heavy-lift rocket for 27 years. Its most famous payload: the James Webb Space Telescope (Dec 25, 2021). Retired Jul 5, 2023 to make way for Ariane 6. Responsible for launching over 250 commercial and scientific payloads including XMM-Newton, Rosetta, and BepiColombo. | 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. |
28 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.