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 | Orienspace | Rocket Lab | Isar Aerospace |
| Country | 🇨🇳 China | 🇺🇸 USA | 🇩🇪 Germany |
| Status | Active | In Development | In Development |
| Vehicle class | Medium | Medium | Small |
| Propellant | Solid (HTPB) — three core stages + four strap-on boosters | CH₄ / LOX | LOX / kerosene (~80% manufactured in-house) |
| Reusable | No | Yes | No |
| Stages | 3 | 2 | 2 |
| First flight | 2024 | 2026 | 2025 |
| Payload to LEO | 6,500 kgas of [1]~4,200 kg to 500 km SSO | 13,000 kgas of [1]Reusable configuration with downrange barge landing — this is the single payload figure Rocket Lab publishes. ~15,000 kg expendable. ↑ Best | 1,000 kgas of [1] |
| Payload to GTO | — | — | — |
| Height | 30 mas of [1] | 43 mas of [1] ↑ Best | — |
| Liftoff mass | ~400 tas of [1] | ~481 tas of [1] ↑ Best | — |
| Success rate | 100%as of [2]2/2 successes: maiden flight Jan 11, 2024; second flight Oct 2025 delivered 3 commercial satellites to SSO ↑ 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 | 2as of [2]Both flights launched from a barge in the Yellow Sea off Haiyang, Shandong ↑ Best | — | 1as of [1] |
| Cost / kg LEO | — | — | — |
| Summary | The world's most powerful solid-propellant launch vehicle and the largest rocket yet flown from a sea platform. Orienspace's barge-launched Gravity-1 gives Chinese commercial customers a mobile, weather-flexible ride for mid-inclination smallsat batches; both flights to date succeeded. | Rocket Lab's medium-lift reusable rocket targeting the $100B constellation replenishment market. Uses a 'hungry hippo' fairings design that opens at the top rather than traditional clamshell separation. First flight delayed to Q4 2026 after a Jan 2026 propellant tank test anomaly. | 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.