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 | ExPace (CASIC subsidiary) | SpaceX | CASC / SAST |
| Country | 🇨🇳 China | 🇺🇸 USA | 🇨🇳 China |
| Status | Active | Active | Active |
| Vehicle class | Small | Heavy | Medium |
| Propellant | Solid (3 stages) + liquid upper stage | RP-1 / LOX | UDMH / N₂O₄ (hypergolic all stages) |
| Reusable | No | Yes | No |
| Stages | 4 | 2 | 2 |
| First flight | 2020 | 2018 | 1992 |
| Payload to LEO | 1,500 kgas of [1] | 63,800 kgas of [1]Expended side boosters. Fully reusable ~27,500 kg LEO. ↑ Best | 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 | — |
| Height | — | 70 mas of [1] ↑ Best | 41.06 mas of [1] |
| Liftoff mass | 78 tas of [1]Transporter-erector-launcher (TEL) capable. | 1,421 tas of [1] ↑ Best | 232 tas of [1] |
| Success rate | 80% (4/5)as of [1]Debut flight (2020-07-10) failed; returned to flight 2022-12-07 successfully. ↑ Best | 100%as of [2]12/12 mission successes through Falcon Heavy ViaSat-3 F3 (Apr 29, 2026) | 98.7%as of [2]~77/78 successes; one known failure (CZ-2D Y7, Mar 1995 upper-stage anomaly) |
| Total flights | 5as of [1] | 12as of [2] | ~78as of [2] ↑ Best |
| Cost / kg LEO | — | ~$1,400/kgas of [1]Based on ~$97M list price / 63,800 kg (expendable configuration) ↓ Cheapest | — |
| Summary | 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. | 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. | 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. |
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.