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The global launch market reached $14.1 billion in 2024 — up 34% since 2021.
| Attribute | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Company | Rocket Lab | Relativity Space | Firefly Aerospace / Northrop Grumman |
| Country | 🇺🇸 USA | 🇺🇸 USA | 🇺🇸 USA |
| Status | In Development | In Development | In Development |
| Vehicle class | Medium | Heavy | Medium |
| Propellant | CH₄ / LOX | LOX / methane | RP-1 / LOX |
| Reusable | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Stages | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| First flight | 2026 | 2026 | 2027 |
| Payload to LEO | 13,000 kgas of [1]Reusable configuration with downrange barge landing — this is the single payload figure Rocket Lab publishes. ~15,000 kg expendable. | 33,500 kg expendable / 23,500 kg with a reusable first stageas of [1]First flight targeted 2026 (stated plan, not yet confirmed flown as of this research). ↑ Best | 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. |
| Payload to GTO | — | — | — |
| Height | 43 mas of [1] | 87 mas of [1] ↑ Best | — |
| Liftoff mass | ~481 tas of [1] ↑ Best | — | — |
| Success rate | — | — | — |
| Total flights | — | — | — |
| Cost / kg LEO | — | ~$55M per launch (estimate)as of [1]Total launch price estimate, not a per-kg figure. ↓ Cheapest | — |
| Summary | 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. | Relativity Space's Falcon-9-class successor to Terran 1, partially 3D-printed, with 13 Aeon R methalox engines on a reusable first stage; second stage and fairing expendable. | 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. |
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.