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 | NASA / Boeing | Galactic Energy | Isar Aerospace |
| Country | 🇺🇸 USA | 🇨🇳 China | 🇩🇪 Germany |
| Status | Active | Active | In Development |
| Vehicle class | Super Heavy | Small | Small |
| Propellant | LH₂ / LOX (RS-25); solid HTPB (SRBs) | Solid (stages 1–3) + hydrazine liquid upper stage | LOX / kerosene (~80% manufactured in-house) |
| Reusable | No | No | No |
| Stages | 2 | 4 | 2 |
| First flight | 2022 | 2020 | 2025 |
| Payload to LEO | 95,000 kgas of [1] ↑ Best | 400 kgas of [1]300 kg to SSO. | 1,000 kgas of [1] |
| Payload to GTO | 27,000 kgas of [1]Trans-lunar injection (TLI) payload; GTO not a primary design goal ↑ Best | — | — |
| Height | 98.1 mas of [1] ↑ Best | 20 mas of [1] | — |
| Liftoff mass | 2,608 tas of [1] ↑ Best | 33 tas of [1] | — |
| Success rate | 100%as of [2]2/2: Artemis I uncrewed (Nov 16, 2022) + Artemis II crewed lunar flyby (Apr 1–10, 2026) ↑ Best | 91.3% (21/23)as of [1] | 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] | 23as of [1] ↑ Best | 1as of [1] |
| Cost / kg LEO | ~$40,000+/kgas of [3]NASA OIG (2023) estimated $4.1B per Artemis SLS/Orion flight; total program $23B+ development cost | ~$4.5M per launchas of [1]Total launch price, not a per-kg figure. ↓ Cheapest | — |
| Summary | NASA's human deep space launch vehicle for the Artemis programme. Uses heritage RS-25 shuttle main engines (4 per flight, expended). Block 1B with Exploration Upper Stage cancelled Feb 2026; Block 1 will fly through Artemis IV at minimum. | Galactic Energy's workhorse small-lift solid rocket — one of the most-flown Chinese commercial launchers — with a sea-launch variant (Ceres-1S, debuted Sep 2023) and a larger Ceres-2 in development. | 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.