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 | Isar Aerospace | Rocket Lab | CASC / CALT |
| Country | 🇩🇪 Germany | 🇺🇸 USA | 🇨🇳 China |
| Status | In Development | In Development | Active |
| Vehicle class | Small | Medium | Medium |
| Propellant | LOX / kerosene (~80% manufactured in-house) | CH₄ / LOX | RP-1 / LOX (YF-100 + YF-115) |
| Reusable | No | Yes | No |
| Stages | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| First flight | 2025 | 2026 | 2016 |
| Payload to LEO | 1,000 kgas of [1] | 13,000 kgas of [1]Reusable configuration with downrange barge landing — this is the single payload figure Rocket Lab publishes. ~15,000 kg expendable. | 13,500 kgas of [1]SSO capacity ~5,500 kg ↑ Best |
| Payload to GTO | — | — | — |
| Height | — | 43 mas of [1] | 53.1 mas of [1] ↑ Best |
| Liftoff mass | — | ~481 tas of [1] | 597 tas of [1] ↑ Best |
| Success rate | 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. | — | 100%as of [2]12/12 missions, all Tianzhou ISS resupply or CZ-7 tech demo flights ↑ Best |
| Total flights | 1as of [1] | — | 12as of [2]Most recently Tianzhou-10 cargo to Tiangong (May 11, 2026) ↑ Best |
| Cost / kg LEO | — | — | — |
| Summary | 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. | 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. | China's workhorse medium-lift rocket, used exclusively for Tianzhou automated cargo missions to the Tiangong space station. Designed to replace the Long March 2F for high-cadence LEO/cargo missions. Uses the same YF-100 engines as Long March 5's boosters. |
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.