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 | Relativity Space | ExPace (CASIC subsidiary) | NASA / Boeing |
| Country | 🇺🇸 USA | 🇨🇳 China | 🇺🇸 USA |
| Status | In Development | Active | Active |
| Vehicle class | Heavy | Small | Super Heavy |
| Propellant | LOX / methane | Solid (3 stages) + liquid upper stage | LH₂ / LOX (RS-25); solid HTPB (SRBs) |
| Reusable | Yes | No | No |
| Stages | 2 | 4 | 2 |
| First flight | 2026 | 2020 | 2022 |
| Payload to LEO | 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 | 1,500 kgas of [1] | 95,000 kgas of [1] |
| Payload to GTO | — | — | 27,000 kgas of [1]Trans-lunar injection (TLI) payload; GTO not a primary design goal ↑ Best |
| Height | 87 mas of [1] | — | 98.1 mas of [1] ↑ Best |
| Liftoff mass | — | 78 tas of [1]Transporter-erector-launcher (TEL) capable. | 2,608 tas of [1] ↑ Best |
| 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]2/2: Artemis I uncrewed (Nov 16, 2022) + Artemis II crewed lunar flyby (Apr 1–10, 2026) |
| Total flights | — | 5as of [1] ↑ Best | 2as of [2] |
| Cost / kg LEO | ~$55M per launch (estimate)as of [1]Total launch price estimate, not a per-kg figure. ↓ Cheapest | — | ~$40,000+/kgas of [3]NASA OIG (2023) estimated $4.1B per Artemis SLS/Orion flight; total program $23B+ development cost |
| Summary | 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. | 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. | 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. |
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.