SpaceX · China · United Kingdom · U.S. · Ars Technica
Policy experts: Europe stuck between "rock and a hard place" on launch
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A decade ago, SpaceX began to land the first stages of the Falcon 9 rocket with some regularity, but it’s only within the last five years that the company has begun flying the rocket dozens and then hundreds of times a year.
Key facts
- The researchers estimate that the average cost of sending a kilogram of payload to orbit in the United States is now $3,225, compared to higher costs elsewhere: Japan ($5,287), China ($5,809), Russia
- Public policy researchers based in the United Kingdom and Italy have published new research in Economics Letters that showcases the marked changes wrought by the Falcon 9 by mining a dataset of more
- Between 1995 and 2012, the US share of global payload collapsed from almost 50 percent to a trough of less than 20 percent, far below Russia and only a few percentage points above China and Europe
- From 1990 to the early 2000s, the United States and the Soviet Union tracked fairly closely to one another
Summary
As a result, SpaceX has rapidly become responsible for more than three-quarters of all mass launched into orbit. New research is beginning to quantify how much the introduction of the Falcon 9 rocket, the adoption of reuse, and the vehicle’s high cadence have upended the global launch market. Public policy researchers based in the United Kingdom and Italy have published new research in Economics Letters that showcases the marked changes wrought by the Falcon 9 by mining a dataset of more than 6,700 launches from 1960 to 2025. One of the more striking findings comes in the cumulative payload to orbit by nation.