A Molotov cocktail, also known as a petrol bomb, gasoline bomb, bottle bomb, poor man's grenade, fire bomb (not to be confused with an actual fire bomb), fire bottle or just Molotov, sometimes shortened as Molly, is a improvisedincendiary weapon.
It is made by filling a glass bottle with flammable substances. In use,
a fuse attached to the bottle is lit and the bottle is thrown,
shattering on impact and spreading its burning contents.
The name "Molotov cocktail" was coined by the Finns during the Winter War, called Molotovin koktaili in Finnish. The name was a pejorative reference to Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov, who was one of the architects of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact signed in late August 1939.
The name's origin came from the propaganda Molotov produced
during the Winter War, mainly his declaration on Soviet state radio that
bombing missions over Finland were actually airborne humanitarian food
deliveries for their starving neighbours. As a result, the Finns sarcastically dubbed the Soviet cluster bombs "Molotov bread baskets" in reference to Molotov's propaganda broadcasts.
When the hand-held bottle firebomb was developed to attack and destroy
Soviet tanks, the Finns called it the "Molotov cocktail", as "a drink to
go with his food parcels".
Design
Molotov cocktail recipe by Pravda Brewery, Lviv, 2022
A Molotov cocktail is a breakable glass bottle containing a flammable substance such as petrol, alcohol, or a napalm-like mixture, with some motor oil added, and usually a source of ignition such as a burning cloth wick held in place by the bottle's stopper. The wick is usually soaked in alcohol or kerosene, rather than petrol.
In action, the wick is lit and the bottle hurled at a target such
as a vehicle or fortification. When the bottle smashes on impact, the
ensuing cloud of fuel droplets and vapour is ignited by the attached
wick, causing an immediate fireball followed by spreading flames as the remainder of the fuel is consumed.
The contents of the bottle may be pressurized to create a stronger explosion, potentially dispersing the broken glass as shrapnel. This is usually done by closing the bottle with an airtight closure and heating it before attaching the cloth wick.
In addition, highly toxic substances are also known to be added
to the fuel to create a suffocating or poisonous smoke on the resulting
explosion, effectively turning the Molotov cocktail into a makeshift chemical weapon. These include bleach, chlorine, hydrogen cyanide, various strong acids, and pesticides.
Improvised incendiary devices of this type were used in warfare for the first time in the Spanish Civil War between July 1936 and April 1939, before they became known as "Molotov cocktails". In 1936, General Francisco Franco ordered Spanish Nationalist forces to use the weapon against Soviet T-26 tanks supporting the Spanish Republicans in a failed assault on the Nationalist stronghold of Seseña, near Toledo, 40 km (25 mi) south of Madrid. After that, both sides used simple petrol bombs flame with toxic gas or petrol-soaked blankets with some success. Tom Wintringham, a veteran of the International Brigades, later publicised his recommended method of using them:
We made use of "petrol bombs"
roughly as follows: take a 2lb glass jam jar. Fill with petrol. Take a
heavy curtain, half a blanket, or some other heavy material. Wrap this
over the mouth of the jar, tie it round the neck with string, leave the
ends of the material hanging free. When you want to use it have somebody
standing by with a light [i.e., a source of ignition]. Put a corner of
the material down in front of you, turn the bottle over so that petrol
soaks out round the mouth of the bottle and drips on to this corner of
the material. Turn the bottle right way up again, hold it in your right
hand, most of the blanket bunched beneath the bottle, with your left
hand take the blanket near the corner that is wetted with petrol. Wait
for your tank. When near enough, your pal [or comrade-in-arms] lights
the petrol soaked corner of the blanket. Throw the bottle and blanket as
soon as this corner is flaring. (You cannot throw it far.) See that it
drops in front of the tank. The blanket should catch in the tracks or in
a cog-wheel, or wind itself round an axle. The bottle will smash, but
the petrol should soak the blanket well enough to make a really healthy
fire which will burn the rubber wheels on which the tank track runs, set
fire to the carburetor or frizzle the crew. Do not play with these
things. They are highly dangerous.
Khalkhin Gol
The Battle of Khalkhin Gol, a border conflict of 1939 ostensibly between Mongolia and Manchukuo, saw heavy fighting between Japanese and Soviet
forces. Short of anti-tank equipment, Japanese infantry attacked Soviet
tanks with gasoline-filled bottles. Japanese infantrymen claimed that
several hundred Soviet tanks had been destroyed this way, though Soviet
loss records do not support this assessment.
On 30 November 1939, the Soviet Union attacked Finland, starting what came to be known as the Winter War. The Finnish
perfected the design and tactical use of the petrol bomb. The fuel for
the Molotov cocktail was refined to a slightly sticky mixture of
alcohol, kerosene, tar, and potassium chlorate.
Further refinements included the attachment of wind-proof matches or a
phial of chemicals that would ignite on breakage, thereby removing the
need to pre-ignite the bottle, and leaving the bottle about one-third
empty was found to make breaking more likely.
A British War Office report dated June 1940 noted that:
The Finns' policy was to allow the
Russian tanks to penetrate their defences, even inducing them to do so
by 'canalising' them through gaps and concentrating their small arms
fire on the infantry following them. The tanks that penetrated were
taken on by gun fire in the open and by small parties of men armed with
explosive charges and petrol bombs in the forests and villages... The
essence of the policy was the separation of the AFVs from the infantry, as once on their own the tank has many blind spots and once brought to a stop can be disposed of at leisure.
Special matches for the Swedish, military grade incendiary bottle (Swedish: brännflaska) m/40
Molotov cocktails were eventually mass-produced by the Alko corporation at its Rajamäki distillery, bundled with matches to light them. Production totalled 450,000 during the Winter War. The original recipe of the Molotov cocktail was a mixture of ethanol, tar and gasoline in a 750 millilitres (0.79 US qt) bottle. The bottle had two long pyrotechnicstorm matches
attached to either side. Before use, one or both of the matches was
lit; when the bottle broke on impact, the mixture ignited. The storm
matches were found to be safer to use than a burning rag on the mouth of
the bottle.
Early in 1940, with the prospect of immediate invasion,
the possibilities of the petrol bomb gripped the imagination of the
British public. For laypersons, the petrol bomb had the benefit of using
entirely familiar and available materials, and they were quickly improvised in large numbers, with the intention of using them against enemy tanks.
The Finns had found that they were effective when used in the
right way and in sufficient numbers. Although the experience of the
Spanish Civil War received more publicity, the more sophisticated
petroleum warfare tactics of the Finns were not lost on British
commanders. In his 5 June address to LDV leaders, General Ironside said:
I want to develop this thing they
developed in Finland, called the "Molotov cocktail", a bottle filled
with resin, petrol and tar which if thrown on top of a tank will ignite,
and if you throw half a dozen or more on it you have them cooked. It is
quite an effective thing. If you can use your ingenuity, I give you a
picture of a [road] block with two houses close to the block,
overlooking it. There are many villages like that. Out of the top
windows is the place to drop these things on the tank as it passes the
block. It may only stop it for two minutes there, but it will be quite
effective.
Wintringham advised that a tank that was isolated from supporting
infantry was potentially vulnerable to men who had the required
determination and cunning to get close. Rifles or even a shotgun would
be sufficient to persuade the crew to close all the hatches, and then
the view from the tank is very limited; a turret-mounted machine gun has
a very slow traverse and cannot hope to fend off attackers coming from
all directions. Once sufficiently close, it is possible to hide where
the tank's gunner cannot see: "The most dangerous distance away from a
tank is 200 yards; the safest distance is six inches."
Petrol bombs will soon produce a pall of blinding smoke, and a
well-placed explosive package or even a stout iron bar in the tracks can
immobilise the vehicle, leaving it at the mercy of further petrol
bombs – which will suffocate the engine and possibly the crew – or an
explosive charge or anti-tank mine.
By August 1940, the War Office
produced training instructions for the creation and use of Molotov
cocktails. The instructions suggested scoring the bottles vertically
with a diamond to ensure breakage and providing fuel-soaked rag,
windproof matches or a length of cinema film (then composed of highly
flammable nitrocellulose) as a source of ignition.
On 29 July 1940, manufacturers Albright & Wilson of Oldbury
demonstrated to the RAF how their white phosphorus could be used to
ignite incendiary bombs. The demonstration involved throwing glass
bottles containing a mixture of petrol and phosphorus
at pieces of wood and into a hut. On breaking, the phosphorus was
exposed to the air and spontaneously ignited; the petrol also burned,
resulting in a fierce fire. Because of safety concerns, the RAF was not
interested in white phosphorus
as a source of ignition, but the idea of a self-igniting petrol bomb
took hold. Initially known as an A.W. bomb, it was officially named the No. 76 Grenade,
but more commonly known as the SIP (Self-Igniting Phosphorus) grenade.
The perfected list of ingredients was white phosphorus, benzene, water and a two-inch strip of raw rubber; all in a half-pint bottle sealed with a crown stopper.
Over time, the rubber would slowly dissolve, making the contents
slightly sticky, and the mixture would separate into two layers – this
was intentional, and the grenade should not be shaken to mix the layers,
as this would only delay ignition.
When thrown against a hard surface, the glass would shatter and the
contents would instantly ignite, liberating choking fumes of phosphorus pentoxide and sulfur dioxide as well as producing a great deal of heat. Strict instructions were issued to store the grenades safely, preferably underwater and certainly never in a house. Mainly issued to the Home Guard as an anti-tank weapon, it was produced in vast numbers; by August 1941 well over 6,000,000 had been manufactured.
There were many who were skeptical about the efficacy of Molotov
cocktails and SIPs grenades against the more modern German tanks. Weapon
designer Stuart Macrae witnessed a trial of the SIPs grenade at Farnborough:
"There was some concern that, if the tank drivers could not pull up
quickly enough and hop out, they were likely to be frizzled to death,
but after looking at the bottles they said they would be happy to take a
chance."
The drivers were proved right, trials on modern British tanks confirmed
that Molotov and SIP grenades caused the occupants of the tanks "no
inconvenience whatsoever."
Wintringham, though enthusiastic about improvised weapons,
cautioned against a reliance on petrol bombs and repeatedly emphasised
the importance of using explosive charges.
Other fronts
A display of improvised munitions, including a Molotov cocktail, from the Warsaw uprising, 1944
During the Irish War of Independence, the Irish Republican Army
sometimes used sods of turf soaked in paraffin oil to attack British
army barracks. Fencing wire was pushed through the sod to make a
throwing handle.
The Polish Home Army developed a version which ignited on impact without the need of a wick. Ignition was caused by a reaction between concentrated sulfuric acid mixed with the fuel and a mixture of potassium chlorate and sugar which was crystallized from solution onto a rag attached to the bottle.
During the Norwegian campaign
in 1940 the Norwegian Army lacking suitable anti-tank weaponry had to
rely on petrol bombs and other improvised weapons to fight German armor.
Instructions sent to army units in April 1940 from Norwegian High
Command encouraged soldiers to start ad-hoc production of "Hitler
cocktails" (a different take on the Finnish nickname for the weapon) to
fight tanks and armored cars.
During the campaign there were instances of these petrol bombs being
quite effective against the lighter tanks employed in Norway by Germany,
such as the Panzer I and Panzer II.
Molotov cocktails produced for use in Ukrainian Euromaidan protests
Molotov cocktails were reportedly used in the United States for arson attacks on shops and other buildings during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
During the Second Battle of Fallujah in 2004, U.S. Marines
employed Molotov cocktails made with "one part liquid laundry
detergent, two parts gas" while clearing houses "when contact is made in
a house and the enemy must be burned out". The tactic "was developed in
response to the enemy's tactics" of guerrilla warfare and particularly martyrdom tactics which often resulted in U.S. Marine casualties. The cocktail was a less expedient alternative to white phosphorus mortar rounds or propane tanks detonated with C4 (nicknamed the "House Guest"), all of which proved effective at burning out engaged enemy combatants.
Molotov cocktails were also used by protesters and civilian militia in Ukraine during violent outbreaks of the Euromaidan and the Revolution of Dignity. Protesters during the Ferguson riots used Molotov cocktails.
In Bangladesh
during anti government protests at the time of the 2014 national
election, many buses and cars were targeted with petrol bombs. A number
of people burnt to death and many more were injured during the period
2013–2014 due to petrol bomb attacks.
In the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests, protesters used Molotov cocktails to defend themselves from police or to create roadblocks. Protesters also attacked an MTR station and caused severe damage. A journalist was also hit by a Molotov cocktail during the protests.
Molotov cocktails were used by some during the George Floyd protests of 2020 in the United States.
During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry told civilians to make Molotov cocktails to fight Russian troops. The defense ministry distributed a recipe for producing Molotov
cocktails to civilians through Ukrainian television, which included the
use of styrofoam as a thickening agent to aid in helping the burning
liquid stick to vehicles or other targets. The Pravda Brewery of Lviv,
which converted from making beer to Molotov cocktails, said that their
recipe was "3 cups polystyrene, 2 cups grated soap, 500 millilitres
gasoline, 100 millilitres oil, 1 jumbo tampon fuse."
During the protests in Venezuela from 2014 and into 2017, protesters had been using Molotov cocktails similar to those used by demonstrators in other countries. As the 2017 Venezuelan protests
intensified, demonstrators began using "Puputovs", a play on words of
Molotov, with glass devices filled with excrement being thrown at
authorities after the PSUV ruling-party official, Jacqueline Faría, mocked protesters who had to crawl through sewage in Caracas' Guaire River to avoid tear gas.
On 8 May, the hashtag #puputov became the top trend on Twitter in
Venezuela as reports of authorities vomiting after being drenched in
excrement began to circulate. A month later on 4 June 2017 during protests against Donald Trump in Portland, Oregon, protesters began throwing balloons filled with "unknown, foul-smelling liquid" at officers.
Legality
As
incendiary devices, Molotov cocktails are illegal to manufacture or
possess in many regions. In the United States, Molotov cocktails are
considered "destructive devices" under the National Firearms Act and are regulated by the ATF. Wil Casey Floyd, from Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin,
was arrested after throwing Molotov cocktails at Seattle police
officers during a protest in May 2016; he pleaded guilty for using the
incendiary devices in February 2018.
In Simpson County, Kentucky,
20-year-old Trey Alexander Gwathney-Law attempted to burn
Franklin-Simpson County Middle School with five Molotov cocktails; he
was found guilty of making and possessing illegal firearms and was
sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2018.
Symbolism
An anarchist protester with a Molotov cocktail aimed at police during protests in 2013 in Mexico.
Due to the Molotov's ease of production and use by civilian forces,
the Molotov cocktail has become a symbol of civil uprising and revolution. The Molotov's extensive use by civilian, and partisan forces has also thereby led to the Molotov becoming a symbol representing civil unrest. The Molotov has strong association with anarchism
due to anarchists' use of the Molotov, and anarchists engaging in civil
uprisings and unrest across the world, with protesters organizing from
Chile and Iran, to Egypt and Hong Kong. The contrast of a Molotov cocktail and an organized force has become a popular symbol in popular culture, and often utilized as a weapon in various video games.
Gallery
Soviet cluster bomb sarcastically called a "Molotov bread basket". The "Molotov cocktail" was the Finns' response – "a drink to go with the food".
Space launch market competition is the manifestation of market forces in the launch service provider business. In particular it is the trend of competitive dynamics among payload transport capabilities at diverse prices
having a greater influence on launch purchasing than the traditional
political considerations of country of manufacture or the national
entity using, regulating or licensing the launch service.
Following the advent of spaceflight technology in the late 1950s, space launch services came into being, exclusively by national
programs. Later in the 20th century commercial operators became
significant customers of launch providers. International competition for
the communications satellite
payload subset of the launch market was increasingly influenced by
commercial considerations. However, even during this period, for both
commercial- and government-entity-launched commsats,
the launch service providers for these payloads used launch vehicles
built to government specifications, and with state-provided development
funding exclusively.
In the early 2010s, privately developed
launch vehicle systems and space launch service offerings emerged.
Companies now faced economic incentives rather than the principally
political incentives of the earlier decades. The space launch business
experienced a dramatic lowering of per-unit prices along with the
addition of entirely new capabilities, bringing about a new phase of
competition in the space launch market.
History
In the early decades of the Space Age—1950s–2000s—the government space agencies of the Soviet Union and the United States pioneered space technology. This was augmented by collaboration with affiliated design bureaus
in the USSR and contracts with commercial companies in the US. All
rocket designs were built explicitly for government purposes. The European Space Agency (ESA) was formed in 1975, largely following the same model of space technology development. Other national space agencies—such as China's CNSA
and India's ISRO—also financed the indigenous development of their own national designs.
Communications satellites
were the principal non-government market. Although launch competition
in the early years after 2010 occurred only in and among global
commercial launch providers, the US market for military launches began
to experience multi-provider competition in 2015, as the US government began to move away from their previous monopoly arrangement with United Launch Alliance (ULA) for military launches. By 2018, the ULA monopoly on US national security space launch had evaporated.
By mid-2017, the results of this multi-year competitive pressure
on commercially bid launch prices was being observed in the actual
number of launches achieved. With frequent recovery of first-stage
boosters by SpaceX, expendable missions had become a rare occurrence for them. But the new landscape did not come without a cost. Many space launch providers are expending capital to develop new lower-cost reusable spaceflight technologies. SpaceX alone had expended about US$1 billion by 2017 in order to develop the capability to reuse orbital class boosters on a subsequent flight.
By 2021, the monopoly previously held by nation states to be the only entities to fund, train, and send astronauts for human space exploration was ending as the first mission with exclusively private citizens—Inspiration4—was launched in September 2021. The rocket and capsule
for the flight, the training, and the funding are all provided by
private entities outside of the traditional NASA process that had held
the US monopoly since the early 1960s.
1970s and 1980s: Commercial satellites emerge
Non-military
commercial satellites began to be launched in volume in the 1970s and
1980s. Launch services were supplied exclusively with launch vehicles
developed originally for various Cold War military programs, with their attendant cost structures.
SpaceNews journalist Peter B. De Selding has asserted that French government leadership, and the Arianespace consortium "all but invented the commercial launch business in the 1980s" principally "by ignoring U.S. government assurances that the reusable U.S. space shuttle would make expendable launch vehicles like Ariane obsolete."
2000-2010
Little
market competition emerged inside any national market before
approximately the late 2000s. Some global commercial competition arose
between the national providers of various nation states for
international commercial satellite launches. Within the US, as late as
2006, the high cost structures built in to government contractors'—Boeing's Delta IV and Lockheed Martin's Atlas V—launch vehicles left little commercial opportunity for US launch service providers but considerable opportunity for low-cost Russian boosters based on leftover Cold War military missile technology.
DARPA's Simon P. Worden and the USAF's
Jess Sponable analyzed the situation in 2006 and offered that, "One
bright point is the emerging private sector, which [was then] pursuing suborbital or small lift capabilities." They concluded, "Although such vehicles support very limited US Department of Defense or National Aeronautics and Space Administration
spaceflight needs, they do offer potential technology demonstration
stepping stones to more capable systems needed in the future.";
demonstrating capabilities that would grow in the next five years while
supporting published list prices substantially below the rates on offer
by the national providers.
Since the early 2010s, new private options for obtaining spaceflight services emerged, bringing substantial price pressure into the existing market.
Before 2013, Europe's Arianespace, which flies the Ariane 5, and International Launch Services (ILS), which marketed Russia's Proton vehicle dominated the communications satellite launch market.
In November 2013, Arianespace announced new pricing flexibility for the
"lighter satellites" it carries to orbits aboard its Ariane 5 in
response to SpaceX's growing presence in the worldwide launch market.
In early December 2013, SpaceX flew its first launch to a geostationary transfer orbit
providing additional credibility to its low prices which had been
published since at least 2009. The low launch prices offered by the
company, especially for communication satellites flying to geostationary (GTO) orbit, resulted in market pressure on its competitors to lower their prices.
By late 2013, with a published price of US$56.5 million per launch to low Earth orbit,
"Falcon 9 rockets [were] already the cheapest in the industry. Reusable
Falcon 9s could drop the price by an order of magnitude, sparking more
space-based enterprise, which in turn would drop the cost of access to
space still further through economies of scale."
Falcon 9 GTO missions 2014 pricing was approximately US$15 million less than a launch on a ChineseLong March 3B.
Despite SpaceX prices being somewhat lower than Long March prices, the Chinese Government and the Great Wall Industry
company—which markets the Long March for commsat missions—made a policy
decision to maintain commsat launch prices at approximately US$70 million.
In early 2014, the ESA asked European governments for additional subsidies to face the competition from SpaceX. Continuing to face "stiff competition on price", in April seven European satellite operator companies—including the four largest in the world by annual revenue—asked that the ESA
"find immediate ways to reduce Ariane 5 rocket launch costs and, in the longer term, make the next-generation Ariane 6
vehicle more attractive for smaller telecommunications satellites. ...
[C]onsiderable efforts to restore competitiveness in price of the
existing European launcher need to be undertaken if Europe is [to]
maintain its market situation. In the short term, a more favorable
pricing policy for the small satellites currently being targeted by
SpaceX seems indispensable to keeping the Ariane launch manifest strong
and well-populated."
In competitive bids during 2013 and early 2014, SpaceX was winning
many launch customers that formerly "would have been all-but-certain
clients of Europe's Arianespace launch consortium, with prices that are
$60 million or less." Facing direct market competition from SpaceX, the large US launch provider United Launch Alliance
(ULA) announced strategic changes in 2014 to restructure its launch
business—replacing two launch vehicle families (Atlas V and Delta IV)
with the new Vulcan architecture—while implementing an iterative and incremental development program to build a partially reusable and much lower-cost launch system over the next decade.
In June 2014, Arianespace CEO Stéphane Israël announced that European efforts to remain competitive in response to SpaceX's recent success had begun in earnest. This included the creation of a new joint venture company from Arianespace's two largest shareholders: the launch-vehicle producer Airbus and engine-producer Safran. No additional details of the efforts to become more competitive were released at the time.
In August 2014, Eutelsat,
the third-largest fixed satellite services operator worldwide by
revenue, indicated that it planned to spend approximately €100 million
less each year in the next three years, due to lower prices for launch
services and by transitioning their commsats to electric propulsion.
They indicated they are using the lower prices they can get from SpaceX
against Arianespace in negotiations for launch contracts.
By December 2014, Arianespace had selected a design and commenced
development of the Ariane 6, its new entrant into the commercial launch
market aiming for more competitively priced launch service offerings,
with operational flights planned to begin in 2020.
In October 2014, ULA announced a major restructuring of processes
and workforce to decrease launch costs by half. One of the reasons
given for the restructuring and new cost reduction goals was competition
from SpaceX. ULA had less "success landing contracts to launch private,
commercial communications and earth observation satellites" than it had
with launch USmilitary payloads, but CEO Tory Bruno believed the new lower-cost launcher could be competitive and succeed in the commercial satellite sector. The US GAO calculated the average cost of each ULA rocket launch for the US government had risen to approximately US$420 million in 2014.
By November 2014, SpaceX had "already begun to take market share" from Arianespace. Eutelsat CEO Michel de Rosen
said, in reference to ESA's program to develop the Ariane 6, "Each year
that passes will see SpaceX advance, gain market share and further
reduce its costs through economies of scale."
European government research ministers approved the development of the new European rocket—Ariane 6—in
December 2014, projecting the rocket would be "cheaper to construct and
to operate" and that "more modern methods of production and a
streamlined assembly to try to reduce unit costs" plus "the rocket's
modular design can be tailored to a wide range of satellite and mission
types [so it] should gain further economies from frequent use."
In 2015, the ESA was attempting to reorganize to reduce
bureaucracy and decrease inefficiencies in launcher and satellite
spending which had been tied historically to the amount of tax funds
that each country has provided to it.
In May 2015, ULA stated it would go out of business unless it won
commercial and civil satellite launch orders to offset an expected
slump in U.S. military and spy launches. As of 2015, SpaceX had remained "the low-cost supplier in the industry." However, in the market for launches of US military payloads, ULA faced no competition for nearly a decade, since the formation of the ULA joint venture
from Lockheed Martin and Boeing in 2006. However, SpaceX was also
upsetting the traditional military space launch arrangement in the US,
which in 2014 was called a monopoly by space analyst Marco Caceres and
criticized by some in the US Congress. By May 2015, the SpaceX Falcon 9 v1.1 was certified by the USAF to compete to launch many of the expensive satellites which are considered essential to US national security.
And by 2019, ULA, with their next-generation, lower-cost Vulcan/Centaur
launch vehicle, was one of four launch companies competing for the US
military's multi-year block-buy contract for 2022–2026 against SpaceX
(Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy), Northrop Grumman (Omega), and Blue Origin (New Glenn), where only the SpaceX vehicles are currently flying and the other three are all slated to make their initial launch in 2021.
University of Southampton researcher Clemens Rumpf
argued in 2015 that the global launch industry was developed in an "old
world where space funding was provided by governments, resulting in a
stable foundation for [global] space activities. The money for the space
industry [had been] secure and did not encourage risk-taking in the
development of new space technologies. ... the space landscape [had not
changed much since the mid-1980s]." As a result, the emergence of
SpaceX was a surprise to other launch providers "because the need to
evolve launcher technology by a giant leap was not apparent to them.
SpaceX show[ed] that technology has advanced sufficiently in the last 30
years to enable new, game changing approaches to space access." The Washington Post said that the changes occasioned from multiple competing service providers resulted in a revolution in innovation.
By mid-2015, Arianespace was speaking publicly about job
reductions as part of an attempt to remain competitive in the "European
industry [which is being] restructured, consolidated, rationalized and
streamlined" to respond to SpaceX price competition. Still, "Arianespace
remained confident it could maintain its 50% share of the space launch
market despite SpaceX's slashing prices by building reliable rockets
that are smaller and cheaper."
Following the first successful landing and recovery of a SpaceX Falcon 9 first stage in December 2015, equity analysts at investment bank Jefferies estimated that launch costs to satellite operators using Falcon 9 launch vehicles may decline by about 40% of SpaceX' typical US$61 million per launch,
although SpaceX had only forecast an approximately 30 percent launch
price reduction from the use of a reused first stage by early 2016.
In early 2016, Arianespace was projecting a launch price of €90–100
million, about one-half of the 2015 Ariane 5 per launch price.
In March 2017, SpaceX reused an orbital booster stage that had
been previously launched, landed and recovered, stating the cost to the
company of doing so "was substantially less than half the cost" of a new
first stage. COO Gwynne Shotwell said the cost savings "came even
though SpaceX did extensive work to examine and refurbish the stage. We
did way more on this one than [is planned for future recovered stages]."
A 2017 industry-wide view by SpaceNews
reported: By 5 July 2017, SpaceX had launched 10 payloads during a bit
over six months—"outperform[ing] its cadence from earlier years"—and
"is well on track to hit the target it set last year of 18 launches in a
single year." There were indeed 18 successful Falcon 9 launches in 2017. By comparison,
France-based Arianespace,
SpaceX’s chief competitor for commercial telecommunications satellite
launches, is launching 11 to 12 times a year using its fleet of three
rockets—the heavy-lift Ariane 5, medium-lift Soyuz and light-lift Vega. Russia has the ability to launch a dozen or more times with Proton
doing both government and commercial missions, but has operated at a
slower cadence the past few years due to launch failures and [the]
discovery of an incorrect material used in some rocket engines. United Launch Alliance,
SpaceX’s chief competitor for defense missions, regularly conducts
around a dozen or more launches per year, but the Boeing-Lockheed Martin
joint venture has only performed four missions through mid-year 2017.
By 2018, the monopoly ULA had held on US national security space launch was over.
ULA responded to the Falcon 9 by beginning development in 2014 on the Vulcan rocket, a partly reusable vehicle powered by Blue Origin BE-4 engines, intended to replace its ageing expendable Atlas V and Delta IV rockets.
In early 2018, SpaceNews reported that "[t]he rise of SpaceX has disrupted the launch industry at large." By mid-2018, with Proton flying as few as two launches in an entire year, the Russianstate corporationRoscosmos announced they would retire the Proton launch vehicle, in part due to competition from lower-cost launch alternatives.
In 2018 SpaceX launched a record 21 times, exceeding the 18 launches in 2017; ULA had flown just 8 flights in 2018. That record was again beaten in 2020 with 26 Falcon 9 launches and 2021 with 31 launches.
In early 2019, the French "Court of Audit
criticized Arianespace for what it "perceived as an unsustainable and
overly cautious response to the swift rise of SpaceX’s affordable and
reusable Falcon 9 rocket." The Ariane 6 was found to be uncompetitive
with SpaceX launch service provider options, and further found that "the
most probable outcome for Ariane 6 is one in which the very existence
of the rocket will be predicated upon continual annual subsidies from
the European Space Agency
(ESA) in order to make up for the rocket’s inability to sustain
commercial orders beyond a handful of discounted shoo-in contracts."
Raising private capital
Privatecapital invested in the space launch industry prior to 2015 was modest. From 2000 through the end of 2015, a total of US$13.3 billion of investment finance had been invested in the space sector. US$2.9 billion of that was venture capital financing, of which $1.8 billion was invested in 2015 alone.
For the space launch sector, this began to change with the January 2015 Google and Fidelity Investments investment of US$1 billion in SpaceX. While private satellite manufacturing companies had previously raised large capital rounds, that has been the largest investment to date in a launch service provider.
SpaceX developed the Falcon Heavy (first flight in February 2018), and are developing the Starship launch vehicle with private capital. No government financing is being provided for either rocket.
After decades of reliance on government funding to develop the Atlas and Delta
families of launch vehicles, in October 2014 the successor
company—ULA—began development of a rocket, initially with private
funds, as one part of a solution for its problem of "skyrocketing launch
costs". However, by March 2016 it had become clear that the new Vulcan launch vehicle would be developed with funding via a public–private partnership with the US government. By early 2016, the US Air Force had committed US$201 million
of funding for Vulcan development. ULA has not "put a firm price tag on
[the total cost of Vulcan development but ULA CEO Tory Bruno has] said
new rockets typically cost $2 billion, including $1 billion for the main
engine". ULA had asked the US government in 2016 to provide a minimum of US$1.2 billion by 2020 to assist it in developing the new US launch vehicle.
It was unclear how the change in development funding mechanisms might
change ULA plans for pricing market-driven launch services.
Since Vulcan development began in October 2014, the privately generated
funding for Vulcan development has been approved only on a short term
basis.
The ULA board of directors—composed entirely of executives from Boeing
and Lockheed Martin—is approving development funding on a
quarter-by-quarter basis.
Other launch service providers are developing new space launch systems
with substantial government capital investment. For the new ESA launch
vehicle—Ariane 6, aiming for flight in the 2020s—€400 million of
development capital was requested to be "industry's share", ostensibly
private capital. €2.815 billion was slated to be provided by various
European government sources at the time the early finance structure was
made public in April 2015. In the event, France's Airbus Safran Launchers—the
company building the Ariane 6—did agree to provide €400 million of
development funding in June 2015, with expectation of formalizing the
development contract in July 2015.
As of May 2015, the Japanese legislature was considering
legislation to provide a legal framework for private company spaceflight
initiatives in Japan.
It was unclear whether the legislation would become law and, if so,
whether significant private capital would subsequently enter the
Japanese space launch industry as a result.In
the event, the legislation appears not to have become law, and little
change in the funding mechanism for Japanese space vehicles are
anticipated.
The economics of space launch are driven, in part, by business demand in the space economy. Morgan Stanley projected in 2017 that "revenue from the global industry will increase to at least US $1.1 trillion
by 2040, more than triple the figure in 2016. This does not include
"the more aspirational possibilities presented by space tourism or
mining, nor by [NASA] megaprojects."
2014 and beyond
A
number of market responses to the increase of lower-cost competition in
the space launch market began in the 2010s. As rocket engine and rocket
technologies have fairly long development cycles, most of the results of these moves would not be seen until the late-2010s and early 2020s.
ULA entered into a partnership with Blue Origin in September 2014 to develop the BE-4 LOX/methane engine to replace the RD-180
on a new lower-cost first stage booster rocket. At the time, the engine
was already in its third year of development by Blue Origin. ULA
indicated then they expected the new stage and engine to start flying no
earlier than 2019 on a successor to the Atlas V
A month later, ULA announced a major restructuring of processes and
workforce to decrease launch costs by half. One of the reasons given for
the restructuring and new cost reduction goals was competition from
SpaceX. ULA intended to have preliminary design ideas in place for a
blending of the Atlas V and Delta IV technology by the end of 2014, but in the event, the high-level design was announced in April 2015. By early 2018, ULA had moved the first launch date for the Vulcan launch vehicle to no earlier than mid-2020, and by 2019, were aiming to launch in 2021.
Blue Origin is also planning to begin flying its own orbital launch vehicle—the New Glenn—in 2021, a rocket that will also use the Blue BE-4
engine on the first stage, the same as the ULA Vulcan. Blue Origin's
Jeff Bezos initially said they did not plan to compete for the US military
launch market, stating the market is "a relatively small number of
flights. It's very hard to do well and ULA is already great at it. I'm
not sure where we would add any value."
Bezos sees competition as a good thing, particularly as competition
leads to his ultimate goal of getting "millions and millions of people
living and working in space." This decision was reversed in 2017, with Blue Origin saying it did intend to compete for US national security launches.
In 2019, Blue was not only competing to offer the New Glenn launch
vehicle for the US military's multi-year block-buy contract for "all
[US] national security launches from 2022 to 2026" against SpaceX, ULA
(for which Blue is on contract to provide the BE-4 engines for the ULA
Vulcan), and others, it had "said the Air Force competition was designed
to unfairly benefit ULA."
In early 2015, the French space agency CNES began working with Germany and a few other governments to start a modest research effort with a hope to propose a LOX/methanereusable launch system, to supplement or replace the Ariane 6 that was only then beginning full development in Europe, by mid-2015, and subsequently renamed Ariane Next,
with flight testing unlikely before approximately 2026. The stated
design objective was to reduce both the cost and duration of reusable
vehicle refurbishment and was partially motivated by the pressure of
lower-cost competitive options with newer technological capabilities not
found in the Ariane 6.
Responding to competitive pressures, one stated objective of Ariane
Next is to reduce Ariane launch cost by a factor of two beyond
improvements brought by Ariane 6.
Ariane 6, the European launch vehicle design prior to Ariane Next has
seen delays. In 2014, operational flights of the expendable Ariane 6
were slated to begin in 2020, but by mid-2021 had slipped to 2022.
SpaceX stated in 2014 that if they were successful at developing the reusable technology, launch prices in the US$5 to 7 million range for the reusable Falcon 9 could be achieved in the longer term.
In the event, SpaceX did not choose to develop the reusable second
stage for the Falcon 9, but are doing so for their next-generation
launch vehicle, the new fully reusable Starship. SpaceX indicated in 2017 that the single-launch marginal cost of the Starship would be approximately US$7 million.
In November 2019, Elon Musk reduced this figure to $2 million --
$900,000 for fuel and $1.1 million for launch support services.
After the mid-2010s, prices for smallsat and cubesat launch services began to decline significantly. Both the addition of new small launch vehicles to the market (Rocket Lab,
Firefly, Vector, and several Chinese service providers) and the
addition of new capacity of rideshare services are putting price
pressure on existing providers. "Cubesats that used to cost US$350,000–400,000 to launch are now US$250,000 and going down."
According to an industry panel interviewed in October 2018, an
industry shakeout is expected between 2019 and 2021 due to the excess
supply compared to demand. Prices should reach stability once the new
entrants have demonstrated their capabilities.
In the first quarter of 2020, SpaceX launched over 61,000 kg
(134,000 lb) of payload mass to orbit while all Chinese, European, and
Russian launchers placed approximately 21,000 kg (46,000 lb), 16,000 kg
(35,000 lb) and 13,000 kg (29,000 lb) in orbit, respectively, with all
other launch providers launching approximately 15,000 kg (33,000 lb).
Competition for the American heavy-lift market
As early as August 2014, media sources noted that the US launch market may have two competitive super-heavy
launch vehicles available in the 2020s to launch payloads of 100 metric
tons (220,000 lb) or more to low-Earth orbit. The US government is
developing the Space Launch System
(SLS), capable of lifting very large payloads of 70 to 130 metric tons
(150,000 to 290,000 lb) from Earth. On the commercial side, SpaceX has
been privately developing their next-generation Starship launch system, featuring fully reusable boosters and spacecraft, and targeting 150 metric tons (330,000 lb) of payload. Development of the methaloxRaptor engine began in 2012, first flight tests were done in 2019. By 2014, NASASpaceflight.com reported: "SpaceX [had] never openly portrayed its BFR
plans in competition with NASA’s SLS. ... However, should SpaceX make
solid progress on the development of its BFR over the coming years, it
is almost unavoidable that America’s two HLVs will attract comparisons
and a healthy debate, potentially at the political level."
The Starship is planned to replace the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles, as well as the Dragon spacecraft, initially aiming at the Earth-orbit launch market, but explicitly adding substantial capability to support long-duration spaceflight in the cislunar and Mars mission environments.
SpaceX intends this approach to bring significant cost savings that
will help the company justify the development expense of designing and
building the Starship system.
Following the successful maiden flight of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy in February 2018, and with SpaceX advertising a US$90 million list price for transporting up to 63,800 kg (140,700 lb) to low-Earth orbit, U.S. President Donald Trump
said: "If the government did it, the same thing would have cost
probably 40 or 50 times that amount of money. I mean literally. When I
heard $80 million, I'm so used to hearing different numbers with NASA."
Space journalist Eric Berger extrapolated: "Trump seems to be siding
with commercial space advocates, who say that, while rockets like the
Falcon Heavy may be slightly less capable than the SLS, they come at a
drastically reduced price that will enable much quicker, broader
exploration of the Solar System."
A consolidated Arianspace reported 15 total launches for the Ariane, Soyuz, and Vega rockets in 2021.
Launch contract competitive results
Before 2014
Before
2014, Arianespace had dominated the commercial launch market for many
years. "In 2004, for example, they held over 50% of the world market."
2010: 26 geostationary commercial satellites were ordered under long-term launch contracts.
2011: Only 17 geostationary commercial satellites went under
contract during 2011 as an "historically large capital spending surge by
the biggest satellite fleet operators" began to tail off, something
that had been anticipated to follow the various satellite fleets being
substantially upgraded.
2012: As of September 2012, the major launch providers globally were
Arianespace (France), International Launch Services (United States)
which markets the Russian Proton launch vehicle, and Sea Launch
of Switzerland which markets the Russian-Ukrainian Zenit rocket. In
late 2012, each of them had manifests that were "full or nearly so for
both 2012 and 2013."
23 geostationary orbit communications satellites were placed under firm contract during 2013.
2014
A total of 20 launches were booked in 2014 for commercial launch service providers. 19 were for flights to geostationary orbit (GEO), one was for a low Earth orbit (LEO) launch.
Arianespace and SpaceX each signed nine contracts for geostationary launches, while Mitsubishi Heavy Industries was awarded one. United Launch Alliance signed one commercial contract to launch an Orbital Sciences CorporationCygnus spacecraft to the LEO-orbiting International Space Station following the destruction over the pad of an Orbital Antares vehicle in October 2014. This was the first year in some time that no commercial launches were booked on the Russian (Proton-M) and Russian-Ukrainian (Zenit) launch service providers.
For perspective, eight additional satellites in 2014 were booked
"by national launch providers in deals for which no competitive bids
were sought."
Overall in 2014 Arianespace took 60% of commercial launch market share.
2015
In 2015,
Arianespace signed 14 commercial-order launch contracts for
geosynchronous-orbit commsats, while SpaceX received only nine, with
International Launch Services (Proton) and United Launch Alliance
signing one contract each. In addition, Arianespace signed their largest
launch contract ever—for 21 LEO launches for OneWeb using the Europeanized Russian Soyuz launch vehicle launching from the ESA spaceport—and two Vega smallsat launches.
The launch of the US Air Force's first GPS III satellite is expected no earlier than 2017 rather than 2016 as originally planned. ULA—after having held a government-sanctionedmonopoly
on US military launches for the previous decade—declined to even submit
a bid, leaving the likely contract award winner to be SpaceX, the only
other domestic US provider of launch services to be certified as usable
by the US military.
Since 2016
SpaceX's
market share increased rapidly. In 2016, SpaceX had 30% global market
share for newly awarded commercial launch contracts, in 2017 the market
share reached 45%, and 65% in 2018.
Five years after SpaceX began to recover Falcon 9 booster stages,
and three years after they began reflying previously-flown boosters on
commercial flights, the US military contracted in September 2020 for
flying several US Space Force GPS satellite flights in 2021+ on previously-flown booster rockets in order to reduce launch costs by over US$25 million per flight.
Launch industry response - to lower prices - from 2014
In
addition to price reductions for proffered launch service contracts,
launch service providers are restructuring to meet increased competitive
pressures within the industry.
In 2014, United Launch Alliance (ULA) began a multi-year major restructuring of processes and workforce to decrease launch costs by half.
In May 2015, ULA announced it would decrease its executive ranks by 30
percent in December 2015, with the layoff of 12 executives. The
management layoffs were the "beginning of a major reorganization and
redesign" as ULA endeavors to "slash costs and hunt out new customers
to ensure continued growth despite the rise of [SpaceX]".
According to one Arianespace
managing director in 2015, "'It's quite clear there's a very
significant challenge coming from SpaceX,' he said. 'Therefore, things
have to change - and the European industry is being restructured,
consolidated, rationalised and streamlined.' "
Jean Botti, Chief technology officer for Airbus (which makes the Ariane 5) warned that "those who don't take Elon Musk seriously will have a lot to worry about."
Airbus announced in 2015 that they would open an R&D center and venture capital fund in Silicon Valley. Airbus CEO Fabrice Bregier
stated: "What is the weakness of a big group like Airbus when we talk
about innovation? We believe that we have better ideas than the rest of
the world. We believe that we know because we control the technologies
and platforms. The world has shown us in the car industry, the space
industry and the hi-tech industry that this is not true. And we need to
be open to others' ideas and others' innovations."
Airbus Group CEO Tom Enders
said: "The only way to do it for big companies is really to create
spaces outside of the main business where we allow and where we
incentivize experimentation ... That is what we have started to do but
there is no manual ... It is a little bit of trial and error. We all
feel challenged by what the Internet companies are doing."
Following a SpaceX launch vehicle failure in June 2015—due
to the lower prices, increased flexibility for partial-payload launches
of the Ariane heavy lifter, and decreased cost of operations of the ESA
Guiana Space Center spaceport—Arianespace regained the competitive lead in commercial launch contracts signed in 2015. SpaceX’s successful recovery of a first stage rocket in December 2015
did not change the Arianespace outlook. Arianespace CEO Israel stated
the next month that the "challenges of reusability ... have not
disappeared. ... The stress on stage or engine structures of high-speed
passage through the atmosphere, the performance penalty of reserving
fuel for the return flight instead of maximizing rocket lift capacity,
the need for many annual launches to make the economics work – all
remain issues."
Despite ULA restructuring begun in 2014 to decrease launch costs by half, the cheapest ULA space launch in early 2018 remained the Atlas V 401 at a price of approximately US$109 million, over US$40 million
more than a SpaceX standard commercial launch, that the US military
began to utilize for some US government missions that flew in 2018.
By early 2018, two European government space agencies—CNES and DLR—began
concept development for a new reusable engine aimed to be manufactured
at one-tenth the cost of the Ariane 5's first-stage engine, Prometheus. As of January 2018, the first flight test
for the rocket engine in a demonstration vehicle was expected in 2020.
The goal was to "establish a base of knowledge for future launch
vehicles that could, maybe, be reusable."
In the market for launches of small satellites—including both rideshare launch services on medium-lift and heavy-lift launch vehicles, and the developing capacity from small launch vehicles—prices were falling by early 2018 as more launch capacity entered the market. Cubesat launches that had previously cost US$350–400 thousand had declined by March 2018 to US$250 thousand, and prices were continuing to decline. New capacity from Chinese Long March and Indian PSLV medium-lift vehicles and a number of new small launchers from Virgin Orbit, Rocket Lab, Firefly,
and a number of new Chinese small launch vehicles are expected to put
more downward pressure on prices, while also increasing the ability of
entities launching smallsats to purchase custom launch dates and launch
orbits, increasing overall responsiveness to launch purchasers.
As recently as 2013, nearly half of the world's commercial launch
payloads were launched on Russian launch vehicles. By 2018 the Russian
launch service market share was projected to shrink to about 10% of the
world's commercial launch market. Russia launched only three commercial
payloads in 2017.
Technical problems with the Proton rocket and intense competition with
SpaceX have been the prime drivers of this decline. SpaceX's share of
the commercial market has grown from 0% in 2009 to a projected 50% for
2018.
By 2018, Russia has indicated it may reduce focus on the
commercial launch market. In April 2018, Russia's chief spaceflight
official, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin
said in an interview, "The share of launch vehicles is as small as four
percent of the overall market of space services. The four percent stake
isn’t worth the effort to try to elbow Musk and China aside. Payloads
manufacturing is where good money can be made."
The global launch market revenue from the 33 commercial orbital launches in 2017 was estimated to be just over US$3 billion while the global space economy is much larger at US$345 billion
(2016 data). The launch industry is becoming increasingly competitive;
however, to date there has been no indication of a large increase of
launch opportunities in response to decreasing prices. Russia may be the first launch provider to be a casualty of over supply of launch services.
By May 2018, as SpaceX prepared to launch the first Block 5 version of Falcon 9, Eric Berger reported in Ars Technica
that, during the eight years since its maiden launch, Falcon 9 had
become the dominant rocket globally, through SpaceX efforts to take
risks and relentlessly innovate driving efficiency upwards.
The first Block 5 booster flew successfully on 11 May 2018, and SpaceX
then "lowered the standard price of a Falcon 9 launch from US$62 million to about US$50 million. This move further strengthens SpaceX’s competitiveness in the commercial launch market."
In mid-2018, no fewer than three commercial launch vehicles—Ariane 6, Vulcan, and New Glenn—were being targeted for initial launch in 2020, two of them explicitly aimed at competitively responding to the offerings of SpaceX(although journalists and industry experts were expressing doubts that all these target dates would be met).
In addition to building new launch vehicles and endeavoring to
lower launch prices, competitive responses may include new product
offerings, and now do include a more schedule-oriented launch cadence
for dual-manifested payloads on offer from Blue Origin. Blue Origin
announced in 2018 they intend to contract for launch services a bit
differently than the contract options that have been traditionally
offered in the commercial launch market. The company has stated they
will support a regular launch cadence of up to eight launches per year.
If one of the payload providers for a multi-payload launch is not ready
on time, Blue Origin will hold to the launch timeframe, and fly the
remaining payloads on time at no increase in price.
This is quite different from how dual-launch manifested contracts have
been previously handled by Arianespace (Ariane V and Ariane 6) and
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (H-IIA and H3). SpaceX and International Launch Services offer only dedicated launch contracts.
In June 2019, the European Commission
provided funding for a three-year project called RETALT to "[copy the]
retro-propulsive engine firing technique used by SpaceX to land its
Falcon 9 rocket first stages back on land and on autonomous drone
ships." The RETALT project funding of €3 million was provided to the German Space Agency and five European companies to fund a study to "tackle the shortcoming of know-how in reusable rockets in Europe."
In December 2021, the Government of France
announced a plan to fund the "France-based rocket firm ArianeGroup to
develop a new small-lift rocket called Maïa by the year 2026."
The country is doing this separately from the normal intergovernmental
projects of the European Space Agency, where France also plays a major
role since the ESA founding. The French finance minister, Bruno Le Maire
said France intends to "have our SpaceX, we will have our Falcon 9. We
will make up for a bad strategic choice made 10 years ago."
Effect on related industries
Satellite design and manufacturing is beginning to take advantage of these lower-cost options for space launch services.
One such satellite system is the Boeing 702SP
which can be launched as a pair on a lighter-weight dual-commsat
stack—two satellites conjoined on a single launch—and which was
specifically designed to take advantage of the lower-cost SpaceX Falcon 9
launch vehicle.
The design was announced in 2012 and the first two commsats of this
design were lofted in a paired launch in March 2015, for a record low
launch price of approximately US$30 million per GSO commsat. Boeing CEO James McNerney
has indicated that SpaceX's growing presence in the space industry is
forcing Boeing "to be more competitive in some segments of the market."
Early information in 2015 on the Starlink constellation of 4000 satellites operated by SpaceX intended to provide global Internet services, along with a new factory dedicated to manufacturing low-cost smallsat satellites, indicate that the satellite manufacturing industry may "experience a supply shock similar to what the launcher industry is experiencing" in the 2010s.
Venture capital investor Steve Jurvetson has indicated that it is not merely the lower launch prices, but the fact that the known prices act as a signal in conveying information to other entrepreneurs who then use that information to bring on new related ventures.
Launch vehicle cost vs mass launch cost
While
vehicle launch cost is a metric utilized when comparing vehicles, the
cost per lb/kg launched is also an important factor that is not always
directly correlated with the overall launch vehicle cost. The cost per
lb/kg launched varies widely due to negotiations, prices, supply &
demand, customer requirements, and the number of payloads manifested per
launch. Pricing also differs depending on required orbit. Geosynchronous orbit
launches historically taking advantage of economies of scales with
larger launch vehicles and greater use of the maximum payload capacity
of a vehicle vs LEO launches. These varying cost and requirements makes
market analysis imprecise.
First launch of the competitive PSLV-CA and PSLV-XL versions (2007 and 2008)
Maiden flight of Vega was non-commercial
Excluding two demo flights of Kuaizhou-1 version in 2013 and 2014
.jpg)
