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Cloud Above the Clouds

On Tuesday, the European Space Policy Institute think tank published a report advising Europe to build space data centers. What is going on?

“Europe risks falling behind in the race to place data centres in space, unless it creates an immediate roadmap to deploy them.” — ESPI report

Since earlier this month, when Starcloud put the very first data center (test) into orbit, Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt, and now Elon Musk have all expressed interest.

The advantage of space really comes down to two factors — power and cooling.

As solar panel and launch costs keep dropping, the unlimited free sunlight and background microwave heat sink in space could make it a more practical location for data centers than on Earth.

Demand exists. According to McKinsey, $7 trillion in data centers will be built in just the next 5 years.

On the cooling side, Jensen Huang, chief executive of Nvidia, noted that the compute inside today’s racks is extremely small compared to the total mass, because nearly the entire structure — roughly 1.95 tons out of 2 tons — is essentially a cooling system.

Throw in the fact that latency is about 31% lower in the vacuum of space than on Earth for long-distance communication, and the future of the cloud could very soon be above the clouds.

If this turns out to be the case, Europe doesn’t want to miss out, hence the report.

Aliens?

Now that the U.S. government shutdown is over, NASA can return to its regularly scheduled programming of denying alien theories.

Comet 3I/ATLAS — only the third interstellar object to ever be discovered entering our solar system — became a celestial celebrity when it was found in July due to speculation that it could be an alien spacecraft. While astronomers were quite clear that the interstellar visitor is a natural comet from an unknown star system, NASA was silent about the matter (because it was shut down) until Wednesday.

In a Wednesday livestream, NASA released observations from Hubble, JWST, and ground assets revealing a 1-km icy body with cyanogen jets, confirming natural origins and, sadly, no artificial signals.

Bigger is Better

On Thursday, Blue Origin got everyone excited by announcing that their largest rocket, New Glenn — which just last week made the company the second in history (behind SpaceX) to land an orbital booster — will be getting even bigger.

The new rocket, New Glenn 9x4, will have a lift capacity nearly on par with NASA’s Space Launch System, while being reusable and costing less than one-tenth as much as the $2.2 billion SLS.

At this point, with two rockets in development (Starship & New Glenn 9x4), both capable of sending man back to the moon, the exorbitantly expensive SLS program doesn’t make any sense.

It’s an overpriced taxpayer-funded job program that has been draining the agency dry while bottle-feeding contractors for years, and will likely be cancelled very soon.

Attack, Defend, Pursue

Space is becoming more and more a war-fighting domain.

On Thursday, the US Space Force introduced a new mission-based naming scheme for its space systems, platforms, and vehicles with core categories such as Attack, Defend, and Pursue.

This change is similar to how early 20th-century US Army Air Service aircraft designations (such as the B-17 bomber or P-51 pursuit plane) signaled a shift towards combat.

The timing aligns with escalating space tensions. The Pentagon has been openly discussing “defender” satellites and offensive doctrines to counter Chinese anti-satellite tests, and funding for orbital combat prototypes, like a $60M “orbital aircraft carrier” was greenlit just days earlier on Monday.

Honey, You Blew Up the Rocket

Early Friday at 4 a.m., everyone woke up to terrible news. SpaceX’s very first Starship V3 first stage — the tallest, most powerful booster ever built and supposed to lead Flight 12 in early 2026 — blew apart during a routine pressure test.

No (very expensive) engines were attached, and there were no injuries.

One of SpaceX's core attributes is that it diagnoses failures quickly, addresses problems, and gets back to flying as rapidly as possible. The company is resilient and has plenty of resources. They lose hardware, learn fast, and will have the next booster stacked next month with more behind it.

Within hours, the scrapyard crew was already cutting the wreckage for autopsy, and there’s no question that engineers are already poring over the data and quite possibly have already diagnosed the problem.

Thank you for reading. I will be pausing further issues of This Week in Launch for the time being, as I am building a company that requires my full-time attention. See you soon.

– David

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Good Rockets Come to Those Who Wait

Monday morning, Rocket Lab announced its new reusable rocket, Neutron, will not launch in 2025.

Although officially slated to launch this year, the news wasn’t really a surprise. It’s been obvious for months that a slip into 2026 was inevitable.

“We’ve seen what happens when others rush to the pad with an unproven product, and we just refuse to do that. You won’t see us minimizing some qualifier about just clearing the pad and claiming success.” – CEO Peter Beck

Unlike its rivals, SpaceX and Blue Origin, Rocket Lab is a public company and has additional motivations to err on the side of caution. With stock (NASDAQ: RKLB) up 150% in the last six months and a billion-dollar war chest, they have no reason to rush.

The Sun Explodes… Twice

On Tuesday, the largest solar flare of the year erupted, bathing the Earth in radiation and sending Aurora Borealis lights as far south as Mexico.

Then it happened again. On Friday, another major eruption unleashed the second most powerful eruption of 2025, from the same hyperactive sunspot region just days before, causing radio blackouts all over Africa.

Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Regulation

On Tuesday, the U.S. State Department — with input from over 70 U.S. companies — sent a strongly worded memo to the EU, basically telling them to “stop regulating everything”, in response to Brussels’ new EU Space Act proposal.

The proposal will make a single regulatory framework for space activities across the EU’s 27 member states. This is a good thing. Europe’s space regulations today are fragmented, with 13 different national laws.

What gets contentious is the Act’s extraterritorial reach to US firms, which dominate the global space market. If approved, US operators will need to navigate new compliance layers if serving EU customers, adding 3-10% to manufacturing costs and up to 10% to IT budgets for cybersecurity.

TBD on what happens next.

France Bumps Space Spending

European space funding is set to surge. On Wednesday in Toulouse, French President Emmanuel Macron did two things:

1. Inaugurated the country’s first Space Command facility

2. Announced nearly $30 billion in Space spending over the next 5 years — nearly double the current spend

The announcement follows Germany’s $40 billion total commitment to space defense spend by 2030.

“Space is no longer a sanctuary; it has become a battlefield.” — French President Emmanuel Macron, during his speech

Get Back to Work

As of Wednesday, the longest government shutdown in U.S. history is officially over, with President Trump signing legislation that funds operations through January 30, just hours after the House of Representatives passed the package by a vote of 222-209.

What does this mean for the space community?

Good things. Over 15,000 NASA employees can now return to work after furlough, and its aerospace contractors, slowed by delayed payments and paused collaborations, can resume business as usual.

Just a day before, Boeing ended its own sort of internal shutdown. Roughly 3,200 defense workers, who had been on strike for over three months, finally accepted a new contract.

“Now Boarding Service to Mars”

The biggest news this week happened on Thursday, when Blue Origin became the second company in history (after SpaceX) to land an orbital rocket booster — a massive milestone in lowering the cost to space.

“We achieved full mission success today, and I am so proud of the team,” said Dave Limp, CEO of Blue Origin.

With only their second flight to orbit, Blue Origin now needs to quickly ramp up manufacturing and launch pace to seriously capture market share from SpaceX, which is rapidly developing Starship.

Space Internet: Add to Cart

On Thursday, Amazon’s satellite internet product, “Project Kuiper,” rebranded as “Amazon Leo,” a nod to the L-to-E or Launch-to-Orbit concept, unveiled its logo, matching the parent company’s A-to-Z branding, and making it much easier for non-space-familiar customers to remember and pronounce.

Can’t Park There Mate!

On Friday morning (Beijing time), the 20th crew of the Chinese Tiangong space station safely returned to Earth using the 21st crew’s capsule, landing in Mongolia, following a record 204-day stay in orbit.

They couldn’t use their own capsule because space debris broke its window.

China Manned Space Agency revealed details about the debris damage for the first time on Friday, saying “tiny cracks” were found in a small window of the Shenzhou-20 spacecraft’s return capsule.

“The capsule does not meet the safety requirements for a crewed return, Shenzhou-20 will remain in orbit and conduct relevant experiments.” — CMSA in a statement

That’s all for now! If you enjoyed reading this, leave a like and share with anyone else interested in the rapidly accelerating space industry.

– David

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Isaacman Nominated (again)

He’s back baby.

On Tuesday, in a post on Truth Social, President Trump re-nominated Jared Isaacman for NASA admin. Acting admin Sean Duffy — who insiders say has been pulling every string he can to remain in power — ensured everyone in a post on X that he will “ensure the transition is seamless.”

Just days before, a 62-page manifesto by Isaacman dubbed “Project Athena” was leaked in an attempt to scare away support for the admin-elect, likely by Duffy’s team, as they were the only ones in possession of the documents.

The plan pitched running the agency like a lean business, letting commercial space build out proven technology, leaving NASA to “focus on the hard problems” such as nuclear propulsion. Critics call the report reckless, but supporters see it as the shake-up needed to beat China back to the Moon.

“To all the commercial and international partners, we have an extraordinary responsibility--but the clock is running. The journey is never easy, but it is time to inspire the world once again to achieve the near-impossible--to undertake and accomplish big, bold endeavors in space.” – Isaacman, following re-nomination

Isaacman will likely not have to redo his Senate hearing and could be in as soon as this month, so long as politics and the government shutdown don’t get in the way.

Closing the Skies

As the U.S. government shutdown drags into its second month, the FAA announced on Thursday it’ll restrict commercial rocket launches to overnight hours — 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. — starting Nov. 10, blaming staffing shortages and fatigue risks. The restriction also reduces commercial flights at 40 major airports nationwide by up to 10%.

The curfew spares military and NASA, but will likely disrupt SpaceX’s near-daily Starlink launches, unless something changes fast. The timing of the order will still allow Blue Origin to attempt its launch of a Mars-bound probe on Nov. 9 from Cape Canaveral. However, if that launch slips, it will be unable to fly until the order is lifted.

Space Hotels!

On Sunday, Vast Space’s half-ton Haven Demo reached orbit in nominal condition on SpaceX’s Bandwagon-4 ride, unfurling its solar panels to begin tests for the world’s first fully private space station.

The demo will test propulsion, computers, and navigation for Haven-1, a crew-ready habitat targeting a May 2026 launch. Founded in 2021, Vast is the fastest-moving space station company and on track to receive NASA’s contract to replace the aging ISS by 2030.

UK Lawmakers Sound Alarm

Britain doesn’t want to be left behind.

On Tuesday, a UK parliamentary committee declared that the country’s 2021 National Space Strategy has failed, with the nation holding only fragments of the global market and facing further decline without bold moves.

“The Government should conduct research on the potential impacts of loss of access to SpaceX services.”

The report, ‘The Space Economy: Act Now or Lose Out,’ urged swift action on priorities, funding, and coordination, and lamented the UK Space Agency’s merger into a government department as a potential independence killer.

With rivals like SpaceX continuing to build momentum, concerned lawmakers worry that turning ambition into action is a matter of do-or-die.

Russian Spaceport Can’t Even Pay Power Bill

On Thursday, Russia’s troubled spaceport, Vostochny Cosmodrome, hit a new low when the Far Eastern Energy Company cut power to construction zones over $627,000 in unpaid bills from contractor PSO Kazan.

Located in the far east of Russia, the modern, $3 billion facility is one of President Vladimir Putin’s signature projects.

The blackout highlights Vostochny’s distress amid a saga of delays, strikes, and embezzlement. For example, in 2015, Russia’s Prosecutor General reported that $126 million had been stolen during construction. Additionally, a man driving a diamond-encrusted Mercedes was arrested after embezzling $75,000 from the project.

Officials vow to repay the electric bill by month’s end, but the energy company isn’t holding its breath, intending to file a lawsuit against PSO Kazan to declare the entity bankrupt.

“Would you like fries with that?”

On Monday, a new oven delivered to Tiangong was put to quick work by the six people currently living aboard the outpost. The taikonauts went viral, firing up the smokeless oven for history’s first space BBQ of grilled chicken wings and pepper steaks.

The meal not only served as a powerful technology demonstration for the microgravity microwave (which actually functions more like an air fryer), but also provided a welcome flavor of home for the taikonauts.

That’s all for this week. Thank you for reading, and if you have not yet, please consider subscribing.

- David

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To the Moon & Back!

On Thursday, SpaceX announced an update to its long-awaited lunar Human Landing System. NASA selected Starship in 2021 to serve as the lander for the Artemis III mission and return humans to the Moon for the first time since Apollo.

The massive Starship HLS will have a habitable volume comparable to that of the ISS, and approximately 100 times as much as the Apollo lander that last brought American astronauts to the moon.

SpaceX reminded everyone that over 90% of program costs are coming out-of-pocket, with the remainder under a fixed-price contract — ensuring the company is only paid after the successful completion of progress milestones, and American taxpayers are not on the hook for increased costs — something most legacy space primes cannot claim.

They say the last major milestone is transferring cryogenic liquid methane and liquid oxygen between two Starships in low-Earth orbit, now planned for early 2026 (see video below).

This announcement came 10 days after acting NASA admin Sean Duffy’s politically charged decision to “open up” the contract to competition.

In a statement, NASA confirmed that both SpaceX and Blue Origin submitted accelerated approaches for an HLS lander. The request for Information to the broader space industry will be delayed until after the now month-long U.S. government shutdown, which continues to freeze funding and timelines.

Golden Dome is Going Up?

On Friday, an anonymous WSJ report claims SpaceX is set to pocket $2 billion to develop up to 600 satellites for tracking missiles from orbit.

If true, this will be a significant step towards realizing President Trump’s Golden Dome defense program.

Announced in January 2025, it promises a revolutionary space-based shield against ICBMs, with thousands of satellites zipping through low Earth orbit to detect and destroy threats before they even leave the atmosphere.

Despite hype and a whopping $175 billion price tag (critics say it’ll balloon to trillions), concrete details remain frustratingly elusive.

The Pentagon hasn’t released the full architecture, technical specs, or even which agency leads the charge, leaving contractors in a holding pattern and wondering if this will be a repeat of Reagan’s failed “Star Wars” dreams or the real deal.

FCC Cuts Red Tape

On Tuesday, the Federal Communications Commission voted to create a modular “licensing assembly line” that would overhaul its satellite application process to accelerate reviews and reduce bureaucratic delays.

“This plan will modernize the our licensing processes to match the scale and dynamism of today’s space economy.” — FCC Chairman Brendan Carr

Critics worry about fairness and “picking favorites” in fast-tracking, but if it sticks, this could supercharge America’s edge in the global space race without the usual regulatory drag.

Data Centers in Space

Darling startup Starcloud has been recently making headlines following an official NVIDIA blog release last week titled “How Starcloud Is Bringing Data Centers to Outer Space”.

Founded in 2024 and backed by Y Combinator and NVIDIA (now the world’s first-ever $5 trillion company), Starcloud’s white paper claims 22x lower energy costs, but real-world hurdles in bandwidth, latency, and assembly are still to be worked out.

The company will kick things off with Starcloud-2, a satellite launch planned for next month, utilizing NVIDIA H100 GPUs.

Long-term, the company envisions 4km-wide solar arrays, assembled robotically in orbit to handle everything from crunching real-time Earth observation data to AI training.

Many skeptics question the logistics, economics, and physics of the plan. Regardless of the company's long-term outcome, excitement will be guaranteed.

China’s Youngest Astronaut

Later today, China will launch three astronauts toward its Tiangong space station, including 32-year-old Wu Fei, China’s youngest astronaut.

Recruited in 2020 as part of China’s third astronaut batch, Wu’s rigorous training included underwater simulations and docking drills, all fueled by his mantra: “The harder you work, the luckier you get.”

Wu and his crewmates will spend around six months aboard Tiangong.

China has ramped up its space program unilaterally since being excluded from the International Space Station project in 2011, largely due to U.S. government concerns about the Chinese military’s complete control over its space program.

The work done on China’s space station coincides with and often complements the nation’s efforts to be the first nation to land a person on the moon’s surface in more than 40 years.

That’s all for this week. Thank you for reading, and if you have not yet, please consider subscribing.

- David

Thank you for joining me! Let’s dive in.

Goodbye NASA?

The week immediately kicked into high gear Monday morning as acting NASA chief Sean Duffy went on national TV to announce he’s reopening SpaceX’s moon lander contract to competition.

Considering no other company has the track record or capability to build a lander within the 30-month target window, industry experts have been left baffled.

Elon Musk wasn’t happy. He responded with Trumpisms, calling the acting chief “Sean Dummy” (which he later amended to “Sean ‘Dangerously Stupid’ Dummy”), accusing him of plotting to “kill NASA” with a two-digit IQ, and replying with a “why are you gae?” gif under Duffy’s announcement post.

Insiders say Duffy’s actions are purely political.

According to folks with an eye on the situation, Jared Isaacman is on a good path to being re-nominated to lead NASA, the acting administrator doesn’t want to let go of power, and is increasing his lobbying to stop it. Which included shilling to legacy space, hence the announcement.

Duffy even went so far as to suggest that the beloved space agency merge with the Department of Transportation, which he currently leads.

“SpaceX is moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry. Moreover, Starship will end up doing the whole moon mission. Mark my words.”

– Elon Musk on X

Duffy has appeared to enjoy the limelight that comes with leading NASA. In the future, one source said, “Duffy wants to be president.” The NASA position has afforded him greater visibility, including television appearances, to expand his profile in a positive way. “He doesn’t want to give up the job,” the source added.

Per NASA admin, Trump will decide what happens next.

America’s Government is Gone Fishin’

Contributing to the worsening moon mission timeline — we have now entered week four of the U.S. government shutdown, and NASA is on life support.

The organization has already furloughed 15,000 of its 18,000 employees, and only critical tasks, such as ISS support, continue. Defense space programs are also now struggling with limited staff. With no budget agreement in sight, long-term cuts are becoming a growing concern.

Star Wars!

On Wednesday, Apex Space, a Los Angeles startup, announced it is funding its own $15 million project to develop a missile-intercepting satellite called Shadow (see video below).

Set to launch in June 2026, the satellite will test technology to counter hypersonic and ballistic missiles in orbit. Unlike traditional defense contractors, Apex — founded in 2022 and already valued at over a billion dollars — is moving fast to prove its concept, aiming to support the Pentagon’s missile defense goals.

Apex aims to mass-produce these guardians faster than rivals like Lockheed Martin, which plans its own test in 2028. This bold move positions the startup as a key player in space-based warfare and in Trump’s recently announced “Golden Dome” initiative.

China’s First Reusable Rocket Heads to Launch Pad

The global race for affordable access to space is intensifying.

On Wednesday, Chinese startup LandSpace announced its sleek, reusable Zhuque-3 rocket had recently passed a key test and will be ready for its first orbital flight as soon as November.

“They have added aspects of Starship, such as use of stainless steel and methalox, to a Falcon 9 architecture, which would enable it to beat Falcon 9,” wrote Elon Musk on X, “But Starship is in another league.”

Designed to land like SpaceX’s Falcon 9, Zhuque-3 represents a significant advance in China’s efforts to deliver affordable, frequent space missions and to reduce launch costs for Chinese megaconstellations.

European Space Giants (finally) Merge

On Wednesday, European space primes Airbus, Thales, and Leonardo announced that after multiple years of talks, they’ve signed an MoU to combine their space divisions into a €6.5 billion company to help the bloc better compete in the global market (namely, SpaceX).

However, analysts doubt it will rival SpaceX, saying, “Let’s not confuse consolidation with competitiveness. I don’t see this merger creating any competitive force against SpaceX at all. If there is to be a competitor to emerge from Europe, they are in the start-up ecosystem today.”

The deal, expected to be finalized by 2027, awaits EU approval. The group still needs to convince European regulators (and grumbling French unions) that they’re not engaging in anti-competitive behavior by combining.

“To me, it’s almost a joke when they say, ‘This is now something that can compete with SpaceX.’ And then in the next sentence, it says, ‘Oh, and we start in 2027.’ I mean, in two years, SpaceX has probably reinvented itself three times” — NewSpace’s Biedermann to Payload

That’s all for this week. Thank you for reading, and if you have not yet, please consider subscribing.

- David

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A new space race is on, and the United States is falling behind.

In 1981, when NASA was just old enough to drink, China was one of the poorest countries on earth, with some 800 million citizens living in extreme poverty. In the four decades since, China has eradicated extreme poverty — the largest such alleviation in history — while making steady progress on a space program that’s now vying to be number one.

A new 116-page report released last month by a Washington, D.C. trade association, titled “Redshift,” shines light on the acceleration. “I thought I had a pretty good read on China’s space program when I was finishing grad school,” said Johnathan Roll, one of the report’s authors. “That almost everything needed to be updated, or had changed three years later, was pretty scary.”

China now operates six spaceports, multiple regional research hubs, and will have the only space station in orbit once the ISS retires in 2030. In January, it surpassed the UK in satellites, now ranking second behind the USA, and plans to establish a fully operational moon base by 2035.

The trend is unmistakable: as a nation, the United States lacks the cohesive industrial policy and direction needed to compete with a determined adversary like China. The USA has held the top spot in space for decades, since landing 12 Americans on the Moon between 1969 and 1972. But complacency has set in, and the world’s superpower is on the verge of paying the price in lost leadership, national security vulnerabilities, and economic opportunities.

Plagued by delays and budget threats, NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return Americans to the Moon and pave the way for Mars exploration, has gained renewed urgency amid China’s 2023 announcement of a 2030 crewed lunar landing. Artemis I, initially slated for 2016, launched six years late in 2022. Artemis II slipped from 2024 to April 2026, and Artemis III to mid-2027. In contrast, China reports steady progress.

On the other side of the Pacific, China is accelerating at full throttle toward its goal of landing taikonauts on the Moon by 2030. In June 2025, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) successfully tested a launch escape system for its next-generation crewed spacecraft, a critical safety feature for manned missions.

By August, they completed a large-scale landing and takeoff verification test on a high-fidelity mockup of the 26-ton Lanyue lunar lander, demonstrating precise control during descent and ascent phases. Just last week, CMSA conducted a static fire test of the first-stage propulsion system for the Long March 10 rocket, achieving record thrust levels and confirming readiness for integrated testing. The People’s Republic is also planning a fully operational moon base, equipped with an autonomous nuclear reactor, as soon as 2035. Beijing has even recruited international partners, such as Russia and Pakistan, for its International Lunar Research Station, signaling a long-term vision for lunar dominance.

Right now, NASA is headless, with a hilariously underqualified acting administrator in power since July, who even hinted this week at disbanding the agency to “roll NASA” into his day job, the Department of Transportation.”

NASA’s Artemis program is mired in delays and bureaucratic hurdles. These postponements are signs of much deeper issues, including fragmented funding, regulatory bottlenecks, and a lack of streamlined acquisition processes in the U.S. Defense Industrial Base, which allows China to close the gap rapidly.

This is a national security imperative for all players. Control of the lunar south pole will dictate future space economies and military advantages. China’s program, backed by unified state support, is set to surpass U.S. capabilities soon. Without urgent policy reforms, such as expanding incentives for space manufacturing — as in the CHIPS and Science Act — reforming DoD space acquisition to cut red tape, and boosting NASA-DARPA collaborations with private innovators, the U.S. will cede the final frontier.

To stay ahead, Washington must elevate space as a top priority. Revitalizing American industrial space policy now is the only way to secure its lead and ensure the next footprints on the Moon are by free nations, not authoritarian regimes. The clock is ticking, and the complacency we’ve enjoyed for the last 60 years is no longer an option.

Written by David Venegas

Oct. 23, 2025

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Starship’s Eleventh-Hour Success

On Monday, SpaceX nailed its 11th Starship test flight, launching from Starbase, TX, and marking the final hurrah for its Version 2 prototype.

The hour-long mission hit on all marks: deploying mock satellites, relighting engines in space, and splashing down in the Indian Ocean after heat shield tests, while the booster completed a water landing in the Gulf of Mexico.

Elon Musk called it a “great work” on X, and NASA Acting Administrator Sean Duffy hailed it as a “major step” toward Artemis III’s 2027 moon landing.

Starship Version 3 flights are expected as soon as the year’s end.

On Tuesday, over on the West Coast, the U.S. Air Force greenlit doubling SpaceX’s Falcon launches at Vandenberg to 100 per year starting in 2026. This will supercharge the growth of the world’s biggest launcher amid a record 51 VSFB launches already this year.

European “Iron Curtain” Goes Orbital

On Thursday, the European Commission announced its “Space Shield” satellite defense program to protect communications, navigation, and observation assets from jamming, spoofing, and in-orbit threats posed by Russia and China, fast-tracked for 2026.

Yet Europe’s launch woes persist.

On Thursday, France’s Arianespace confirmed its Ariane 6’s debut will slip to mid-2026 after years of delays and cost overruns, while Italy’s Avio’s reusable Vega upper stage remains in its design phase for at least two years, forcing the bloc to continue relying on SpaceX for rides.

Germany continues to pour money into the problem, with launch startups Rocket Factory Augsburg and Isar Aerospace showing fast progress, and HyImpulse announcing a 45 million euro raise on Friday.

Roscosmos Sells Ads

Late last month, Russia’s space agency Roscosmos scored a surprising cash lifeline: starting January 1, 2026, rockets and spacecraft can sport ads from approved sponsors, turning its Soyuz vehicles into flying billboards, Roscosmos posted on its official Telegram account.

The move echoes Pizza Hut’s 2000 Proton logo, with revenue split between Roscosmos and the federal budget, provided the ads meet safety specs and hail from “friendly” nations.

This comes as Roscosmos grapples with serious debt and missed deadlines, accelerated by the Ukraine war draining talent and munitions.

China Is Not Racing to the Moon

In contrast to the USA’s turbulent “Hare” of a space program, China says it will continue to “Tortoise” along.

“When the president changes, his policies change,” — “We in China may anchor our goals and always draw a blueprint until the end, so we have always moved forward smoothly and firmly, which is the difference between our two countries.”

– Wu Weiren (吴伟仁), Chief Designer of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program

Racing or not, a milestone 600th Long March liftoff on Wednesday highlights that the country’s consistent growth will only continue to ramp up. The historic launch sent a new group of internet satellites into LEO, bolstering its megaconstellation.

Stateside, NASA’s Artemis is suffering under a government shutdown since October 1, furloughing staff and freezing non-essential work, including science budgets, with experts warning that China is set to lap the U.S. moon ambitions by 2028.

That’s all for this week. Thank you for reading, and if you have not yet, please consider subscribing.

- David

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Thank you for joining me! Let’s dive in.

Isaacman has a Chance?

On Thursday, a source familiar with the talks confirmed President Trump has met with Jared Isaacman to discuss another nomination to lead NASA.

The self-made billionaire, fighter pilot, and astronaut stepped down as CEO of Shift4 — the payments company he founded in 1999 at the age of 16 — in March after being confirmed as NASA administrator nominee by Trump in January.

After a fiery back-and-forth between Musk and Trump over government spending, the president pulled Isaacman’s nomination for the post, saying he was a “blue-blooded Democrat, who had never contributed to a Republican before.” Tensions between Musk and Trump have cooled in the months since, but the U.S. space program still faces major challenges.

“Even knowing the outcome, I would do it all over again,” Isaacman wrote about the NASA nomination process in a letter to investors announcing the Shift4 change.

Now, it looks like he gets to do it all over again.

Cautious excitement erupted in the space community upon the news breaking — if it pans out, the USA should expect bolder pushes in exploration and private partnerships.

One Billion Dollars for Stoke

On Wednesday, Stoke Space announced its $510 million Series D funding to scale up its fully reusable Nova rocket, bringing the 5-year-old Seattle-based startup’s total funding to $990 million. The company also secured $100 million in debt from Silicon Valley Bank.

The raise proves Stoke’s lack of a launch (so far) isn’t slowing it down. The significant new round of investment ensures that Stoke will have the resources needed to slog through the upcoming period of development hell, leading to its inaugural early 2026 launch, which is especially important given its ambitious and novel technologies, such as a reusable upper stage and an advanced rocket engine design.

Another accolade the company has locked down: The Pentagon announced in March that it had added Stoke to the pool of launchers who could compete for national security space launch contracts valued at $5.6B.

Houston, We Have a Winner

Last week, the Space Force announced SpaceX significantly outbid United Launch Alliance (ULA) for the agency’s upcoming 2026 launch contracts, winning five of seven missions valued at $142 million each. In comparison, ULA secured two for $214 million each, with a price-per-mission markup of over 50%.

SpaceX and ULA are the only companies with rockets certified by the Space Force to launch the Pentagon’s big-ticket satellites. ULA’s prices for Space Force launches have, for some reason, increased significantly over the last few years. In contrast, the average value of SpaceX’s contracts has remained fairly steady over the same timeframe.

The announcement highlights how single-use rockets, such as ULA’s Vulcan, are hopelessly obsolete in a market where reusable rockets are only bound to get cheaper.

Sky’s (not) the Limit

If you think space is crowded now, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

On Monday, the French space consultancy Novaspace released a new report predicting that 43,000+ new satellites will launch in the coming decade, adding to the already exponential increase from ~3,000 satellites in orbit just 5 years ago, to the nearly 16,000 today (~9,000 of which are SpaceX).

But the booming satellite economy is not going to be evenly distributed, nor will it be easy to capture. According to Novaspace, only 7% of the manufacturing market value is open to any manufacturer. In comparison, the vast majority (about 70%) is “nationally captive,” or locked up by government demand and will flow to national primes. The remaining manufacturing market value will remain within companies that’ve chosen vertical integration.

“No One Even Knows We’re Going to the Moon”

Artemis has a PR problem, says acting NASA admin Sean Duffy. According to him, almost no one even knows the USA is trying to return to the Moon. In an exclusive interview with USA Today on Tuesday, he talked about the need to do a better job in giving purpose to NASA and its missions — and communicating that to the American public. A key part of that, he said, is giving Artemis the Apollo treatment.

“I want to be able to run into a Walmart in Middle America and ask a customer, ‘What’s NASA up to?’ and hear them tell me about Artemis.” – Sean Duffy during the interview.

That’s all for this week. Thank you for reading, and if you have not yet, please consider subscribing.

- David

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“We think of life as confined to a single planet. But the nature of life is to spread. To seek out new horizons. To take root on foreign shores, in search of new soils. To make its mark on the cosmos.”

— John D. Boswell

We’re in a Cave Right Now…

“You’re a cavewoman, I’m a caveman…” Neil deGrasse Tyson says to the reporter who asked him: “Why go to space when we have problems on Earth?”.

“…and we’re in a cave, and there’s a mountain and a valley over there, and I tell you: ‘I wanna explore that mountain and that valley.’ But you say: ‘No, we can’t afford to send you out there now, we have to solve the cave problems first, before anyone leaves the cave!’”

We laugh at that. It’s an absurd claim to make in caveman days, because there are solutions to your problems that might exist, and time has demonstrated likely exist by leaving the cave and discovering.

Space Exploration has Never Been Popular

When we first landed on the moon in 1969, what do you think public sentiment for space exploration was like? If you assumed in favor, you would be wrong. It was overwhelmingly negative.

The average person today unfortunately knows very little about space or space exploration. This is understandably because it doesn’t affect them. It feels unachievable, detached from everyday life.

Ask someone off the street, and you will likely hear the following about space:

1. Waste of resources

2. Dangerous, impractical

3. A distraction from Earth’s problems

4. For the rich only

5. Overhyped, not possible, futile

These can seem reasonable. One looks around and sees all the suffering here on earth, and suddenly space exploration seems like a gratuitous luxury. Maybe man should first perfect the Earth before he tries to go into space?

Wait, We’re not Ready Yet…

But this is a short-sighted and ever-incorrect understanding of history.

Humans didn’t eradicate extreme poverty by trying to optimize our hodgepodge hunter-gatherer system — we built farms. We did not connect the world by breeding faster horses or carrier pigeons — we invented cars and iPhones.

We don’t know what we don’t know. It’s a story as old as time. The unknown unknowns are what change the world.

Expecting any type of exploration to justify its costs by predicting all the amazing things it will discover would be akin to expecting Christopher Columbus, when he was lobbying Queen Isabella for ships, to predict the polio vaccine or Netflix.

But Everything on Earth is just so Bad!

It’s actually… not. We’ll get to that in a second.

Our perception of how the world is changing really matters for what we believe is possible in the future. When asked, “All things considered, do you think the world is getting better or worse?” very few people gave a positive answer. In France and Australia, only 3%!

On the whole, we do not only believe that the world is stagnating or declining, we also expect that this perceived stagnation and decline will continue into the future!

This pessimism about what is possible for the world matters. Those who don’t expect things to get better in the first place will be less likely to act in ways that can bring about positive developments.

The few optimists, on the other hand, will act in a way that creates the necessary changes required to bring about the improvements they expect.

The World isn’t Just Getting Better, it is Already Better

It’s all about where you put the magnifying glass. We have holdover negativity biases from the trade-offs our ancestors made between berries and tiger-in-bush scenarios a quarter of a million years ago. Although there are still issues, we have made significant improvements.

The truth is strikingly opposite from what the news would have you believe.

Let’s start with the most precious thing of all — life itself.

Imagine half of your kids not making it to adulthood. Every second child dies. Until the 1800s, that was the norm! Today, child mortality is down to 4.3%.

Life expectancy: Global life expectancy has jumped from 32 years in 1900 to 73 years today. The percentage of people living in a democracy has increased from 1% in 1800 to nearly half of the world's population today.

Slavery: Slavery during the Roman Empire accounted for approximately 30% of the population, compared to 0.6% now (all illegally).

Literacy: In the 1500s, literacy was rare at 10%, but now over 85% can read and write. Primary school enrollment was unheard of in the 1800s, today 90% of kids get an education.

Poverty: In 1800, 90% of mankind was in extreme poverty — today, less than 10%. In just 100 years, global GDP per capita has increased by nearly an order of magnitude.

Death: Since the 1900s, you are 80% less likely to be a victim of homicide, 93% less likely to die in a car, and natural disasters kill 95% fewer people (thanks to better infrastructure) — and workplace deaths have dropped by 48% in just the last 20 years.

Food & Water: In 1900, over 50% of the population faced chronic hunger, and access to clean water was a luxury for fewer than 1%. Today, the rate is less than 9% for hunger, and 86% have safe access to water.

Labor: In 1900, we averaged 63 hours of work per week, today, only 38. Housekeeping required 58 hours a week, but is now 17 (thanks to washing machines, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, stoves, microwaves, and refrigerators).

War: Historically, the human experience has been nonstop war with mere interludes of peace. Today, that has inverted — wars of all kinds have become fewer and less deadly, with 22x less death by battle than just a hundred years ago.

Happiness: In the last few decades, even happiness levels have risen dramatically in nearly every country.

To recap, in just the last hundred years we’ve gotten exponentially healthier, wealthier, wiser, safer, and happier.

Ok, so Earth is already unrecognizably better than just a few years ago, and we have luxuries our ancestors wouldn’t have even known were possible to dream for.… but what is the advantage of space? Why go to space at all? Why put humanities resources out there? We clearly still have issues, shouldn’t we direct everything we have towards fixing those?

A nun once had that exact question.

Nun Tells NASA Children are Starving to Death

In 1970, a Zambia-based nun named Sister Mary Jucunda wrote to Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger, then-associate director of science at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, in response to his ongoing research into a piloted mission to Mars. Specifically, she asked how he could suggest spending billions of dollars on such a project at a time when so many children were starving on Earth.

Stuhlinger soon sent the following letter of explanation to Sister Jucunda, along with a copy of “Earthrise,” the above photograph of Earth taken in 1968 by astronaut William Anders, from the Moon. His thoughtful reply was later published by NASA, and titled, “Why Explore Space?”

The nearly 3,000 word letter reads as follows:

p.s. I know it’s long, but trust me it’s worth the read…

Dear Sister Mary Jucunda:

Your letter was one of many which are reaching me every day, but it has touched me more deeply than all the others because it came so much from the depths of a searching mind and a compassionate heart. I will try to answer your question as best as I possibly can.

First, however, I would like to express my great admiration for you, and for all your many brave sisters, because you are dedicating your lives to the noblest cause of man: help for his fellowmen who are in need.

You asked in your letter how I could suggest the expenditures of billions of dollars for a voyage to Mars, at a time when many children on this Earth are starving to death. I know that you do not expect an answer such as “Oh, I did not know that there are children dying from hunger, but from now on I will desist from any kind of space research until mankind has solved that problem!” In fact, I have known of famined children long before I knew that a voyage to the planet Mars is technically feasible. However, I believe, like many of my friends, that travelling to the Moon and eventually to Mars and to other planets is a venture which we should undertake now, and I even believe that this project, in the long run, will contribute more to the solution of these grave problems we are facing here on Earth than many other potential projects of help which are debated and discussed year after year, and which are so extremely slow in yielding tangible results.

Before trying to describe in more detail how our space program is contributing to the solution of our Earthly problems, I would like to relate briefly a supposedly true story, which may help support the argument. About 400 years ago, there lived a count in a small town in Germany. He was one of the benign counts, and he gave a large part of his income to the poor in his town. This was much appreciated, because poverty was abundant during medieval times, and there were epidemics of the plague which ravaged the country frequently. One day, the count met a strange man. He had a workbench and little laboratory in his house, and he labored hard during the daytime so that he could afford a few hours every evening to work in his laboratory. He ground small lenses from pieces of glass; he mounted the lenses in tubes, and he used these gadgets to look at very small objects. The count was particularly fascinated by the tiny creatures that could be observed with the strong magnification, and which he had never seen before. He invited the man to move with his laboratory to the castle, to become a member of the count’s household, and to devote henceforth all his time to the development and perfection of his optical gadgets as a special employee of the count.

The townspeople, however, became angry when they realized that the count was wasting his money, as they thought, on a stunt without purpose. “We are suffering from this plague,” they said, “while he is paying that man for a useless hobby!” But the count remained firm. “I give you as much as I can afford,” he said, “but I will also support this man and his work, because I know that someday something will come out of it!”

Indeed, something very good came out of this work, and also out of similar work done by others at other places: the microscope. It is well known that the microscope has contributed more than any other invention to the progress of medicine, and that the elimination of the plague and many other contagious diseases from most parts of the world is largely a result of studies which the microscope made possible.

The count, by retaining some of his spending money for research and discovery, contributed far more to the relief of human suffering than he could have contributed by giving all he could possibly spare to his plague-ridden community.

The situation which we are facing today is similar in many respects. The President of the United States is spending about 200 billion dollars in his yearly budget [almost $2 trillion in 2025]. This money goes to health, education, welfare, urban renewal, highways, transportation, foreign aid, defense, conservation, science, agriculture and many installations inside and outside the country. About 1.6 percent of this national budget was allocated to space exploration this year [less than .4 of one percent in 2025]. The space program includes Project Apollo, and many other smaller projects in space physics, space astronomy, space biology, planetary projects, Earth resources projects, and space engineering. To make this expenditure for the space program possible, the average American taxpayer with 10,000 dollars income per year is paying about 30 tax dollars for space. The rest of his income, 9,970 dollars, remains for his subsistence, his recreation, his savings, his other taxes, and all his other expenditures.

You will probably ask now: “Why don’t you take 5 or 3 or 1 dollar out of the 30 space dollars which the average American taxpayer is paying, and send these dollars to the hungry children?” To answer this question, I have to explain briefly how the economy of this country works. The situation is very similar in other countries. The government consists of a number of departments (Interior, Justice, Health, Education and Welfare, Transportation, Defense, and others) and the bureaus (National Science Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and others). All of them prepare their yearly budgets according to their assigned missions, and each of them must defend its budget against extremely severe screening by congressional committees, and against heavy pressure for economy from the Bureau of the Budget and the President. When the funds are finally appropriated by Congress, they can be spent only for the line items specified and approved in the budget.

The budget of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, naturally, can contain only items directly related to aeronautics and space. If this budget were not approved by Congress, the funds proposed for it would not be available for something else; they would simply not be levied from the taxpayer, unless one of the other budgets had obtained approval for a specific increase which would then absorb the funds not spent for space. You realize from this brief discourse that support for hungry children, or rather a support in addition to what the United States is already contributing to this very worthy cause in the form of foreign aid, can be obtained only if the appropriate department submits a budget line item for this purpose, and if this line item is then approved by Congress.

You may ask now whether I personally would be in favor of such a move by our government. My answer is an emphatic yes. Indeed, I would not mind at all if my annual taxes were increased by a number of dollars for the purpose of feeding hungry children, wherever they may live.

I know that all of my friends feel the same way. However, we could not bring such a program to life merely by desisting from making plans for voyages to Mars. On the contrary, I even believe that by working for the space program I can make some contribution to the relief and eventual solution of such grave problems as poverty and hunger on Earth. Basic to the hunger problem are two functions: the production of food and the distribution of food. Food production by agriculture, cattle ranching, ocean fishing and other large-scale operations is efficient in some parts of the world, but drastically deficient in many others. For example, large areas of land could be utilized far better if efficient methods of watershed control, fertilizer use, weather forecasting, fertility assessment, plantation programming, field selection, planting habits, timing of cultivation, crop survey and harvest planning were applied.

The best tool for the improvement of all these functions, undoubtedly, is the artificial Earth satellite. Circling the globe at a high altitude, it can screen wide areas of land within a short time; it can observe and measure a large variety of factors indicating the status and condition of crops, soil, droughts, rainfall, snow cover, etc., and it can radio this information to ground stations for appropriate use. It has been estimated that even a modest system of Earth satellites equipped with Earth resources, sensors, working within a program for worldwide agricultural improvements, will increase the yearly crops by an equivalent of many billions of dollars.

The distribution of the food to the needy is a completely different problem. The question is not so much one of shipping volume, it is one of international cooperation. The ruler of a small nation may feel very uneasy about the prospect of having large quantities of food shipped into his country by a large nation, simply because he fears that along with the food there may also be an import of influence and foreign power. Efficient relief from hunger, I am afraid, will not come before the boundaries between nations have become less divisive than they are today. I do not believe that space flight will accomplish this miracle over night. However, the space program is certainly among the most promising and powerful agents working in this direction.

Let me only remind you of the recent near-tragedy of Apollo 13. When the time of the crucial reentry of the astronauts approached, the Soviet Union discontinued all Russian radio transmissions in the frequency bands used by the Apollo Project in order to avoid any possible interference, and Russian ships stationed themselves in the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans in case an emergency rescue would become necessary. Had the astronaut capsule touched down near a Russian ship, the Russians would undoubtedly have expended as much care and effort in their rescue as if Russian cosmonauts had returned from a space trip. If Russian space travelers should ever be in a similar emergency situation, Americans would do the same without any doubt.

Higher food production through survey and assessment from orbit, and better food distribution through improved international relations, are only two examples of how profoundly the space program will impact life on Earth. I would like to quote two other examples: stimulation of technological development, and generation of scientific knowledge.

The requirements for high precision and for extreme reliability which must be imposed upon the components of a moon-travelling spacecraft are entirely unprecedented in the history of engineering. The development of systems which meet these severe requirements has provided us a unique opportunity to find new material and methods, to invent better technical systems, to manufacturing procedures, to lengthen the lifetimes of instruments, and even to discover new laws of nature.

All this newly acquired technical knowledge is also available for application to Earth-bound technologies. Every year, about a thousand technical innovations generated in the space program find their ways into our Earthly technology where they lead to better kitchen appliances and farm equipment, better sewing machines and radios, better ships and airplanes, better weather forecasting and storm warning, better communications, better medical instruments, better utensils and tools for everyday life. Presumably, you will ask now why we must develop first a life support system for our moon-travelling astronauts, before we can build a remote-reading sensor system for heart patients. The answer is simple: significant progress in the solutions of technical problems is frequently made not by a direct approach, but by first setting a goal of high challenge which offers a strong motivation for innovative work, which fires the imagination and spurs men to expend their best efforts, and which acts as a catalyst by including chains of other reactions.

Spaceflight without any doubt is playing exactly this role. The voyage to Mars will certainly not be a direct source of food for the hungry. However, it will lead to so many new technologies and capabilities that the spin-offs from this project alone will be worth many times the cost of its implementation.

Besides the need for new technologies, there is a continuing great need for new basic knowledge in the sciences if we wish to improve the conditions of human life on Earth. We need more knowledge in physics and chemistry, in biology and physiology, and very particularly in medicine to cope with all these problems which threaten man’s life: hunger, disease, contamination of food and water, pollution of the environment.

We need more young men and women who choose science as a career and we need better support for those scientists who have the talent and the determination to engage in fruitful research work. Challenging research objectives must be available, and sufficient support for research projects must be provided. Again, the space program with its wonderful opportunities to engage in truly magnificent research studies of moons and planets, of physics and astronomy, of biology and medicine is an almost ideal catalyst which induces the reaction between the motivation for scientific work, opportunities to observe exciting phenomena of nature, and material support needed to carry out the research effort.

Among all the activities which are directed, controlled, and funded by the American government, the space program is certainly the most visible and probably the most debated activity, although it consumes only 1.6 percent of the total national budget, and 3 per mille (less than one-third of 1 percent) of the gross national product. As a stimulant and catalyst for the development of new technologies, and for research in the basic sciences, it is unparalleled by any other activity. In this respect, we may even say that the space program is taking over a function which for three or four thousand years has been the sad prerogative of wars.

How much human suffering can be avoided if nations, instead of competing with their bomb-dropping fleets of airplanes and rockets, compete with their moon-travelling space ships! This competition is full of promise for brilliant victories, but it leaves no room for the bitter fate of the vanquished, which breeds nothing but revenge and new wars.

Although our space program seems to lead us away from our Earth and out toward the moon, the sun, the planets, and the stars, I believe that none of these celestial objects will find as much attention and study by space scientists as our Earth. It will become a better Earth, not only because of all the new technological and scientific knowledge which we will apply to the betterment of life, but also because we are developing a far deeper appreciation of our Earth, of life, and of man.

The photograph which I enclose with this letter shows a view of our Earth as seen from Apollo 8 when it orbited the moon at Christmas, 1968. Of all the many wonderful results of the space program so far, this picture may be the most important one. It opened our eyes to the fact that our Earth is a beautiful and most precious island in an unlimited void, and that there is no other place for us to live but the thin surface layer of our planet, bordered by the bleak nothingness of space. Never before did so many people recognize how limited our Earth really is, and how perilous it would be to tamper with its ecological balance. Ever since this picture was first published, voices have become louder and louder warning of the grave problems that confront man in our times: pollution, hunger, poverty, urban living, food production, water control, overpopulation. It is certainly not by accident that we begin to see the tremendous tasks waiting for us at a time when the young space age has provided us the first good look at our own planet.

Very fortunately though, the space age not only holds out a mirror in which we can see ourselves, it also provides us with the technologies, the challenge, the motivation, and even with the optimism to attack these tasks with confidence. What we learn in our space program, I believe, is fully supporting what Albert Schweitzer had in mind when he said: “I am looking at the future with concern, but with good hope.”

My very best wishes will always be with you, and with your children.

Very sincerely yours,

Ernst Stuhlinger, Associate Director for Science

Dr. Stuhlinger made some critical points:

1. Technology is ultimately what raises living standards

2. Space exploration is an unprecedented engineering challenge

3. Scientific progress is often made through an indirect approach, and it’s basically impossible to predict the second-order effects of new technology

But isn’t Space Super Expensive?

Americans wildly overestimate how much money NASA gets each year. In fact, when asked by Business Insider in 2018, some answers to the question were so extreme that the top 5% of responses had to be removed to show a more representative result.

This disconnect from reality has caused many people to call for cutting NASA's funding. In May 2025, a national survey asked the public which federal programs should be reduced to address the budget deficit, and NASA was the top candidate, with 63% favoring a reduction. Yet NASA's budget is a pittance compared to other government expenditures.

And what does that meager amount of money get us? From a purely Earth-centric point of view, space exploration is a marvelous return on investment.

Do you like the internet, your GPS, your cellphone, and your seven-day weather forecasts? None of those would be possible without space exploration.

I could go into detail on each thing that space has given us, but it would literally require a textbooks amount of text. Instead, here’s an annoyingly long and jumbled list. Feel free to do research yourself:

GPS navigation, ride share, food delivery, package tracking, health monitors, emergency alerts, search & rescue, weather forecasts, natural disaster prediction & response, aviation collision avoidance, maritime navigation, scratch-resistant lenses, UV protection, ear thermometers, shoe insoles, invisible braces, cordless tools, water filters, memory foam, solar panels, pacemakers, heart rate sensors, chemotherapy, LASIK eye surgery, hearing aids, artificial limbs, osteoporosis drugs, vaccine research, asthma research, Alzheimer’s research, HIV research, ultrasounds, MRI scanners, baby formula, air scrubbers, LEDs, traffic lights, anti-icing fluid, highway grooving, modern smoke detectors, modern tires, modern batteries, modern refrigerators, modern thermostats, modern air conditioning, modern transistors, modern vacuums, modern Velcro, CO2 sensors, soil moisture sensors, clock syncing, disease outbreak detection, insulin pumps, emergency blankets, freeze-dried food, firefighting gear, fire-resistant paint, shock absorbers, hospital ventilators, LIDAR, night vision, digital cameras, the computer mouse, bar codes, insulation, food safety standards, crop yield detection, wireless headsets, landmine removal …and much, much more.

To Inspire a New Generation

A 2009 survey found that fifty percent of the internationally renowned scientists who published in the prestigious journal Nature during the previous three years had been inspired by Apollo to become scientists. And to be clear, this is not an isolated incident.

Constraint is the Parent of Innovation

Scientific progress often occurs in indirect ways, yet certain key elements tend to be present. Space exploration beautifully encapsulates all of these important ingredients.

In an increasingly complex and challenging environment, we must learn to do more with less. As any engineer will tell you, constraints breed resourcefulness, and the highest form of creativity is found by improvising within a set of restrictions. As Dr. Stuhlinger put so elegantly in his letter:

“Significant progress in the solutions of technical problems is frequently made not by a direct approach, but by first setting a goal of high challenge which offers a strong motivation for innovative work, which fires the imagination and spurs men to expend their best efforts, and which acts as a catalyst by including chains of other reactions.”

Today, we can measure the literal hundreds of trillions of dollars of value that space exploration has created for humans! And we have only begun to discover what’s possible.

But beyond fixing Earth, there’s a deeper imperative: survival.

A Defensive Reason to become Multiplanetary

How do you rationally decide that anything is important? History is the best lens. If you look at things over a long enough span of time, the things that are less important fall away.

Primitive life started around 3.5 billion years ago. What were the most important steps in the evolution of life?

1. Advent of single-celled life

2. Differentiation to plants and animals

3. Life going from oceans to land

4. Mammals

5. Consciousness

Life becoming multiplanetary also fits on that scale, in fact, it’s the very next step.

Because you need consciousness to design vehicles that can transport life over hundreds of millions of miles of irradiated space to an environment they did not evolve to exist. It would be very convenient for life if there were another planet just like Earth nearby, but that would be unlikely, and as it turns out, not the case. There is no way for life, by means of natural selection, to get to Mars and survive.

If one could make a reasonable argument that something is important enough to fit on the scale of evolution, then maybe it’s worth a bit of our resources. We know for a fact that before 500 million years from now, as the sun continues to warm, photosynthesis will no longer be possible, and all life as we know it will cease to exist.

But humans are much more likely to become extinct much sooner.

From natural causes such as asteroid impacts, supervolcanic eruptions blocking out the sun, solar flares sending our infrastructure back to the dark ages, or Gamma-ray bursts depleting our protective ozone layer — to recently possible manmade disasters like nuclear holocaust, a mass bioweapon, runaway artificial intelligence, ecological collapse, or even just population decline.

“Dithering on space exploration is not just a waste of human destiny, it is also a gamble with the continued existence of introspective intelligence in the universe. There is no time to waste - we should go as soon as it is possible, starting now.”

— Dr. Casey Handmer

There Have Already Been Five Major Extinction Events

We’ve been down to less than 10,000 people before. There is clear evidence of life being destroyed multiple times in the fossil record. So we don’t need to guess if this is something that can occur — it has already occurred.

There have been five major mass extinction events, known as the “Big Five,” over the last 450 million years, including the Ordovician-Silurian, Late Devonian, Permian-Triassic, Triassic-Jurassic, and Cretaceous-Paleogene extinctions. These events each resulted in the loss of a large percentage of the Earth’s species and are identified by fossil records and geological changes. Scientists also believe the planet is currently undergoing a potential sixth mass extinction, driven by human activities.

The Permian extinction is a particularly interesting one because it destroyed between 90-95% of species on Earth. The majority of the remaining species were fungi, so unless you were a mushroom, you were out of luck.

One could consider space exploration from the perspective of life insurance. If we think it’s worth buying life insurance on an individual level, perhaps it’s worth spending something on life insurance to protect life as we know it.

If we are on more than one planet, the probable life span and the light of consciousness are going to be far greater than if we are on just one planet. Earth has been around for 4 billion years, and civilization about 10,000 years, and it’s only now that this little window has just cracked open, where it’s possible for life to extend beyond Earth.

It seems sensible to take advantage of that window while it’s open. Hopefully, it will be open for a long time, but it could be open for a short time. So we should take action!

A Positive Reason to Become Multiplanetary

But doomerism does not need to be the only reason we go. Space exploration is literally the most inspiring and interesting thing we can do. It is the greatest adventure that humanity could ever embark upon. Life has to be more than solving problems. If life is only about solving problems, why get up in the morning? We need more great endeavors to inspire us and make us feel positive and optimistic about humanity.

These are points SpaceX founder Elon Musk presents in the following video:

There must be things that make you proud to be a member of humanity.

The Apollo program is a great example. Only a handful of people went to the moon, yet actually, we all went to the moon together. We went with them vicariously. We shared in that adventure. We need more of those things. Even for people in a different industry or a different walk of life, it is still something that makes you feel good about the world!

Dr. Robert Zubrin, a long-time proponent of space exploration, aerospace engineer, and author, sums up his top three reasons for Mars in the following video:

There are three reasons why humanity should go to Mars:

1. THE SCIENCE

If we’re interested in the origins of life, it is easier to see that on Mars than on Earth, because on Earth, the evidence has been wiped away.

Mars is the Rosetta Stone for life in the universe.

It was once a warm and wet planet with water on its surface for over a billion years. On Earth, once water was on the surface, it only took 200 million years for life to appear. So if the theory of life as a natural development from chemistry is correct, life should’ve appeared on Mars even if it went extinct. If we go to Mars and find fossils of past life, we can prove that the development of life is a general phenomenon elsewhere in the universe.

Alternatively, if we were to go to Mars and find evidence of past water but no fossils, that would imply that life is not a natural development of chemistry that occurs with high probability, and we could be alone in the universe.

Furthermore, if we go to Mars and drill into its groundwater, we could find life there now. Would Mars life be the same as Earth life? All Earth life at the biochemical level is the same. It all uses the same amino acids and the same method of replicating and transmitting information through RNA/DNA. Is that what life has to be? Or could life be very different from that? Are we what life is? Or are we just one example drawn from a much vaster tapestry of possibilities?

This is real science. These are fundamental questions that thinking men and women have wondered about for thousands of years. The role of life in the universe.

2. THE CHALLENGE

Societies are like individuals – we grow when we challenge ourselves, we stagnate when we do not. Embracing the challenge of Mars is incredibly productive for innovation and ingenuity, particularly among youth. Going to Mars will tell every kid in school today that “if you learn your science, you too can become an explorer of new worlds.”

This will create millions of new scientists, engineers, inventors, entrepreneurs, doctors, and medical researchers. The intellectual benefits alone dwarf the costs.

3. THE FUTURE

Mars is the closest planet that has all the resources necessary to support life.

If we do what we are capable of in our time to establish a Plymouth Rock settlement on Mars, 500 years from now, there will be new branches of human civilization on Mars and throughout interstellar space.

If you ask any American, what happened in 1492? They’ll tell you, “Columbus sailed in 1492”, and that is correct — he did. But that’s not the only thing that happened in 1492.

In 1492, France and England signed a peace treaty. In 1492, Rodrigo Borgia scandalously took over the papacy. In 1492, Lorenzo de’ Medici, one of the richest men in the world, died. If there had been newspapers in 1492, those stories would’ve been what were written about — not some Italian weaver’s son taking a bunch of ships and sailing off to nowhere.

But Columbus is what we remember. In 500 years, no one will care what faction came out on top in Iraq, but they will care what we did to make their civilization possible.

This is the most important thing we can do at this time. If you have it in your power to do something great and important and wonderful — then you should.

So, why Mars and not another Celestial Body?

It’s the closest and most similar to Earth.

Venus and Mercury are far too hot for life, and anything Earth-like past Mars, such as Saturn’s moon Titan, would take 6+ years to reach.

What about the Moon?

• It’s much smaller than a planet

• Doesn’t have any atmosphere

• Not as resource-rich

• Has a 28-day day (Mars day is 24.5 hrs)

On the other hand, Mars & Earth are very similar, and both have all the resources necessary to sustain life.

We Choose to Go Because it is Hard.

Some consider space exploration to be dangerous, impractical, and difficult — and it is — that is the point.

What if we were not an adventuring species and had all remained in Africa since the dawn of humanity? How significant a population would Africa have supported before a predator or nature wiped us out?

Mars is the next step for humanity to continue as a species.

There’s nowhere left to explore on Earth. You can literally get anywhere in 24 hours or less. You could fly over the Antarctic pole or Mt. Everest and parachute out, or go to the bottom of the ocean in a submarine. From a physical standpoint, on Earth, you can go anywhere.

There is no physical frontier on Earth anymore — space is that frontier. Settling Mars is the next great challenge and an appeal to anyone with an exploratory spirit.

“To boldly go where no man has gone before.”

— Captain Kirk, Star Trek

Humanity is drawn to the frontier. We desire a horizon to focus our energies. We make heroes out of those who brave those frontiers — even if they do not return — because they act out something ancient and important in us.

We are a Species of Explorers

The first humans left their caves to climb mountains. Just 130 years ago, humans sailed further and further south until they saw the glacial landscapes of Antarctica for the first time.

What is the common denominator in our history? Exploration.

Take the remarkable expansion of the Polynesians across the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean. The expansion was initially rapid, as long as new islands to be settled were in visible range of those already inhabited. But once the open ocean was reached, the expansion halted until what is today South China provided the next boost in terms of a new technology, better ships. With the technology, the Polynesians pushed onward and eventually reached as far as the Americas.

Once again we are poised at the edge of a great sea. This time it’s called space.

Human nature is characterized by a propensity to travel, to look further and to discover. We are all curious by nature. If we stop wanting to explore, we stop being human.

That is why space matters. While some say we need to clean up our act at home before we venture outward, the irony is that these two needs are linked.

We can only learn to preserve our own planet when we discover how planets work. Space exploration provides us with the much-needed understanding of Earth’s functionality as a planet in its entirety.

SpaceX

The pivotal breakthrough that is necessary to make life multiplanetary is a reusable orbit-class rocket. This is obvious when applied to any other mode of transport. If planes were not reusable, very few people would fly.

Today, SpaceX is the only entity — country or company — to have achieved these fully and rapidly reusable rockets. In addition, while a handful of countries are racing to establish small bases on the moon, SpaceX is the only entity working to develop human civilization on another planet.

The team at SpaceX is rapidly developing a much larger vehicle, Starship (see below), to transport millions of tons of cargo to Mars as quickly and cheaply as possible.

SpaceX’s single goal is to make humanity multiplanetary. This goal influences every aspect of the company — from job descriptions to internal communications — guiding the decisions of its 16,000 employees.

“It’s very important to appreciate, this is not inevitable. People are mistaken when they think that technology just automatically improves. It does not automatically improve. If you look at great civilizations like ancient Egypt, they were able to make the pyramids… and they forgot how to do that. Then the Romans built these incredible aqueducts… and they forgot how to do it. In 1969 we were able to send someone to the moon… and we forgot how to do that. The window of opportunity is open right now to make life multiplanetary. But we cannot count on it being open for a long time. We need to take advantage of that window while it is open.”

— Elon Musk

Humankind is a Story of Growth

In an interview, Chris Power, the founder of Hadrian, echoes the case for space.

“…it comes down to growth or degrowth. Are we going to use the limited resources on the planet to go get new resources so we can continue this magical species-wide journey of settling the solar system… or are we going to accept the status quo, and continue to shit in a hole instead of inventing the toilet?”

“Space is the last frontier we have, the moon is the eighth continent, and as a species we must continue to grow… else we stagnate, and if anyone’s choosing to stagnate, I’m sorry but you’re on the wrong side of history. You will be blown past by everyone else.”

The full 7-min video is here:

…and so we go

Today, the poorest among us live better than kings did a century ago. We stand on the shoulders of giants and must continue the race that our ancestors have all successfully run. The baton is firmly in our hands, and we must continue to run to the edge.

What we do now over the next 100 years will determine the course of the next millennium. If we stay on Earth, we eventually die out, and the wonders of the universe will forever remain unexplored.

We must reject that possibility and choose growth, there is no time to waste.

Thank you for reading.

– David

Thank you for joining me! Let’s dive in.

BOOM! Firefly Booster Explodes During Test

On Monday, the first stage of Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha rocket blew up during a test stand anomaly in Briggs, Texas.

The company confirmed that all personnel were safe. This happened just a week after the first earnings call announced “good progress” toward resuming launches following its sixth flight failure in April, and only a month after renewed FAA clearance.

Firefly went public on the NASDAQ last month, raising nearly $900 million in its initial public offering. Since then, its stock has fallen more than 50%. Really unfortunate to see, and hopefully they can recover quickly.

Global Delivery in Under an Hour

On Wednesday, from its factory in Los Angeles, startup Inversion Space unveiled its new Arc delivery spacecraft.

Arc’s purpose is to deliver 500 pounds of on-demand cargo to the US military anywhere in the world, instantly. It can store payload in orbit for up to five years, maneuver 1,000 km cross-range during reentry, and land via parachutes without requiring a runway. Because the propulsion system uses non-toxic materials, a soldier can approach it immediately after landing without any protective gear.

The company has raised $54 million, secured a $71 million SpaceWERX contract, and is part of a $1.45 billion Program of Record for hypersonic testing. Its long-term vision is to become a new mode of transportation, but per the CEO, it is “fully focused on defense right now”. They aim to launch the first Arc vehicle by the end of 2026, with a constellation of vehicles in orbit by 2028.

“No, I didn’t order anything from Amazon.”

During a panel discussion at IAC 2025 on Tuesday, Josef Koller, head of space safety for Amazon’s Project Kuiper, recounted communication hurdles in space traffic management:

“We had a conjunction warning coming up with a Korean satellite. We had their contact information so we called them up, but there was a language barrier as well, because the answer that we got was, ‘No, I didn’t order anything from Amazon.’”

The Kuiper team eventually got across to their Korean counterparts that a two-minute prime delivery was headed their way at Mach 20.

Koller’s concern is with satellite operators that Amazon does not, and cannot, communicate with. He estimated about 1,500 operational payloads pass through Kuiper orbits, only half of which Amazon has contact information for. He asked the ITU to help standardize communication protocols, including simple details like email addresses, to prevent conflicts in crowded orbits.

ESA Wants a Mini Starship

On Monday at IAC 2025 in Sydney, the European Space Agency signed a contract with Avio, the Italian company behind the small Vega rocket, to begin designing a reusable upper stage capable of flying into orbit, returning to Earth, and launching again.

The agency posted on X a rendering that looks a lot like SpaceX’s Starship megarocket upper stage. With SpaceX making such rapid progress with Starship, it’s no surprise some other rocket builders want to copy it. Avio is not the first company to reveal a rocket concept that so closely mimics Starship. A new design for China’s super-heavy-lift Long March 9 rocket appeared at a Chinese airshow last year.

At the end of the two-year contract, Avio will deliver a preliminary design — a milestone typically occurring many years before launch. For example, Europe’s flagship Ariane 6 rocket passed its preliminary design review in 2016, eight years before its first launch.

Beijing Boosts Private Space Funding

This quarter saw China emerge as a major funding driver, with Galactic Energy raising $336 million in its Series D round —the largest ever for a Chinese launch startup. Geespace secured $281 million for its IoT satellite mega-constellation, and innovators like iSpace and Galactic Energy are gearing up for end-of-year tests on reusable launch vehicles that promise to slash costs and crank up launch cadences.

CNSA Messages NASA for the First Time

The Chinese space agency has reportedly contacted NASA for the first time to avoid a collision in orbit. The message read, “We would like to recommend you hold still and we’ll do the maneuver,” Alvin Drew, NASA Space Sustainability director and former astronaut, said on Thursday at a panel on space sustainability at the IAC. “That’s the first time that has ever happened.” While CNSA sent “a simple email,” its significance was great.

In the past, communication between CNSA and NASA has been extremely limited due in part to the Wolf Amendment, which prohibits NASA from funding work with China without congressional and FBI approval.

These communications are occurring at a critical time for satellite operators. Chinese companies plan to establish the 13,000-satellite Guowang IoT constellation and a 15,000-satellite Qianfan internet constellation. SpaceX’s Starlink broadband constellation could include as many as 42,000 satellites, and Amazon intends to send 3,236 broadband satellites into Project Kuiper.

That’s all for this week. Thank you for reading, and if you have not yet, please consider subscribing.

- David

Thank you for joining me! Let’s dive in.

Those Mexicans Will “Chop Your Head Off”

Last week, during a talk to students at UC Berkeley, Astra Space CEO Chris Kemp attempted to appeal to prospective interns in the audience by arguing that his company offers a better work environment.

He then proceeded to trash nearly every single one of his rocket competitors: Blue Origin and NASA spend “tens of billions” and take “20 or 30 years” to launch, Rocket Lab’s “little rocket is too small”, Firefly’s engines are “literal garbage”, and SpaceX is dangerous because “we’re not on the border of Mexico where they’ll chop your head off if you accidentally take a left turn.”

Yet Astra itself hasn’t been too promising. With five of seven launches failing between 2020 and 2022, its valuation crashed from $2.6 billion to $25 million, forcing Kemp to take the firm private in 2023 at 50 cents a share.

Now rebooted to focus on tactical rockets for national defense, Astra has the potential to become a nice comeback story for the industry, provided Kemp avoids alienating, well, everyone.

Note: To be clear, there have been no reports of beheadings at SpaceX

Run, Girls, Run

On Monday, at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, the agency unveiled its 24th astronaut class, comprising six women and four men (the first women-dominated class) who will accelerate the pace of this intensifying space race.

Selected from over 8,000 applicants, these 10 new astronauts will join NASA’s total of 370 astronauts recruited over its 60-year history, becoming eligible for space travel in 2027, after completing two years of training.

Officials used the ceremony to stress that Artemis, which could launch as soon as February, remains on track to beat China, with acting administrator Sean Duffy noting, “One of these 10 could actually be one of the first Americans to put their boots on the Mars surface.”

Back to Stone Age

On Wednesday, SpaceX launched $1.6 billion worth of NASA satellites a million miles from Earth to monitor the Sun. The probes will gather real-time solar wind data and provide advanced warnings of geomagnetic storms that could knock out power grids, radio communications, GPS, air travel, and other satellites.

“We can now buy power grid, airline, and satellite operators’ precious time to act before billion-dollar storms strike,” said Clinton Wallace, director of NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center. This early warning system could give a fighting chance to prepare, particularly after the first US solar storm emergency drill in May 2024 “did not go well.”

Billion Dollar Hide-and-Seek

In a high-stakes game of tag, U.S. satellite imagery giant Maxar Technologies began in July 2025 by releasing ultra-high-resolution photos of China’s Shijian-26 spy satellite. China swiftly returned the favor on September 8, dispatching satellites from its massive Jilin-1 constellation, operated by Chang Guang Satellite Technology (CGST), to capture crisp snapshots of Maxar’s own WorldView Legion 2 satellite.

CGST then went further, releasing images of U.S. Space Force early-warning SBIS satellites as well.

While images of adversarial satellites are nothing new, the audacity and temperature levels are definitely increasing. In 2023, the U.S. Government sanctioned CGST for allegedly providing imagery to the Russians.

Does the “Cool Kids Table” Now Speak Mandarin?

In 1981, when NASA was just old enough to drink, China was one of the poorest countries on earth, with some 800 million citizens living in extreme poverty. In the four decades since, China has eradicated extreme poverty — the largest such alleviation in history — while making steady progress on a space program that’s now fighting to be number one.

A new 116-page report released last week by a Washington, D.C. trade association, titled “Redshift,” shines light on the acceleration. “I thought I had a pretty good read on China’s space program when I was finishing grad school,” said Johnathan Roll, one of the report’s authors. “That almost everything needed to be updated, or had changed three years later, was pretty scary.”

China now operates six spaceports, multiple regional research hubs, and will have the only space station in orbit once the ISS retires in 2030. In January, it surpassed the UK in satellites, now ranking second behind the USA, and plans to establish a fully operational moon base by 2035.

What’s most impressive is that the country is completing all these impressive tasks simultaneously. In other words, China is living its Apollo, ISS, and commercial space eras all at once.

Germany to Activate Space War Machine

On Thursday, Germany pledged $41 billion over the next 5 years to build its military in space, a significant increase from the country’s historically minimal annual space spending of $100 million. In his announcement, Defence Minister Boris Pistorius cited the need for resilient satellite networks, secure ground stations, better cybersecurity, radars to track space traffic, as well as offense — all to counter threats from Russia and China, who can jam, blind, or smash satellites “anytime they want”.

This marks a huge step forward in Germany’s rearmament, which many see as a welcome surprise, since German think tank Kiel Institute predicted in 2024 that it would take “up to 100 years at current rearmament pace to deter Russia”. Germany has historically relied on the United States and other European countries for critical space capabilities, such as missile warning, intelligence gathering, and launch services. This spending surge marks a shift.

The pledge coincides, likely not coincidentally, with Seraphim, one of the world’s largest space investment offices, announcing the opening of a Berlin subsidiary on Thursday.

That’s for this week. Thank you for reading, and if you have yet, please consider subscribing.

- David

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Starlink Money Printer Gets $17 Billion Upgrade

On Monday, September 8, SpaceX announced an $8.5 billion cash and $8.5 billion stock deal for EchoStar's AWS-4 and H-block spectrum licenses. "The next generation of Starlink Direct to Cell satellites will be designed to fully utilize this spectrum," said SpaceX in a blog post.

EchoStar’s business has been suffering for years due to declining consumer interest. In May 2025, the debt-ridden company was preparing to file for bankruptcy while facing an FCC probe — initiated by SpaceX's complaint — into whether it was meeting 5G deployment requirements to keep its spectrum licenses (it wasn’t).

The sales, including $23 billion to AT&T on August 26, ended the FCC investigation on September 9. These deals also killed EchoStar's LEO constellation plans, terminating its $2.5 billion satellite contract with MDA Space for 200 satellites.

Starship vs. Nudists

After ending a three-flight losing streak with successful Flight 10 last month, Starship scored a court win too. A May 2023 lawsuit by environmentalists against the FAA over Boca Chica wildlife impacts was dismissed on September 16. This removes a key regulatory barrier for the company, allowing for continued launch expansion in South Texas.

In Florida, nudists are opposing SpaceX's $1.8 billion expansion of its Starship program at Kennedy Space Center. The company plans Starship flights as soon as later this year (though 2026 is more likely). The FAA's draft Environmental Impact Statement, released on August 6 for Launch Complex 39A, calls for closing Playalinda — a popular nude beach just 4 miles north of the pad — several times a year during launches. The public comment period ends September 22, but SpaceX anticipates approval regardless of feedback.

“The turtles and the nudists will have to migrate. That's the cost that you have to pay for this incredible stuff that's happening”. - Max West in Teslarati, Sept 6, 2025

In other Starship news, Elon Musk confirmed speculation of watership “You’ll Thank Me Later”, for transporting spaceships from Starbase to Cape Canaveral.

There’s a Bad Moon on the Rise

“I'll be damned if that's the story we write!” screamed NASA Acting Administrator Sean Duffy in an internal NASA town hall on September 4, a day after a Senate committee hearing suggested China would land astronauts on the moon before the USA. Duffy was clear: “Wake up and ask yourself, 'Is what I'm doing helping us get back to the moon?' … If it's not, stop doing it.”

Plagued by delays and budget threats, NASA’s Artemis program has gained renewed urgency amid China’s 2023 announcement of a 2030 crewed lunar landing. Artemis I, initially slated for 2016, launched six years late in 2022. Artemis II slipped from 2024 to April 2026, and Artemis III to mid-2027.

In contrast, China reports steady progress. With Artemis historically missing every major goal by years and China adhering to schedules, momentum is favoring Beijing.

Gwynn Shotwell says “We won’t be the problem”

“Don’t bet against American innovation,” SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell wrote on September 2, quote-tweeting Sean Duffy’s video hyping Artemis III. In late July 2025, outside SpaceX HQ in Hawthorne, Duffy reported that after meeting SpaceX leaders, Shotwell assured him Starship and the Human Landing System (HLS) variant are on track. She added that any Artemis III delays “won’t be because of them”.

Life on Mars… Will Stay on Mars

On September 10, NASA reported Perseverance found a possible biosignature in a Jezero Crater rock the previous year, hinting at ancient microbial activity. "…we're not saying that we found life, but we're saying that it really gives us something to chase," says Prof Sanjeev Gupta, who authored a study on the data. However, with a turbulent year for NASA's science budget, the estimated $11 billion sample-return mission — and confirmation of its findings — will have to wait.

Beijing Breathing Down Washington’s Neck

With major successful tests, such as the launch escape system in June, the lunar lander in August, and a static fire of the first-stage propulsion system just last week, China is going full throttle in its quest to land astronauts on the moon by 2030. The People's Republic is also planning a fully operational moon base, equipped with an autonomous nuclear reactor, as early as 2035. NASA's long-awaited Artemis Mars program, meanwhile, seems almost frozen in its tracks.

Roscosmos Needs Life Support

RSC Energia, Russia’s largest space manufacturer, is in complete meltdown according to its new chief, Igor Maltsev, who posted a doomy message internally on August 26. He warned they’ve reached "critical" state, buried under $2 billion debt, crippling loan interest, and ineffective processes that have tanked morale.

Maltsev ranted: “All major projects … have missed deadlines”, and to stop “lying to yourselves, and others” about true state of affairs. Maltsev was appointed just three months ago. This echoes wider problems with Russia’s space sector, which made just 17 orbital launch attempts in 2024, compared to 145 for the United States and 68 for China.

In reality, the Russian space program is chronically underfunded, and the war against Ukraine has only accelerated the depletion of talent and resources. Russia cannot afford new spacecraft and rockets when it needs munitions and men for the front lines.

Join, or Die

Last week, three of Europe's largest space players, Airbus, Leonardo, and Thales, announced that talks are advancing to consolidate their satellite divisions and create a new “single champion.” While executives expect an internal go/no-go decision as soon as this year, they cautioned that it could take up to two years to close the deal due to antitrust regulatory review.

If finalized, the deal would mark Europe’s most serious attempt yet to unify its fragmented space industry and mount stronger competition against American and Chinese rivals. With the bloc holding a pathetic >1% share of global launch (only 3 flights in 2024) and the UK Space Agency ceasing to exist as of last week, maintaining satellite relevance is critical, especially given the proximity of NATO build-up to the East.

That’s all for this week. Thank you for reading, and if you have not yet, please consider subscribing.

- David

Last updated: September 18, 2025

This article is a bird's-eye view of every rocket launch from 1957 to 2025. It contains a compilation of every rocket program in history, grouped by country and organization.

As of 2025, 12 countries and 1 inter-governmental organization (ESA) have achieved orbital launch. The USA, Russia, and China account for 88% of historical launch. When combined with the EU, Japan, and India, the number reaches 99%. All other countries represent less than 1% of the total.

USA

The USA's history of leadership in rocket launches has seen a period of Soviet dominance, followed by decades of American leadership, a brief period where China led between 2018 and 2022, and a recent return to US dominance.

Today, the United States is responsible for over 60% of reported global launches by count, nearly 90% by mass, and over 40% by revenue.

SpaceX

• Falcon 1 (retired 2009): 5 launches (3 failures)

• Falcon 9: 540 launches (3 failures)

• Falcon Heavy: 11 launches

• Starship (in-test): 10 launches (5 failed to achieve all major test objectives)

Today, SpaceX is responsible for over 50% of the world’s launches by count, and nearly 90% of the world’s reported launch volume (approximately 1.5 million kg to orbit in 2024).

Rocket Lab

• Electron: 70 launches (4 failures)

• HASTE: 3 launches

• Neutron: In development

While its launch cadence is remarkable, Electron is an ultra-small lift vehicle capable of 300 kg to LEO (compared to Falcon 9’s 18,500 kg to 22,800 kg). Neutron is targeting 13,000 kg. The company went public on the NASDAQ (RKLB) in 2021.

Blue Origin

• New Shepard: 34 launches (1 failure)

• New Glenn: 1 launch

New Shepard is a tourism vehicle capable of taking 6 crew members to suborbital heights. New Glenn’s maiden flight took place in early 2025 and has yet to achieve any reusability.

Firefly Aerospace

• Alpha: 6 launches (4 failures)

• Eclipse: In development with Northrop Grumman

Founded in 2014, Firefly restructured from Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2017 and completed its first launch in 2021. They listed on the NASDAQ (FLY) in the third quarter of 2025.

United Launch Alliance

• Delta IV (retired 2024): 45 launches

• Atlas V (retiring 2026): 106 launches

• Vulcan Centaur: 3 launches

Formed in 2006, ULA is a 50/50 consolidation of Boeing and Lockheed Martin’s space launch operations. It has since completed 161 launches with a 100% reported mission success rate, but has yet to achieve any reusability.

Northrop Grumman

• Pegasus (retired): 45 launches (5 failures)

• Minotaur Family: 30 launches (1 failure)

• Antares: 18 launches (1 failure)

• Eclipse: In development with Firefly Aerospace

Northrup’s Pegasus was the world's first privately developed launch vehicle to reach orbit. The corporation’s main customers are entities of the U.S. Government, particularly the Department of Defense and the intelligence community.

Boeing (Exited)

• Thor-Able (retired 1960): 16 launches (6 failures)

• Thor-Ablestar (retired 1965): 19 launches (7 failures)

• Thorad-Agena (retired 1972): 43 launches (3 failures)

• Thor-Burner (retired 1976): 26 launches (3 failures)

• Thor DSV-2U (retired 1980): 5 launches (1 failure)

• Thor-Delta (retired 1962): 5 launches (1 failure)

• Delta A (retired 1962): 2 launches

• Delta B (retired 1964): 9 launches (1 failure)

• Delta C (retired 1969): 13 launches (1 failure)

• Delta D (retired 1965): 2 launches

• Delta E (retired 1971): 23 launches

• Delta G (retired 1967): 2 launches

• Delta J (retired 1968): 1 launches

• Delta L (retired 1972): 2 launches (1 failure)

• Delta M (retired 1971): 13 launches (2 failures)

• Delta N (retired 1972): 9 launches (1 failure)

• Delta II (retired 2018): 155 launches (2 failures)

• Delta III (retired 2000): 3 launches (3 failures)

These programs include those developed by McDonnell Douglas, acquired by Boeing in 1997. In 2006, Boeing transferred its space business to ULA, a joint venture with Lockheed Martin.

Lockheed Martin (Exited)

• Vanguard (retired 1959): 11 launches (8 failures)

• Scout family (retired 1994): 120 launches (11 failures)

• Athena I (retired 2001): 4 launches (1 failure)

• Athena II (retired 1999): 3 launches (1 failure)

• Titan II GLV (retired 1966): 12 launches

• Titan 23G (retired 2003): 13 launches (1 failure)

• Titan IIIA (retired 1965): 4 launches (1 failure)

• Titan IIIB (retired 1987): 68 launches (6 failures)

• Titan IIIC (retired 1982): 36 launches (5 failures)

• Titan IIID (retired 1982): 22 launches

• Titan IIIE (retired 1977): 7 launches (1 failure)

• Titan 34D (retired 1989): 12 launches (3 failures)

• Commercial Titan III (retired 1992): 4 launches (1 failure)

• Titan IV (retired 2005): 39 launches (4 failures)

These programs include those developed by Glenn L. Martin Company and LTV Aerospace Corporation, merged and acquired by Lockheed Martin in 1995 and 1996 respectively. In 2006, Lockheed Martin transferred its space business to ULA, a joint venture with Boeing.

General Dynamics (Exited)

• Atlas B (retired 1959): 10 launches (4 failures)

• Atlas D (retired 1967): 135 launches (32 failures)

• Atlas-Able (retired 1960): 3 launches (3 failures)

• Atlas-Agena (retired 1978): 109 launches (16 failures)

• Atlas E/F (retired 1995): 65 launches (9 failures)

• Atlas H (retired 1987): 5 launches

• Atlas LV-3B (retired 1963): 9 launches (2 failures)

• Atlas SLV-3 (retired 1983): 63 launches (6 failures)

• Atlas-Centaur family (retired 2004): 197 launches (16 failures)

Convair Corporation began contract on America’s first ICBM (Atlas) before the company was acquired by General Dynamics in 1953. In 1962, the Atlas rocket was used to launch the first US astronaut (John Glenn) into orbit. In 1994, General Dynamics sold its space division to Lockheed Martin.

Chrysler (Exited)

• Juno I (retired 1959): 6 launches (3 failures)

• Juno II (retired 1961): 10 launches (6 failures)

• Sparta (retired 1967): 10 launches (1 failure)

Chrysler’s launch vehicles were direct descendants of the German V-2 rocket, developed by a team of German rocket engineers brought to the United States after WWII. In 1958, Juno I launched America's first satellite (Explorer 1) to orbit. After losing the Space Shuttle contract in 1975, Chrysler dissolved its space division.

NASA

• Saturn family (retired 1973): 32 launches (1 failure)

• Space Shuttle (retired 2011): 135 launches (2 failures)

• Space Launch System: 1 launch

Note: I’m using NASA as a generalization for large nationwide programs that utilize multiple prime contractors.

The SLS is the launch system for NASA’s Artemis program, built in partnership with Aerojet Rocketdyne, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and ULA. Made to be expendable, the cost per launch is exorbitantly high at over $4 billion.

Other mentions:

• Stoke Space – Founded in 2019 by former Blue Origin employees, Stoke has yet to launch. Their first rocket, Nova, will have a capacity of 3,000 kg to LEO, and is targeting orbit by 2026.

• Relativity Space – Founded in 2015 by a former Blue Origin employee, Relativity raised over $2 billion and attempted one launch (that failed) in 2023. In 2025, Google CEO Eric Schmidt stepped in to help the “absolutely cooked” company avert potential bankruptcy.

• Long Wall (ABL Space Systems) – Founded in 2017 by former SpaceX employees, ABL raised ~$500 million and attempted one launch (that failed) in 2023. In 2025, they rebranded to “Long Wall” to focus on developing hypersonic missile defense systems.

• Astra Space – Beginning as an aerospace R&D firm in 2005, former NASA CTO Chris Kemp reincorporated the firm as Astra Space in 2016. The company has launched 7 times, with 5 failures. Astra went public on the NASDAQ (ASTR) via a SPAC in 2021, but delisted in 2024 due to a struggling stock price. They are targeting 2026 for their next launch.

• Virgin Galactic – Founded in 2004 by billionaire Richard Branson for the purpose of space tourism, the company has completed 12 successful spaceflights to date. Although struggling financially, they are targeting the launch of their new Delta Class spacecraft in fall 2026.

• Virgin Orbit – The company was formed in 2017 as a spin-off of Virgin Galactic to develop the LauncherOne rocket, designed to deliver satellites to orbit. After listing on the NASDAQ (VORB) in 2021, the company suffered multiple failures and unable to raise funding, filled for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2023.

• SpinLaunch – Founded in 2014, SpinLaunch builds mass accelerators that use centrifugal force to launch payloads into space. They’ve completed suborbital tests up to 9 km high. Recently they’ve pivoted to building a satellite constellation (via traditional launch), alongside development of their accelerator technology.

• Space Services Inc. – In 1982, their Conestoga I rocket became the first privately funded rocket to reach space. They launched three times, with two failures, before running out of money. Today, they operate as a memorial company, purchasing payload on third-party commercial rockets for space burials.

China

Aside from the USA, China has the most active space program in the world. The China National Space Administration (CNSA) leads most missions, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) handles crewed flights, and the People's Liberation Army (PLA) oversees defense aspects. A few of their accomplishments include:

• One of four nations with a global navigation system (BeiDou).

• One of three nations with human spaceflight capability (taikonauts, 2003).

• One of two nations to land a Mars rover (Zhurong, 2021).

• Only nation to land on the far side of the Moon (Chang'e-4, 2019).

• Only nation with a space station (Tiangong, 2021).

In 2014, the Chinese government ended its state-owned monopoly on the space industry by issuing "Document 60," a policy that opened parts of the space sector to private investment. Today, China accounts for over 25% of global launch.

China Aerospace Science & Technology Corporation (CASC)

• Long March 1 (retired 1971): 2 launches

• Feng Bao 1 (retired 1981): 11 launches (4 failures)

• Long March 1D (retired 2002): 3 launches (1 failure)

• Long March 2 (retired 1974): 1 launch (1 failure)

• Long March 2A (retired 1978): 3 launches

• Long March 2C: 82 launches (2 failures)

• Long March 2D: 99 launches (1 failure)

• Long March 2E (retired 1995): 7 launches (3 failures)

• Long March 2F: 25 launches

• Long March 3 (retired 2000): 13 launches (3 failures)

• Long March 3A: 27 launches

• Long March 3B (retired 2012): 12 launches (2 failures)

• Long March 3B/E: 100 launches (2 failures)

• Long March 3C (retired 2016): 8 launches

• Long March 3C/E: 12 launches

• Long March 4A (retired 1990): 2 launches

• Long March 4B: 53 launches (1 failure)

• Long March 4C: 57 launches (2 failures)

• Kaituozhe-1 (retired 2003): 2 launches (2 failures)

• Kaituozhe-2 (retired 2017): 1 launch (1 failure)

• Long March 5: 8 launches (1 failure)

• Long March 5B: 7 launches

• Long March 6: 14 launches

• Long March 6A: 16 launches

• Long March 6C: 1 launch

• Long March 7: 10 launches

• Long March 7A: 11 launches (1 failure)

• Long March 8: 4 launches

• Long March 8A: 3 launches

• Long March 9: In development

• Long March 10: In development

• Long March 11: 17 launches

• Long March 12: 2 launches

CASC is a state-owned enterprise and the primary contractor for China's space program. They are responsible for 97% of all of China’s launches historically, but average 70% in recent years amid commercial growth.

ExPace

• Kuaizhou-1 (retired 2015): 2 launches

• Kuaizhou-1A: 31 launches (3 failures)

• Kuaizhou-1A Pro: 2 launches

• Kuaizhou-11: 3 launches (1 failure)

• Kuaizhou-21: In development

• Kuaizhou 31: In development

Founded in 2016, ExPace is a wholly owned subsidiary of CASIC (a state-owned company and the largest maker of missiles in China) and serves as its commercial rocket division.

i-Space

• Hyperbola-1S (retired 2018): 1 launch

• Hyperbola-1Z (retired 2018): 1 launch

• Hyperbola-1: 8 launches (4 failures)

• Hyperbola-2: In development

• Hyperbola-3: In development

Founded in 2016, i-Space (not to be confused with the Japanese company ispace) became the first private Chinese company to reach orbit in 2019.

Galactic Energy

• Ceres-1: 16 launches (1 failure)

• Ceres-1S: 5 launches

• Pallas-1: In development

• Ceres-2: In development

Founded in 2018 by two ex-CASC engineers, Galactic Energy's long-term objective is to mine asteroids for rare metals and minerals.

CAS Space

• Kinetica-1: 8 launches (1 failure)

• Kinetica-2: In development

• Kinetica-2H: In development

• Kinetica-3: In development

Founded in 2018, CAS Space is a commercial spin-off and majority-owned by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a state-owned institution and the world's largest research organization.

LandSpace

• Zhuque-1 (retired 2018): 1 launch (1 failure)

• Zhuque-2: 3 launches (1 failure)

• Zhuque-2E: 3 launches (1 failure)

• Zhuque-3: In development

Founded in 2015, LandSpace successfully launched the world's first methane-fueled rocket to orbit in 2023.

Other mentions:

• Deep Blue Aerospace – Founded in 2016, the company went viral selling two suborbital tourism seats via livestream, with plans for the maiden flight of its Nebula-1 rocket by mid-2025. However, recent satellite imagery revealed scorch marks from a failed test, likely delaying plans.

• Space Pioneer – Founded in 2019 by an ex-LandSpace CTO, the startup raised ~$500 million and, in 2023, became the first private Chinese company to reach orbit with a liquid-fueled rocket. In mid-2024, a “structural failure” during a routine static launch caused the vehicle to break free and explode.

• Space Epoch – Founded in 2019, the startup recently released a video of its VTVL test in mid-2025. They’ve announced ambitious partnerships, including point-to-point package delivery anywhere on Earth in <1 hour with Alibaba, and launch services for Shifang Xinglian's constellation of MEO satellites.

• Space Transportation – Founded in 2018, the suborbital tourism startup produces point-to-point space planes (reminiscent of Virgin Galactic) with the goal of “making commercial spaceflight and hypersonic travel a daily reality”. It is continuing testing and has yet to launch a crewed flight.

Russia

Russia's space program traces its roots to the Soviet Union's early dominance, marked by groundbreaking firsts before facing post-1991 economic hurdles and recent sanctions. A few accomplishments include:

• First satellite (Sputnik 1, 1957)

• First animal in orbit (the dog Laika, 1957)

• First human spaceflight (Yuri Gagarin, 1961)

• First woman in space (Valentina Tereshkova, 1963)

• First object to land on the Moon (Luna 2, 1959)

• First object to land on Mars (Mars 2, 1971)

• First space station (Salyut 1, 1971)

The Russian space industry had experienced multiple reorganizations. During the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the state-enforced consolidation of the space sector in 2013, global sanctions imposed in 2014 related to the Russo-Ukrainian War, and more severe sanctions in 2022.

Today, the launch sector is a state-owned enterprise run by Roscosmos. While some private firms exist, they operate under strict state supervision. In 1984, Russia accounted for 75% of the world’s launch. Today, that number is near 6%.

RKTs Progress (Roscosmos)

• Sputnik (retired 1958): 2 launches (1 failure)

• Sputnik-PS (retired 1958): 2 launches

• R-7 Semyorka (retired 1961): 27 launches (9 failures)

• R-7A Semyorka (retired 1967): 28 launches (3 failures)

• Luna (retired 1960): 9 launches (7 failures)

• Vostok-L (retired 1961): 4 launches (1 failure)

• Vostok-K (retired 1964): 13 launches (2 failures)

• Vostok-2 (retired 1967): 45 launches (5 failures)

• Vostok-2M (retired 1991): 93 launches (1 failure)

• Molniya (retired 1965): 40 launches (20 failures)

• Molniya-M (retired 2010): 297 launches (21 failures)

• Polyot (retired 1964): 2 launches

• Voskhod (retired 1976): 300 launches (13 failures)

• Soyuz/Vostok (retired 1966): 2 launches

• Soyuz (retired 1975): 30 launches (2 failures)

• Soyuz-L (retired 1971): 3 launches

• Soyuz-M (retired 1976): 8 launches

• Soyuz-U (retired 2017): 786 launches (22 failures)

• Soyuz-U2 (retired 1995): 72 launches

• Soyuz-FG (retired 2019): 70 launches (1 failure)

• Soyuz-2.1a: 76 launches (3 failures)

• Soyuz-2.1b: 80 launches (2 failures)

• Soyuz-2.1v: 13 launches (1 failure)

Founded in 1894 as a Moscow bicycle manufacturer, RKTs Progress was nationalized during WWI and shifted to aircraft (building over 25% of the Soviet air force), and later in the Cold War, pivoted to rockets. Now owned by Roscosmos, it produces the Soyuz vehicle, which has launched ~2,000 times, more than any other rocket family in the world.

Khrunichev (Roscosmos)

• Proton (retired 1966): 4 launches (1 failure)

• Proton-K (retired 2012): 311 launches (36 failures)

• Proton-M: 115 launches (11 failures)

• Angara 1.2: 5 launches (1 failure)

• Angara 1.2PP (retired 2014): 1 launch

• Angara A5: 5 launches (1 failure)

• Strela (retired 2014): 3 launches

• Rokot (retired 2019): 34 launches (3 failures)

Founded in 1916 as a Moscow automobile factory, Khrunichev pivoted to bombers in WWII, then missiles in 1959. It’s Proton rocket evolved to dominate 30% of the global launch market at one point in 2010.

Krasmash (Roscosmos)

• Kosmos (retired 1967): 38 launches (12 failures)

• Kosmos-1 (retired 1965): 8 launches (1 failure)

• Kosmos-3 (retired 1968): 6 launches (2 failures)

• Kosmos-3M (retired 2010): 444 launches (20 failures)

Krasmash began in 1932 as a home appliance manufacturer. Its Kosmos rocket ranked as the second most launched in history until Falcon 9 overtook it in late 2024. The recent 2016 State Defense Order caused the plant to pivot toward ICBM production.

Energia (Roscosmos)

• N1 (retired 1972): 4 launches (4 failures)

• Energia (retired 1988): 2 launches

Energia specializes in spacecraft rather than launch vehicles, having built the world’s first satellite and first human spacecraft. Today, it’s the leading contractor for Russia's human space program development, although recent reports cite debt, low morale, and bankruptcy risk.

Makeyev (Roscosmos)

• Shtil' (retired 2006): 2 launches

• Volna (retired 2005): 5 launches (3 failures)

Makeyev developed the world's first submarine-launched ballistic missile in 1955, and launched the first payload to orbit from a submerged submarine with their Shtil rocket in 1998.

Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology (Roscosmos)

• Start-1 (retired 2006): 7 launches (1 failure)

• Start-1M: In development

Founded in 1945 as a research institute for rocket propellants, MITT entered the launch business in 1993 to handle modifications for ICBMs repurposed as launch vehicles following the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

Other mentions:

• Success Rockets – Founded in 2020, SR Space is Russia’s first (and only) private launch startup. They are developing ultra-small, light-duty launch vehicles along with a range of space services. They are yet to conduct their first orbital flight.

Europe (ESA)

Following WWII, many scientists left Western Europe to work with the USA. In the months following the 1958 “Sputnik shock,” European scientists recognized that individual national projects could not compete with the two main superpowers and formed joint agencies, ELDO and ESRO, in 1964. But struggling from underfunding and diverging interests, the two agencies merged in 1975 to become the ESA.

Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine prompted Europe to sever ties with the Russian space program. The development of Ariane 6 was already experiencing delays, leaving Europe without a reliable means of launch. In response, capital markets flooded a wave of new space startups. Still, excessive bureaucracy and reports of “too much red tape” have restricted growth for many of these fledgling firms.

ESA

• Europa family (retired 1971): 10 launches (7 failures)

• Ariane 1 (retired 1986): 11 launches (2 failures)

• Ariane 2 (retired 1989): 6 launches (1 failure)

• Ariane 3 (retired 1989): 11 launches (2 failures)

• Ariane 4 (retired 2003): 116 launches (1 failure)

• Ariane 5 (retired 2023): 117 launches (5 failures)

• Ariane 6: 3 launches

• Ariane Next: In development

• Vega (retired 2024): 22 launches (2 failures)

• Vega C: 5 launches (1 failure)

• Vega E: In development

ELDO developed the Europa rocket before merging with the ESA. France led the development of the Ariane rockets, while Italy led the development of the Vega rocket. All ESA launches take place from French Guiana, South America.

Individual countries:

• Germany – In 1944, Von Braun's V-2 rocket became the first man-made object to reach space. Post-WWII West Germany's OTRAG rocket (1977-1983) ran 18 suborbital tests before being shutdown over "dual-use" political concerns. HyImpulse, RFA, and Isar Aerospace (all founded in 2018) are the country’s first private launch companies. None has yet reached space.

• France – The Diamant rocket program (1965-1975) flew 12 times (3 failures) before retiring. Latitude (founded 2020) and MaiaSpace (founded 2022) are the country’s first private launch companies since then. Neither has yet reached space.

• Italy – The San Marco program (1960s-1980s) successfully launched five Italian satellites via U.S. Scout rockets and training, making Italy the third nation to have independent launch capability. Avio, responsible for the Vega rocket family, is the only Italian company to reach space.

• UK – British launch began in 1957 with Skylark sounding rockets. The UK has reached orbit independently once, in 1971 (Black Arrow rocket), before canceling the program to opt for cheaper U.S. Scout rockets. Startups Orbex (founded 2015) and Skyrora (founded 2018) have emerged, but neither has reached space.

• Spain – Since 1966, the El Arenosillo launch site has launched 500+ sounding rockets. Spain has never achieved orbit, but startup PLD Space (founded 2011) has raised nearly $200 million and aims to change that in 2026.

• Norway – Since 1962, the Andøya sounding rocket range has launched 1,000+ missions. The range also hosted a spectacular failed orbital test by German firm Isar Aerospace in 2025.

• Sweden – Since 1966, the Esrange sounding rocket range has launched 600+ rockets. In 2025, the Swedish Space Corporation began developing orbital capabilities in a partnership with Firefly Aerospace.

• Turkey – In 2017, Turkey launched its first sounding rocket, and soon after, established its space agency in 2018. The country aims to send a lander to the Moon by 2026, via SpaceX Falcon 9.

Japan

Japan's space program struggled in its early days following WWII, due to armistice restrictions. Forbidden from developing offensive military technology, including missile guidance systems, the country focused on ultra-small, handmade, and manually-operated sounding rockets.

In the 1980s, Japan began using commercial satellites for security purposes, blurring the line between civilian and military space. The law was formally amended in 2008, expanding its scope to include national security and shifting its focus away from purely peaceful uses. A few accomplishments:

• First successful solar sail (IKAROS, 2010)

• First asteroid sample return (Hayabusa, 2010)

• One of two nations to return an asteroid sample

In 2003, Japan created the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) by merging its space agencies (ISAS, NAL, NASDA). JAXA runs all government space projects and supports its small, but growing, private sector.

JAXA

• S-Series sounding rockets: 160+ launches

• Lambda family (retired 1979): 25 launches (6 failures)

• Mu family (retired 2006): 30 launches (4 failures)

• N-I (retired 1982): 7 launches (1 failure)

• N-II (retired 1987): 8 launches

• H-I (retired 1992): 9 launches

• H-II family (retired 2025): 66 launches (3 failures)

• H3: 5 launches (1 failure)

• Epsilon: 6 launches (1 failure)

These programs include those developed by ISAS and NASDA, later merged into JAXA. In 2018, the SS-520 became the smallest rocket to achieve orbit. The 10 meter, 2,600 kg rocket cost ~$5 million and launched a 4 kg satellite payload.

Other mentions:

• Interstellar Technologies – Originally a hobbyist organization started in 1997, Interstellar became the first private Japanese company to reach space in 2019. It has performed 7 suborbital launches (4 failures), but has yet to reach orbit.

• Space One – Founded in 2018, the startup aims to launch 20 rockets annually by the late 2020s. Both attempts of its KAIROS launch vehicle in 2024 either exploded or lost control shortly after liftoff, but more are planned.

• Honda – In 2021, Japan's second-biggest carmaker announced a long-term strategy to “become a comprehensive mobility company”, including space transport. In 2025, they tested a prototype reusable rocket that flew to an altitude of 271.4 meters before landing vertically. The company aims for spaceflight by 2029.

India

India's space program began in 1962 with sounding rocket tests from a church in Thumba. Western technology transfers were denied due to geopolitical tensions and missile proliferation fears, so India partnered with the Soviet Union.

In 1975, the Soviets orbited India's first satellite and assisted its neighboring country in developing its own launch capabilities. In 1980, India launched their second satellite from its own soil.

India reached its 100th orbital rocket launch in 2025. It joins five nations with successful Moon landings and stands alone in landing on the lunar south pole.

ISRO

• Rohini sounding rockets: 1700+ launches

• SLV (retired 1983): 4 launches (2 failures)

• ASLV (retired 1994): 4 launches (3 failures)

• PSLV: 63 launches (4 failures)

• GSLV: 25 launches (6 failures)

• SSLV: 3 launches (1 failure)

• NGLV: In development

Founded in 1962, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is India's national space agency. In 2021, the government launched the Indian Space Association to open the space industry to the private sector and startups.

Other mentions:

• Skyroot Aerospace – Founded in 2018 by ex-ISRO engineers, Skyroot conducted India's first private suborbital launch in 2022.

• Agnikul Cosmos – Founded in 2017, Agnikul successfully flew the world's first single-piece 3D-printed rocket engine in 2024, during a suborbital test.

Other countries

Australia – In 2025, Gilmour Space Technologies attempted Australia's first sovereign orbital rocket launch, but it failed after 14 seconds of flight.

Canada – Reaction Dynamics (founded 2017) and NordSpace (founded 2022) are rapidly testing rockets, both aiming to achieve domestic orbital flight for the first time in the country's history as early as 2027.

Iran – Supported by Russia, China, and North Korea, Iran has built a capable launch program. Since its 2009 debut, the heavily sanctioned country has flown 11 successful orbital launches, most of which deployed military satellites.

Israel – Since 1988, Israel has consistently launched satellite payloads (via its Shavit rocket) to orbit every few years for a total of 13 times (2 failures). Due to the Gaza conflict, its most recent launch sparked brief public panic, mistaken for an incoming missile.

North Korea – Supported by the Soviet Union as early as the 1950s, the DPRK has attempted orbital launches 9 times, achieving success 3 times in 2012, 2016, and 2023.

South Korea – South Korea has conducted 6 orbital launch attempts, with 3 of them succeeding. Its first success occurred less than two months after North Korea's inaugural orbital achievement. Startups Innospace (founded 2017) and Perigee Aerospace (founded 2018) are rapidly testing, but have yet to reach orbit.

New Zealand – Founded by Sir Peter Beck in 2006, Rocket Lab became the first private Southern Hemisphere company to reach space with a 2009 sounding rocket launch. It restructured as a U.S. entity in 2013, with its original NZ operations remaining a subsidiary for key manufacturing and launches.

Ukraine – Before the 1991 Soviet collapse, Ukraine developed the Tsyklon rocket (8 launches, 1 failure). The Zenit rocket, also developed pre-collapse, had 84 launches total (13 failures), continuing before and after. Post-collapse, Ukraine created the Dnepr rocket (22 launches, 1 failure). The 2014 Russian invasion disrupted Russia-Ukraine cooperation, ending Ukrainian orbital rocket launches after the last Zenit in 2017.

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- David