Space Launch Market for Heavy Lift Vehicles

Charts and Data Set of Addressable Launches 2007–2018

by Bonnie L. Triezenberg, Jonathan Cham

In 2019, the U.S. Air Force (USAF) asked the RAND Corporation to independently analyze the heavy lift space launch market to assess how potential USAF decisions in the near term could affect domestic launch providers and the market in general. RAND's analysis was published as Assessing the Impact of U.S. Air Force National Security Space Launch Acquisition Decisions: An Independent Analysis of the Global Heavy Lift Launch Market. As part of their analysis, RAND researchers gathered open-source launch data that describes "addressable launches" of heavy lift vehicles -- the commercial portion of the launch market over which launch firms compete. This tool charts the size of the total heavy lift launch market, as well as the addressable launch market for heavy lift vehicles, and offers filters to examine launches by comparisons of interest (such as vehicle, geographic region, and others).

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This research was sponsored by the U.S. Air Force and conducted by the Force Modernization and Employment Program within RAND Project AIR FORCE.

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