Mass Value Report: 2025 Review

Whats the year looked like, and how have my predictions held up?

We come to the end of 2025, so its time to review the years events and look forward to what’s coming next year. This year has seen the first fully successful Moon landing of NASAs Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, when Blue Ghost touched down in March. It has seen the first all-female spaceflight since 1963 performed by a New Shepard flight in April, and the first human spaceflight to a polar orbit. We’ve also watched the dramatic nomination, withdrawal, renomination and appointment of a new NASA administrator.

The Starship program did not make as much progress as anticipated, suffering a string of failures, but ultimately did complete a test flight of the Block 2 vehicle. It is also notable that two Block 2 boosters were reused, and completed successful ascents. One was lost during recovery, during a test to maximise stress on the booster.

After one failed attempt Blue Origin became, after 10 years, only the second company to recover the booster of an orbital class booster.

On the heels of this, the company announced upgrades to the vehicle and a new, larger vehicle with more engines and a bigger payload fairing.

There have been two attempts at booster recovery in China, with two separate rockets, but neither of them succeeded. I’ll get into those programs below, but first we shall have a look at the scorecard for last years predictions, and see if I can do better this time.

Predictions

And the end of last year, I made the following predictions:

Falcon: 185 Flights
New Glenn: 6 flights
Starship: 12 flights (11 of which actually reach orbit, Flight 7 is not intended to)

All 3 of them were optimistic. Falcon has had 166 flights, New Glenn 2, and Starship has had 5, none of which reached orbit. So what happened? Why did I miss, and how shall I correct for this year?