Mass Value Report for June 2025

Is the space revolution slowing down, or just resting for a moment?

The revolution in spaceflight that we have been living through over the last few years appears in a bit of a lull at the moment. SpaceX have suffered a serious anomaly during a Starship static fire, on the heels of three test launches in a row that failed before achieving all their test objectives. Their competition - companies such as Blue Origin and Rocketlab - are moving slower than many hoped.

But this is just surface appearances - vehicles such as Starship, New Glenn and Neutron are now a question of “when” rather than “if”. Private space stations are finally going to start to appear, beginning with Vast launching their Haven 1 module this year, and Axiom following with their modules being sent to the ISS in a few years. Blue Origin are likely to launch their Blue Moon pathfinder this year (or early next year) as well. There is plenty more in the pipeline I have not mentioned here - so it would be a mistake to read too much into some temporary setbacks.

Meanwhile, I shall break down the current state of play in the launch market, between the two leading players.

SpaceX and China

Looking to the regular Falcon cadence model, this month I predict the yearly flights to be 166 (with standard deviation bounds from 143 to 189) down from 169 last month. This is looking consistent with SpaceX announcing a target of 170 flights.

If this pans out, then the increase on the 2024 flight rate will be 24% - compared with the 40% increase in flight rate between 2023 and 2024 and the 57% increase between 2022 and 2023. The growth is now looking more linear after having been exponential for some time.

Below I have compared the flight rates of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, with the Chinese Long March rockets that cover their payload range - the old workhorse Long March 3B, and the newer Long March 7, 5, and 5B. I have also plotted the rate at which new Falcon boosters make their debut: