Surveying The Launcher Market

V. Zakirov. (2021), JBIS, 74, pp.122-129

Refcode: 2021.74.122

Abstract:

At present, the commercial space transportation market is climbing. Launch activities rely on the number of spacecraft to be placed in orbit, and tend to demonstrate ripple behaviour. Because of the upcoming deployment of commercial remote sensing, navigation and internet-communication constellations a new steep raise in the launch activities is anticipated. To assess the situation CST has started a research project to assist in forecasting future launch activities. Historical launch data were collected along with the estimated spacecraft and launch costs. Based on the data, historical spacecraft and launch sales were approximated. The analysis revealed that during the last quarter of a century the global launcher fleet has been significantly renewed and the launcher market has demonstrated recurrent behaviour in number of launches and launch sales. For spacecraft and launchers there is the same marketing trend for the substitution of a large spacecraft and launcher with smaller commercial ones that leads to increase in number of launches and associated sales while the mass of spacecraft lofted to orbit does not change. At present the launcher market is in a transition period anticipating over a dozen new launchers joining the market in the next 10 years. The next 15 years will see an increase in launch activities, primarily in the United States, and then in the rest of the world.