- Key Takeaways
- Why Space Launch Cost Asymmetries Matter for National Power
- How the Study Measures Launch Economics
- The United States Converted Scale and Reuse Into a Cost Advantage
- Europe Is Paying for Autonomous Access
- China, India, Russia, and Japan Follow Different Economic Paths
- Strategic Dependence Reaches Beyond the Rocket
- Policy Choices Can Balance Cost, Resilience, and Sovereignty
- Summary
Key Takeaways
- U.S. 2025 launch costs in the study were less than one-third of Europe’s payload-weighted average.
- Reuse and high cadence can convert launch demand into lower average costs and greater market power.
- Strategic autonomy can preserve access, but domestic launch capacity may carry a sizable economic premium.
Why Space Launch Cost Asymmetries Matter for National Power
In 2025, Alessio Terzi and Francesco Nicoli estimate an average launch cost of $3,225 per kilogram for the United States and $9,897 per kilogram for Europe, measured in 2024 U.S. dollars and standardized to low Earth orbit. India stands at $13,302 per kilogram, Russia at $6,682, China at $5,809, and Japan at $5,287. Those space launch cost asymmetries form the central empirical result of Geopolitics and Space Access: Cost Asymmetries and Strategic Dependence, published online in Economics Letters on August 5, 2026. A subsequent Bennett School summary describes the research as evidence that unequal launch economics can produce strategic dependencies with economic and security consequences.
The study builds its country comparison from a database covering launch activity between 1960 and 2025. Its associated Mendeley dataset describes 6,740 launches across 16 geographic entities, including the United States, Russia, China, India, Europe, and Japan. Cost information was assembled from government material, academic research, and public documentation, then standardized to 2024 dollars on a low-Earth-orbit-equivalent basis. The purpose is broader than ranking individual rockets. The authors examine whether lower-cost access can compound into strategic advantage as countries deploy larger volumes of communications, Earth-observation, navigation, scientific, and security payloads.
Payload share makes the cost gap more consequential. The study finds that the U.S. share of yearly global payload fell below 20% around 2012, then rose beyond 82% in 2024 and remained near that level in 2025. Separate research from the same academic network estimates that SpaceX carried roughly 75% of global payload to orbit in 2025. That figure refers to payload mass rather than 75% of launch events. A small number of high-capacity missions can move far more mass than many small launches, so payload share and launch count measure different dimensions of market power.
That distinction changes the geopolitical interpretation. A nation can possess a domestic launch vehicle yet remain heavily dependent on a foreign provider because its own system costs more, flies less often, offers less capacity, or cannot provide enough mission slots. Terzi and Nicoli consider the possibility that concentrated foreign dependence could become bargaining power during a dispute. That is a prospective geopolitical risk, not evidence that the United States has already used commercial launch dependence for coercion.
The underlying issue is freedom of action. A government that cannot deploy replacement satellites quickly, affordably, and under its own political authority may face constraints even if it technically possesses a domestic launcher. Conversely, relying on allied or commercial launch providers can be economically rational when access is dependable and multiple alternatives exist. Space launch cost asymmetries become strategically significant when the cheapest service is also difficult to replace.
How the Study Measures Launch Economics
A cost-per-kilogram figure appears simple, but it compresses several assumptions about cost, payload capacity, launcher utilization, and mission comparison. The Economics Letters study uses payload-weighted averages and converts different launch systems to a common low-Earth-orbit-equivalent basis. Its companion study, From Sputnik to Starship, describes the underlying measure as a unit flyaway cost incorporating recurring manufacturing, engineering support, tooling, and quality-control expenses rather than the full historical research and development cost of creating a launch vehicle.
That distinction matters because an economic cost estimate is not the same as the price quoted to a satellite operator. Customers purchase launch services shaped by orbital destination, payload integration, schedule, mission assurance, deployment hardware, regulatory requirements, security needs, and contractual terms. New Space Economy’s examination of payload price sensitivity explains why dividing a vehicle’s public price by maximum payload capability can produce a useful comparison without representing the actual cost of a customer mission.
SpaceX provides a useful example. Its 2026 capabilities material lists a standard Falcon 9 launch price under its published payment plan, yet that commercial price cannot be substituted directly for the Terzi-Nicoli economic cost estimate. Rideshare pricing introduces another structure entirely. New Space Economy’s review of SpaceX rideshare pricing notes a 2026 advertised price of $350,000 for up to 50 kilograms to a sun-synchronous orbit, with additional mass charged separately. A dedicated launch, rideshare slot, modeled production cost, and national payload-weighted average answer different economic questions.
India illustrates another limitation of simple country rankings. The paper’s 2025 average of $13,302 per kilogram appears high beside the U.S. figure despite India’s reputation for economical space programs. Terzi and Nicoli attribute much of the difference to launcher size. Smaller rockets spread fixed mission costs across less payload mass, increasing the calculated cost per kilogram even when the absolute cost of the launch is comparatively modest.
Payload price also fails to capture some forms of customer value. A small dedicated launcher can provide schedule control, direct orbital insertion, mission confidentiality, responsive launch options, or independence from a larger vehicle’s primary payload. Those features can justify a higher price per kilogram for particular missions. National governments may make the same trade when assured access carries security value that does not appear in a commercial transport metric.
One methodological point deserves explicit qualification. The geopolitical paper and its associated Mendeley dataset describe 6,740 launches from 1960 through 2025. The related PNAS Nexus study describes a dataset of 4,405 launches over the same broad period and across 16 geographic entities. The public summaries do not provide enough information to establish why the counts differ, so the difference should not be explained by assumption. The experience-curve result can still be assessed on its own terms, but the difference between the two published dataset descriptions should remain visible.
The companion study estimates that global launch cost fell from roughly $87,000 per kilogram in 1960 to $3,868 per kilogram in 2025 in constant 2024 dollars. It also estimates an average 21.2% decline in cost for every doubling of cumulative payload over its long historical sample. The country-level Economics Letters paper then asks whether individual space powers followed comparable experience curves after 2010. Only the United States and Europe show statistically significant improvement in that period, with the U.S. curve substantially steeper.
The global improvement is partly a composition effect. As a growing fraction of payload shifted toward lower-cost U.S. launch services, the worldwide average fell even faster than the country-specific U.S. experience curve would suggest. Global launch economics are consequently affected by both improvements within launch systems and movement of customer demand toward the providers that already operate at lower cost.
The United States Converted Scale and Reuse Into a Cost Advantage
The present U.S. advantage did not emerge from an uninterrupted period of launch dominance. U.S. and Russian cumulative payload moved along broadly comparable paths through the early 2000s. The 2003 Columbia disaster interrupted Space Shuttle operations, and Shuttle retirement in 2011 left the United States without an immediate domestic replacement for several capabilities. U.S. launch activity accelerated later in the decade as Falcon 9 operations expanded, booster recovery became routine, and SpaceX began deploying the Starlink constellation at large scale.
Reuse changes the economics because recovered flight hardware can spread manufacturing value across multiple missions. Reuse by itself does not guarantee low cost. A recoverable vehicle that flies infrequently can still carry substantial fixed costs, and refurbishment can offset some savings. Falcon 9 combines booster recovery with high flight frequency, standardized hardware, multiple launch sites, government customers, commercial missions, rideshare payloads, crew flights, national-security missions, and SpaceX’s own constellation deployment. That combination provides the recurring demand needed to make reuse economically productive.
Government procurement contributed to that demand base before Falcon 9 reached its later cadence. NASA selected SpaceX under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program in 2006. NASA’s detailed COTS program history records $396 million in NASA investment in SpaceX development and demonstration activities, alongside approximately $454 million financed by SpaceX. NASA subsequently purchased cargo transportation services for the International Space Station, creating a pathway from development milestones to recurring institutional demand.
That procurement model did not guarantee SpaceX’s later commercial position. It did align government demand with private investment and commercial development. The combination allowed a new provider to demonstrate capabilities against funded milestones, develop operational experience, and compete for follow-on missions. Later government launch contracts, commercial satellite missions, crew transportation, and internal Starlink demand added substantially more volume.
Terzi and Nicoli’s comparison of Europe and the United States shows the resulting divergence. Their data indicate that the two regions had broadly similar average launch costs around 2012 and 2013. U.S. costs then declined sharply as Falcon 9 matured and reuse expanded, whereas European average costs remained comparatively flat for much of the 2010s. By 2025, the paper calculates that Europe’s payload-weighted average cost per kilogram exceeded the U.S. figure by more than three times.
Commercial price and production economics should still be separated. A provider does not have to pass every cost reduction directly to the customer. New Space Economy’s assessment of Falcon 9 cost claims examines the difference between theoretical cost per kilogram, advertised launch prices, internal costs, vehicle utilization, and the economics of reusable hardware. A company with a lower cost base and a strong competitive position can retain part of its efficiency as margin rather than translating every reduction into a lower list price.
That produces two forms of advantage. Lower operating cost allows more payload to be moved for a given level of expenditure. High cadence also creates operational experience, supplier volume, more opportunities to test improvements, and scheduling flexibility. Once those elements reinforce one another, a competitor must overcome more than a difference in rocket technology. It must develop a sufficiently large stream of missions to support comparable learning and utilization.
Europe Is Paying for Autonomous Access
Europe’s problem is not the absence of launch capability. Ariane 6 is operational, Vega-C has returned to flight, and Europe again possesses independent orbital access from the Guiana Space Centre. The economic problem is whether those systems can achieve enough cadence, efficiency, and commercial demand to narrow the space launch cost asymmetries documented by Terzi and Nicoli.
Ariane 5 retired in July 2023, and Ariane 6 made its inaugural flight on July 9, 2024. The transition temporarily exposed Europe to greater dependence on outside providers at a time when sovereign access had become more politically sensitive. By 2025 and 2026, Ariane 6 operations had begun moving toward a higher flight rate. On June 17, 2026, an Ariane 6 mission carried 36 Amazon Leo satellites, used the more powerful P160C boosters, and established a new payload-weight record for the European launcher.
As of August 21, 2026, the European Space Agency’s Ariane page lists the next Ariane 6 mission for August 27, 2026. The planned payload is the Meteosat Third Generation Imager 2, or MTG-I2, weather satellite. Because that launch remains scheduled rather than completed as of August 21, its future status should be distinguished from the completed June mission.
The policy response extends beyond operating Ariane 6. The European Commission’s Vision for the European Space Economy treats autonomous access to space as part of Europe’s freedom of action. The document supports aggregation of public launch demand, stronger use of European launch capabilities, competitive private launch services, infrastructure investment, and a more resilient industrial base.
ESA is pursuing the same objective through the European Launcher Challenge. More than €900 million has been earmarked for the initiative. Five launch companies entered the shortlisted group, and Orbital Express Launch withdrew after entering administration in February 2026, leaving four competitors: Isar Aerospace, MaiaSpace, PLD Space, and Rocket Factory Augsburg. ESA’s schedule calls for framework agreements during 2026, successful orbital service demonstrations by 2027, and capacity upgrades by 2028.
Reusable technology sits farther out on the development path. ESA’s Themis demonstrator is intended to advance European knowledge of reusable launch stages. On July 23, 2026, Themis completed a wet dress rehearsal at Esrange Space Center in Sweden using liquid nitrogen. As of August 21, ESA had not reported completion of the planned initial hop flight. The program has consequently reached a substantial ground-test milestone without yet demonstrating the operational reuse needed to affect commercial launch economics.
New Space Economy’s examination of European launch reusability describes the underlying policy tension. Europe needs reliable independent access during the years required to develop lower-cost reusable systems. Maintaining an expendable launcher provides sovereign capability, but that capability can carry an economic premium if flight rate remains far below that of the leading U.S. provider.
External policy research reaches a similar diagnosis from different directions. A Center for Strategic and International Studies analysis published in December 2025 argues that European investment has not yet eliminated structural dependence on U.S. capabilities. A July 2026 Belfer Center assessment focuses on procurement fragmentation, limited scale, finance, and institutional structure as barriers to producing a European company with SpaceX-like economics.
Europe is consequently paying for two objectives at once. It must sustain assured access with the systems available now and finance the technology, procurement changes, and commercial scale that could reduce the cost premium later. The policy value of sovereign access can justify expenditure above the lowest commercial price, but sustained autonomy becomes harder to finance if the premium remains permanently large.
China, India, Russia, and Japan Follow Different Economic Paths
China, India, Russia, and Japan should not be treated as a single group of non-U.S. launch providers. Their 2025 cost estimates range from Japan’s $5,287 per kilogram to India’s $13,302, with China at $5,809 and Russia at $6,682. Each figure reflects a different combination of vehicle architecture, payload mix, government demand, industrial organization, and launch cadence.
China is the clearest case in which the paper’s 2025 endpoint can change quickly. Terzi and Nicoli find that China reached about 27% of annual global payload in 2021, declined during subsequent years, and accelerated again in 2025. They also note that China has been developing several launch technologies rather than converging on one mature reusable architecture, which helps explain the absence of a statistically significant national cost-improvement curve in their 2010-2025 analysis.
An event after the paper’s data cutoff changes the technological context. On August 19, 2026 local time, LandSpace successfully landed the first stage of its Zhuque-3 rocket after an orbital launch, becoming the first Chinese private launch company to complete a ground landing of an orbital-class booster using that approach. The achievement demonstrates a recovery capability that Chinese commercial launch companies have been working toward for years.
A successful landing does not demonstrate Falcon 9-like economics. Economic reuse requires safe reflights, manageable refurbishment, reliable turnaround, sustained customer demand, and enough missions to spread fixed infrastructure costs. Zhuque-3 nevertheless makes the 2025 Chinese cost figure a historical measurement rather than a basis for assuming that China’s launch economics will remain unchanged.
India presents a different interpretation problem. The country’s high per-kilogram result does not establish that Indian space missions are inherently expensive. The paper associates the result partly with smaller launch vehicles and lower payload mass over which fixed costs are distributed. India may also value dedicated domestic access for institutional missions even where a larger foreign rideshare could offer a lower theoretical price per kilogram.
Russia’s position is shaped by fleet transition and industrial continuity. Terzi and Nicoli associate its weak recent experience curve with the phaseout of Proton and the slower-than-planned transition toward Angara, leaving substantial reliance on Soyuz-family launchers. Historical launch experience does not automatically produce falling cost when a vehicle family changes, flight rate declines, supply chains shift, or replacement systems do not reach the expected scale.
Japan’s situation has also changed during 2026. The H3 program is intended to provide Japan with a next-generation heavy-lift launch vehicle and preserve independent access after H-IIA. H3 Flight 8 failed in December 2025, prompting an investigation and corrective work. On August 11, 2026, JAXA successfully launched H3 Flight 9, carrying the QZS-7 navigation satellite and returning the vehicle to successful flight.
That sequence illustrates why one-year cost rankings need context. Reliability interruptions, transition between launch families, payload mix, development programs, and government mission requirements can alter the apparent economics from one period to the next. Strategic launch policy is shaped by the missions a country needs to guarantee and the industrial capabilities it wishes to preserve, not solely by its position in a global dollars-per-kilogram ranking.
Strategic Dependence Reaches Beyond the Rocket
A launch vehicle is a gateway to orbit, but national space power depends on the chain that follows launch. Satellites require ground stations, command and control, tracking, secure data networks, spectrum access, cybersecurity, replacement capacity, skilled personnel, manufacturing, finance, and regulatory authority. A country with an affordable domestic rocket can remain dependent on foreign technologies elsewhere in that chain. A country without a national launcher can retain substantial freedom of action if it has dependable access to several providers and controls the systems needed after deployment.
This broader view places the Terzi-Nicoli argument in proportion. The authors examine one strategically important dependency: physical transportation into orbit. Their reasoning is strongest for governments that need to deploy, replenish, or replace sensitive spacecraft and cannot assume that foreign launch capacity will always remain available on acceptable terms.
The European Union’s Space Strategy for Security and Defence treats the space domain as a connected system that includes spacecraft, launch infrastructure, ground infrastructure, radio-frequency links, terminals, cyber systems, industrial capabilities, and supporting services. Its emphasis on reducing strategic dependencies places launch access within a much broader resilience policy.
A March 2026 International Institute for Strategic Studies assessment identifies European dependencies in launch, intelligence and reconnaissance, missile warning, and high-end space-domain awareness. It also points to ground segments, command structures, and secure data exchange. Those requirements show why solving the launch-cost problem alone would not create comprehensive strategic autonomy.
Commercial concentration creates another form of exposure. When one provider carries a large fraction of global payload, customers benefit from high launch cadence, mature infrastructure, experienced personnel, and repeated hardware use. At the same time, they become more sensitive to that provider’s available capacity, prices, corporate decisions, launch failures, regulatory jurisdiction, and government relationships.
Concentration is not inherently equivalent to fragility. A high-cadence company can maintain multiple launch pads, substantial inventories, experienced teams, tested recovery operations, and a large mission pipeline. Those characteristics can make an individual provider highly resilient operationally. Strategic dependence emerges when customers cannot substitute another provider within the time, cost, security, or performance constraints of the mission.
New Space Economy’s analysis of national rocket programs describes why governments increasingly view domestic launch capacity as a form of strategic insurance. The economics resemble maintaining reserve capacity in other infrastructure sectors. Spare capability can look inefficient during normal conditions, yet it gains value if foreign access is interrupted by export controls, political disagreement, launch failure, war, supply-chain disruption, or competing demand.
The economic problem is determining how much insurance a state should purchase. Full duplication of every capability can consume funds that might produce greater strategic value when invested in satellites, ground infrastructure, secure networks, or replacement capacity. Minimal domestic capability may preserve engineering knowledge without providing enough capacity during a disruption. The wider the launch-cost gap becomes, the more expensive the trade between autonomy and efficiency can become.
Policy Choices Can Balance Cost, Resilience, and Sovereignty
Strategic autonomy does not require commercial isolation. A country can maintain allied launch relationships and still preserve domestic capacity for missions that cannot safely depend on foreign availability. The more practical objective is credible choice: enough national or allied capacity to avoid a single point of dependence, enough competition to restrain cost, and enough commercial flexibility to use lower-priced foreign capacity when political and security conditions permit it.
Procurement design strongly affects that outcome because launch economics improve through repeated use. If public agencies spread a limited mission pool across too many launch providers simply to keep every supplier alive, each provider may struggle to achieve the cadence needed to lower recurring costs. If governments concentrate nearly all demand on the lowest-cost incumbent, competing providers may never reach sufficient scale to become credible alternatives.
Europe’s present strategy reflects that tension. The European Commission supports aggregation of institutional launch demand and stronger European access, but ESA is also using the European Launcher Challenge to stimulate competition among emerging providers. That creates a deliberate attempt to preserve sovereign capacity without assuming that one state-supported vehicle should receive every mission.
Technology programs need the same connection to demand. Reusable stages can lower recurring cost when hardware is flown enough times to justify recovery systems, refurbishment facilities, testing, and operational complexity. Themis can demonstrate European technical capability, but its economic value will depend on what comes after the test program. Flight frequency, production design, turnaround, customer demand, and commercial pricing determine whether reusable hardware becomes an economical transport system.
Financing and industrial structure matter as much as propulsion. Launch businesses need access to engines, structures, avionics, software, test facilities, ranges, insurance, logistics, specialized labor, and patient capital. A technically successful rocket can still struggle commercially if there is insufficient demand to sustain production or if institutional procurement prevents providers from building predictable order books.
The United States faces a different concentration problem. The Terzi-Nicoli data portray an exceptional national cost advantage, but much of that advantage is associated with one company. NASA, national-security customers, and commercial operators have reasons to preserve competing launch options even when SpaceX offers attractive cadence and economics. Redundancy can impose higher short-term costs and still have value if an accident, fleet-wide technical problem, industrial disruption, or capacity shortage affects the dominant provider.
China is pursuing multiple vehicle families and reusable concepts, and the August 2026 Zhuque-3 landing demonstrates that at least one private Chinese company has reached an advanced recovery milestone. Whether that development translates into a steep national experience curve will depend on repeated flight and scale. India may gain more from increasing cadence and matching vehicle capacity to domestic demand than from copying another country’s architecture directly. Japan’s return of H3 to successful flight on August 11 reinforces the role of reliability and continuity in sovereign access. Russia faces a separate problem involving modernization, replacement vehicles, and sustainable production.
No country needs to reproduce the U.S. launch industry exactly to gain strategic resilience. The relevant test is whether the available launch system can support the nation’s expected mission demand at a financially sustainable cost and whether alternatives exist when the preferred system is unavailable.
The strongest contribution of Geopolitics and Space Access is its connection between affordability and freedom of action. Sovereign capacity that is too expensive to use at meaningful scale can become largely symbolic. Cheap access concentrated in a foreign provider can create a different form of vulnerability if replacement options are weak. Cost, capacity, competition, technological learning, and assured access consequently need to be treated as connected policy variables.
Summary
Terzi and Nicoli’s Geopolitics and Space Access: Cost Asymmetries and Strategic Dependence places measurable economic values beside a geopolitical problem that is often described more abstractly. Their 2025 estimates put the United States at $3,225 per kilogram to low Earth orbit on a standardized basis, compared with $9,897 for Europe, $5,809 for China, $6,682 for Russia, $5,287 for Japan, and $13,302 for India. Their research also shows an extraordinary concentration of payload in U.S. launch services, with related Cambridge research estimating that SpaceX carried roughly 75% of global payload in 2025.
The mechanism matters more than the ranking. High cadence, reusable hardware, large payload demand, government procurement, commercial customers, and SpaceX’s internally generated Starlink missions have reinforced one another. The resulting U.S. advantage is not simply a matter of possessing a technically reusable rocket. It reflects an industrial system capable of flying that rocket often enough for experience and asset reuse to affect cost.
Europe has restored autonomous orbital access with Ariane 6 and Vega-C but retains a substantial cost disadvantage in the study’s 2025 estimates. The June 17, 2026 Ariane 6 mission demonstrated increasing capability, and another Ariane 6 launch carrying MTG-I2 remains scheduled for August 27, 2026 as of August 21. European programs now combine current expendable launch capacity with competition, procurement reform, and experimental reusable systems such as Themis.
China has also changed the technical picture since the study’s 2025 cutoff. LandSpace’s successful Zhuque-3 booster landing on August 19, 2026 local time establishes a new Chinese recovery milestone. The result does not demonstrate low-cost reuse by itself, but it means the future Chinese cost curve cannot safely be inferred from the 2025 figure alone.
Japan provides another reminder that launch economics change through operational events. H3 Flight 8 failed in December 2025, and H3 Flight 9 returned the vehicle to successful flight on August 11, 2026. India’s high per-kilogram result requires qualification because smaller launch vehicles distribute fixed costs across less mass. Russia’s figure reflects a different mix of mature systems, fleet transition, and replacement challenges.
The methodology also deserves care. The study’s cost figures are standardized economic estimates rather than customer price quotes. Launch service prices depend on mission configuration, orbit, schedule, payload integration, and contractual arrangements. The publicly described dataset associated with the geopolitical paper contains 6,740 launches, whereas the related PNAS Nexus study describes 4,405 launches. The available public material does not establish the reason for that difference.
Space launch cost asymmetries matter because orbital capability accumulates. Lower-cost, high-frequency access makes it easier to replace satellites, deploy constellations, test new systems, support national-security missions, and sustain commercial activity. Repeated operations can generate more learning, greater supplier volume, and more opportunities for improvement.
The policy objective does not need to be complete national self-sufficiency. A stronger objective is the preservation of credible alternatives. A country that can choose among domestic, allied, and commercial launch options has more room to respond to price changes, political disputes, technical failures, or security emergencies than one dependent on a single provider.
Launch is also only one part of that calculation. Satellites, ground systems, communications links, data processing, cyber protection, industrial supply, workforce, finance, and command structures determine what a country can do after reaching orbit. An inexpensive rocket cannot compensate for dependence throughout the rest of the system.
The economic significance of the Terzi-Nicoli research lies in that connection between scale and strategic choice. Lower launch cost can support larger orbital capacity, and larger capacity can generate further operational learning. If competitors cannot reproduce enough of that cycle, the cost difference can become an industrial and geopolitical advantage rather than a simple pricing difference.