Launch cost

In the early 2010s, a new phase of space launch market competition emerged in the space launch services market.

In the early decades of the Space Age—1950s–2000s—the government space agencies of the Soviet Union and United States pioneered space technology augmented by collaboration with affiliated design bureaus in the USSR and contracts with commercial companies in the US. All rocket designs were built explicitly for government purposes. The European Space Agency was formed in 1975, largely following the same model of space technology development, and other national space agencies—such as China's CNSA and India's ISRO— also financed the indigenous development of their own national designs.

Communications satellites were the principal non-government market. Although launch competition in the early years after 2010 occurred only in and amongst global commercial launch providers, the US market for military launches began to experience multi-provider competition in 2015, as the US government moved away from their previous monopoly arrangement with United Launch Alliance for military launches. By mid-2017, the results of this multi-year competitive pressure on launch prices was being observed in the actual numbers of launches achieved. With frequent recovery of first-stage boosters by SpaceX, "expendable missions are now a rare occurrence" for them.

Non-military commercial satellites began to be launched in volume in the 1970s and 1980s, but launch services were supplied exclusively with launch vehicles that had been originally developed for the various national military programs, with attendant higher cost structures.

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