This study asks what a kilogram to orbit will cost in 2030 and 2035, who will supply it, and whether Europe can close its sovereign launch gap. It is written for satellite and constellation operators, launch companies and their suppliers, lenders, governments and space agencies, and industrial investors who need to understand the launch market's structure and its likely evolution. Figures are as of 21 October 2026 and are sourced in the text. Launch counts come from Setcoin's internal launch dataset (GCAT via the Setcoin space engine); SpaceX figures come from its 2026 registration statement. Where a number is Setcoin's own calculation, estimate or scenario, it is labelled as such and the arithmetic is shown.
The answer in brief
The price of launch is set by one company's cost curve and its choices about price, not by a competitive market.
The world attempted 329 orbital and deep-space launches in 2025, four times as many as in 2015. SpaceX flew 165 of them, half the world total, and by its own filing 122 of those carried its own Starlink satellites; only 43 were for external customers. Customer launch services brought SpaceX about $60 million per customer launch in 2025 (Setcoin calculation from its filing), a price that has barely moved in years while its internal cost fell sharply with booster reuse: 157 of its 165 launches used a flight-proven booster, and one booster has flown 37 times. SpaceX used the gap between cost and price to build the world's largest satellite constellation and to fund Starship, spending $3.0 billion on Starship research and development in 2025 alone.
Starship reached orbit with its first operational payload, 26 Starlink V3 satellites, on 28 September 2026. If it achieves routine full reuse at 100 tonnes, its cost per kilogram could fall below $100–200; its reported price for a dedicated launch is about $90 million, or $900 per kilogram. Whether customers see the cost fall depends on whether anyone can compete.
The challengers are late. Vulcan's solid boosters failed twice in four flights and national security launches were paused in 2026; New Glenn stranded a customer's satellite in April 2026; Neutron, Nova, Terran R and Eclipse had not flown by mid-October. China is the only other country where a company has landed an orbital booster (LandSpace's Zhuque-3, July and August 2026), but its rockets serve Chinese demand.
Europe has recovered sovereign access. Ariane 6 has succeeded on all nine flights since July 2024, Vega C on six in a row, and Isar Aerospace's Spectrum reached orbit in September 2026 as the first of the Launcher Challenge companies, which hold about €544 million of contracts signed in August 2026. On Setcoin's estimate, Europe pays a sovereignty premium of about €0.4–0.6 billion a year, affordable as a share of budgets but expensive per kilogram, and rising if Europe stays expendable while Starship matures.
Nine findings
- The open market is small. Of 329 launches in 2025, Setcoin estimates that only about 60–80 were open to competition among Western suppliers; the rest were captive (Starlink, Chinese and Russian state launches, national institutional missions).
- SpaceX's price has not fallen with its cost. Launch Services revenue per customer launch was about $59.5 million in 2023, $57.4 million in 2024 and $59.9 million in 2025; per customer kilogram, about $8,300 in 2025, three times the full-rocket figure usually quoted, because customer rockets fly part-full.
- Starship's ship recovery is the decisive step. With the ship expended, Starship's cost per kilogram is similar to a reused Falcon 9's; with both stages reused many times, it falls by an order of magnitude.
- Captive demand drives reuse economics. Every successful reusable programme has an anchor customer it controls; reuse turns rockets into fleet assets whose costs depend on utilisation.
- 2026–2028 is the tightest period for non-SpaceX Western launch, because challengers are late, Amazon Leo and the Space Development Agency need capacity, and US pads and ranges are constrained until 2027.
- From about 2029, Starship and a maturing second tier should create surplus heavy-lift capacity; whether prices fall toward cost depends on competition, not technology.
- Government demand is the floor under the rest of the industry: national security, NASA and sovereign European and Asian programmes pay most of the money that changes hands for launch and deliberately sustain several suppliers.
- Ground capacity is a strategic constraint. approvals now allow up to 100 Falcon launches a year at Vandenberg and up to 120 Starship launches a year from two Florida pads, but the pads will not be ready before 2027.
- Only competitive scenarios bring launch prices to the thresholds that commercial stations, lunar operations, orbital data centres and space-based solar power need by 2035.
Prices to 2035 at a glance (Setcoin base case)
| Segment | 2026 | 2030 | 2035 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Heavy lift, per kg of capacity | ~$900–1,500 | ~$600–1,000 | ~$300–600 |
| Medium lift, per kg of capacity | ~$3,400 | ~$2,500–3,500 | ~$1,500–2,500 |
| Rideshare, per kg of satellite | ~$7,000 | ~$3,000–5,000 | ~$1,500–3,000 |
| European medium lift, per kg of capacity | ~€8,000–10,000 | ~€6,000–8,000 | ~€3,000–6,000 |
Setcoin scenarios (Chapter 37); competitive and dominance scenarios differ by a factor of three to six in heavy lift by 2035.
Exhibit 1.2
Heavy-lift prices fall fastest; medium-lift and dedicated launch fall slowly
Customer price per kg to LEO, base case (Setcoin scenarios)
Heavy lift
$ per kg of capacity
Medium lift
$ per kg of capacity
Rideshare
$ per kg of satellite
European medium lift
€ per kg of capacity
Each panel has its own scale. Darker bars are later years; the darker segment marks the low end of a range.
How to read this study
Chapters 2 to 13 cover the history of launch prices, forty years of commercial launch competition, the market today from Setcoin's launch dataset, the anatomy of a launch price, reliability, SpaceX's launch business and accounts from its own filing, Falcon 9 reuse, Starship, Starship's other markets, heavy lift today and Starship cadence scenarios. Chapters 14 to 19 cover the challengers, small launch, Rocket Lab, China's launch industry and how it is financed, and Japan, India, Korea and Russia. Chapters 20 to 24 cover Europe: Ariane 6 and Vega C, inside an Ariane 6 launch, the Launcher Challenge, what sovereignty costs, and the industrial base and path to reuse. Chapters 25 to 28 cover spaceports and their economics, the economics of reuse and the engine and propulsion supply chain. Chapters 29 to 37 cover demand from constellations, satellite design, governments, national security launch, crew, responsive military launch and the Moon, the supply-demand balance and price scenarios. Chapters 38 to 42 cover transfer vehicles, rideshare, regulation and insurance, launch and the environment, and case studies. Chapter 43 sets out what the findings mean for different readers, Chapter 44 a due-diligence checklist and Chapter 45 the risk register, signals and method. Appendix A is a vehicle reference table, Appendix B a glossary and Appendix C the launch dataset.
Four interactive models accompany the study. a cost-per-kilogram stack, a cadence-capacity balance, a European sovereignty premium calculator and a constellation deployment-cost model. Each opens with the figures used in the text, and every input can be changed.
What would change this view
The central reading, that launch prices are set by one supplier's choices and will fall for customers only as fast as competition arrives, would change if a second company reached Falcon 9-like cadence with reusable rockets before 2029, if SpaceX published Starship prices close to its cost, or if Starship's ship recovery slipped well beyond 2028, which would keep the whole market on Falcon 9 economics into the 2030s.