As a host of blockbuster initial public offerings from SpaceX to Anthropic line up for launch, the global space trade is in focus as technology, AI, and geoeconomics converge at the apex of the superpower contest.

Part One of this Hinrich Foundation and Visual Capitalist series essayed the growing US-China competition for space launches in the Third Space Age, which scientists define as starting from 2016 to the present.

Launch sites, the focus of this second part of the series, are critical infrastructure that determine the efficiency, payload, and safety of space missions. Geographically large countries, naturally, have an edge in the spaceport race.

The US dominates the world in the Third Space Age, with 25 launch sites worldwide. It enabled the world’s leading space economy to make 1,191 successful launches since 2016.

But China is closing in with 17 sites. It has made 564 launches in the period, but Part One detailed how the country has steadily and consistently surged to close the gap with the US in the last decade. In this sector, as it is elsewhere, China’s rise is at the expense of Russia, which dominated the First Space Age but has made just 307 successful launches from 15 sites in the last 11 years.

Taking launch mass for the defense industry solely, China is closing the gap even more clearly. In the 2020-2024 period, China launched 230 metric tons successfully, compared with 250 metric tons launched from the US. In the 2005-2009 period, the two superpowers were much further apart, with the US launching 120 metric tons, three times China’s launch mass then, as our infographic shows.

Launch mass means the total combined mass of a fully fueled spacecraft including its most critical element: the payload. The propellant usually takes up 85% to 90% of a rocket’s launch mass. Hardware including engines, fuel tanks, and computers take up another significant fraction. The payload, usually satellites, scientific instruments, and/or astronauts, account for the rest.

Both China and the US each now surpass the launch mass for the rest of the world, which totaled just over 120 metric tons in the 2020-2024 period, according to data from the European Space Agency. Even among the rest of the world, launch sites in the last decade are heavily concentrated in countries geopolitically aligned with the US, including Australia, Israel, Japan, and New Zealand. The other three countries with launches in the period are Pakistan, Brazil, and South Korea.

The contest is as much geopolitical as it is for the space economy. The third part of this series will explore the critical materials and minerals that fuel the space trade, including beryllium for spacecraft structural and optical systems, rhenium for engine combustion and satellite thrusters, and rare gases for rocket launches and in-space navigation.

Watch this space.

Access The Space Trade, Part 1 here.
Access The Space Trade, Part 3 here.

Access the full infographic