美国安全与新兴技术中心2025美国太空发射市场研究报告美国视角下的航天优势保持策略英文版48页

Issue BriefFebruary 2025Shaping the U.S. Space Launch MarketExtending America’s AdvantageAuthors Michael O’Connor Kathleen CurleeCenter for Security and Emerging Technology | 1 Executive Summary While rocketry may be centuries old, orbital space launch began with Sputnik in 1957. In the following decade, fueled by government funding and motivated by the “Sputnik surprise,” American space launch had a burst of activity, with more than half a dozen companies attempting orbit.1 In the decades since, however, the number of companies responsible for space launches has ebbed and flowed. Following the early burst of activity, the number of launches and companies responsible for them decreased. By the mid-2000s, a single firm dominated the field: the United Launch Alliance. ULA was slowly displaced by then-upstart SpaceX, whose pace exploded starting around 2017. Recently, a handful of would-be competitors have shown the ability to achieve orbit, successfully launching commercial and governmen