Rocket Comparisons
Curated side-by-side matchups of the world's most important launch vehicles — payload, size, flight record and reusability, sourced from the Launch Library 2 database. Or build your own in the interactive compare tool.
China's Reusable Challengers vs Falcon 9
China's commercial launch startups are fielding a generation of reusable rockets explicitly modeled on — and aimed at — SpaceX's Falcon 9. These matchups compare each challenger with the benchmark.
Zhuque-3 vs Falcon 9
Zhuque-3 matches the Falcon 9's architecture and class on paper; what it still needs is what SpaceX spent a decade building — a working recovery record and a high flight rate.
Tianlong-3 vs Falcon 9
Tianlong-3 is the closest structural clone of the Falcon 9 outside the United States; its success depends on turning a turbulent test campaign into routine, repeatable recovery.
Nebula-1 vs Falcon 9
Nebula-1 targets the Falcon 9's reuse discipline rather than its size — a smaller, test-first program whose real comparison metric is landings, not tons to orbit.
Pallas-1 vs Falcon 9
Pallas-1 pairs China's most flight-proven commercial startup with the Falcon 9 playbook; watch whether Ceres-1's reliability carries over to a reusable kerolox vehicle.
Next-Generation Heavy Lift
The new super-heavy class: fully or partially reusable vehicles built for Moon programs and megaconstellations.
Starship vs New Glenn
Starship aims to rewrite launch economics with full reuse; New Glenn aims to be the dependable conventional alternative. Watch flight rates — that is where the bet gets settled.
Starship vs SLS
SLS is the proven, expensive present; Starship is the unproven, cheap future. Artemis needs both — which is exactly the program's political and technical tension.
US–China Head-to-Head
The backbone rockets of the world's two most active launch programs, side by side.
Falcon 9 vs Long March 5
Choose the metric that decides your mission: raw cadence and reuse economics (Falcon 9) or single-flight heavy payload for flagship deep-space missions (Long March 5).
Long March 10 vs SLS
SLS has flown and carries the Artemis manifest; the Long March 10 is the only other crewed-lunar rocket in serious development. The 2030 Moon race runs through this table.
Long March 5B vs Falcon Heavy
Same weight class, different worlds: the 5B exists to build a space station in LEO; the Falcon Heavy exists to throw mass at high energy — and to bring its boosters home.
Stablemates & Siblings
Comparisons within one manufacturer's own lineup — same DNA, different jobs.
Europe's Answer
How Europe's institutional launchers stack up against the commercial benchmark.
Falcon 9 vs Ariane 6
Ariane 6 wins on sovereign assurance, not economics — Europe pays a premium per launch to guarantee independent access to space while its reusable technology matures.
Ariane 5 vs Ariane 6
Ariane 5 was the world's most trusted launcher; Ariane 6 only has to be a cheaper one. The comparison shows how much the Falcon 9 changed what 'success' means for a European rocket.
Vulcan vs Ariane 6
Two government-backed flagships born of the same strategic need — assured access to space — diverging mainly on how far each looks toward a reusable future.
Classics & History
The matchups that defined earlier eras of spaceflight — and what they teach today's programs.
Saturn V vs N1
The Moon race in one line: conservative integration beat ambitious engine technology. The N1's engines later flew successfully in America — the system around them was what failed.
Soyuz 2.1a vs Electron
Soyuz is the refined endpoint of 20th-century expendable design; Electron is the small launcher re-imagined for the rideshare era — including partial reuse.
Starship vs Saturn V
The Saturn V proved what perfect expendable engineering achieves; Starship is betting the next half-century on the opposite idea. History's biggest rocket versus its biggest experiment.
Soyuz 2.1a vs Falcon 9
The most-flown rocket family of the 20th century against the one that will own the 21st: heritage and refinement on one side, reuse economics on the other.