The Global Race to Build the Next Great Rockets

The New Giants

We are living through the birth of a new Space Age, but this one is not just about flags and footprints. It’s about infrastructure, economics, and a fundamental rewiring of humanity’s access to the cosmos. For the first sixty years of spaceflight, launching anything to orbit was an extraordinarily expensive and rare event, reserved for superpowers and massive corporations. That is no longer the case.

Today, a significant shift is underway, driven by a new generation of colossal rockets. These “heavy-lift” and “super heavy-lift” launch vehicles are the physical foundation of 21st-century ambition. They are the machines that will build the next space stations, enable the return of astronauts to the Moon, and provide the national security umbrella for major world powers. They are the only vehicles capable of launching the massive hardware needed for a future lunar economy or the first human steps on Mars.

This is not a story about the future. It is happening now. As of late 2025, the global landscape for heavy launch is being completely remade. A “launcher crisis” that saw the retirement of legendary rockets has given way to a boom of new-generation vehicles. For the first time, a private company has successfully landed and recovered an orbital rocket booster, ending a monopoly held by SpaceX for over a decade.

A new race is on. The United States is betting on a commercial-led, public-private partnership, pushing revolutionary technologies like reusability and methane engines. China is in a direct, state-funded competition, methodically building its own versions of these same rockets to meet an ambitious 2030 lunar deadline.

This is the story of those new giants – the globally operational rockets of today, the behemoths in development, and the planned vehicles that will define the next fifty years in space.

What Makes a Rocket “Heavy Lift”?

Before we can compare these giant machines, it’s important to understand the language of rocketry. The aerospace industry doesn’t just build “big rockets”; it builds vehicles for specific “weight classes.” This classification system, primarily defined by NASA, isn’t based on the rocket’s own size, but on one simple metric: how much payload (the satellite, spacecraft, or cargo) it can carry to a standard destination.

That standard destination is Low Earth Orbit (LEO). LEO is the easiest place to “get to” in space. It’s an altitude of a few hundred kilometers, just above the drag of the atmosphere, where objects can circle the Earth in about 90 minutes. This is where the International Space Station and most Earth-observation satellites live. Because it’s the easiest orbit to reach, its payload capacity serves as the baseline for a rocket’s power, like a “0-60 mph” time for a car.

The rocket “weight classes” are generally defined as:

• Small-lift: Capable of lifting up to 2,000 kilograms (4,400 pounds) to LEO.
• Medium-lift: Capable of lifting between 2,000 and 20,000 kilograms (44,000 pounds) to LEO. This class is the workhorse of the industry, launching most commercial communications satellites.
• Heavy-lift (HLV): Capable of lifting between 20,000 and 50,000 kilograms (44,000 to 110,000 pounds) to LEO.
• Super heavy-lift (SHLLV): The most powerful class, capable of lifting anything more than 50,000 kilograms (110,000 pounds) to LEO.

Lifting cargo to LEO is one thing, but missions to higher-energy orbits are much more difficult. For example, a Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO) is a common destination for large communications satellites. This is an elliptical “parking orbit” where the satellite uses its own engine to circularize its path 35,786 kilometers (22,236 miles) high, at a point where it orbits at the same speed the Earth rotates, making it appear stationary in the sky.

Lifting a payload to GTO, or even further to a Trans-Lunar Injection (TLI) trajectory to send a spacecraft to the Moon, requires vastly more energy than a simple LEO delivery. A rocket that can lift 45,000 kg to LEO might only be able to send 13,000 kg to GTO. This is why the “heavy-lift” and “super heavy-lift” classes exist. They are the only vehicles with the power to perform these demanding missions.

The Old System Is Breaking

This rigid classification system worked well for decades, but it’s starting to break down in the modern era. The problem is that these “weight classes” were created for traditional, fully expendable rockets – vehicles where every piece is thrown away after a single use.

Today’s most prominent rockets, like SpaceX’s Falcon 9, are reusable. This forces a trade-off. The Falcon 9, for instance, is technically a “medium-lift” rocket. But if SpaceX chooses not to recover the first-stage booster and instead uses all its fuel to maximize performance, the Falcon 9 can lift over 20,000 kg, pushing it into the “heavy-lift” category.

This reveals a new truth about modern rocketry: a rocket’s capability is no longer a single number. It’s a sliding scale based on economics. The 20,000 kg “heavy-lift” line is still a useful benchmark, but the real story is in the trade-off between payload mass and launch cost. The old system defined capability, but the new one is defined by economics.

A Strategic, Not Just Technical, Designator

That 20,000-kilogram threshold isn’t arbitrary. It’s the minimum payload capacity needed to launch the most valuable and sensitive assets a nation possesses.

The public sector – governments, militaries, and national space agencies – is the primary customer for heavy- and super heavy-lift rockets. A nation’s inability to launch its largest national security satellites is considered a direct threat to its defense. These satellites, which can be the size of a school bus and weigh over 15,000 kg, are the eyes, ears, and communications backbone of a modern military.

This is also the threshold for launching “monolithic” pieces of space infrastructure, like the core modules of a space station or the largest deep-space telescopes.

This means that “heavy-lift” is more than a technical term; it’s a strategic one. A nation that lacks a domestic heavy-lift capability is cut off from true autonomy in space. It cannot guarantee access for its own military, and it cannot build its own large-scale infrastructure without relying on another country. This is the central reason why China, Europe, Russia, and the United States are all locked in a race to build and maintain these new giant rockets. It is a non-negotiable tool of 21st-century statecraft.

The Current Fleet: The Proven Workhorses

As of late 2025, the global fleet of operational heavy-lift rockets is in a state of significant transition. Several of the most reliable and powerful rockets in history have been recently retired, creating a “launcher crisis” and a capability gap that new vehicles are only just beginning to fill.

The Old Guard’s Sunset

It’s impossible to discuss the current fleet without first acknowledging the giants who just left the stage. For over a decade, the workhorse of the US national security launch program was the Delta IV Heavy. Operated by United Launch Alliance (ULA), this triple-core rocket was the only vehicle certified to launch the largest and most secret payloads for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). After 16 historic flights, the Delta IV Heavy launched its final mission, NROL-70, on April 9, 2024, and is now retired.

Similarly, Europe’s reliable Ariane 5, which launched 117 times and was the primary vehicle for the European Space Agency (ESA), also flew its final mission. And Japan’s H-IIB rocket, which was exclusively used to launch the HTV cargo vehicle to the International Space Station, was retired in 2020.

The simultaneous retirement of these vehicles created a significant power vacuum in the Western launch market. For a time, it left the West with only one operational heavy-lifter, forcing some European government missions to “reluctantly” fly on American rockets from SpaceX. This “crisis” is what spurred the urgent development of the new rockets that are only now, in 2025, coming online.

SpaceX Falcon Heavy

With the retirement of the Delta IV Heavy, the SpaceX Falcon Heavy is, as of late 2025, the most powerful operational rocket in the world and the undisputed king of the heavy-lift market.

The Falcon Heavy is a marvel of engineering, and a perfect example of SpaceX’s iterative design. It is, quite literally, three Falcon 9 first-stage cores strapped together, giving it a combined total of 27 Merlin engines on its first stage. These engines burn a refined kerosene (RP-1) and liquid oxygen (LOX).

• Class: Super Heavy-Lift
• Payload to LEO: 63,800 kilograms (140,700 pounds)
• Reusability: The Falcon Heavy is partially reusable. In a typical mission profile, the two outer “side boosters” separate, perform a flip, and fly back to land at Cape Canaveral. The central core, which burns for longer and travels much faster, is often expended to give the payload the maximum possible speed, though it is also capable of landing on a droneship.

Since its dramatic debut flight in 2018, which famously launched Elon Musk’s cherry-red Tesla Roadster into an orbit beyond Mars, the Falcon Heavy has flown 11 times. It has become the go-to rocket for the most demanding missions on the US government’s manifest. It is certified for the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program, flying top-secret payloads for the U.S. Space Force. It’s also the rocket NASA uses for its highest-priority science missions, such as the Psyche asteroid mission and the Europa Clipper, which launched in October 2024 to explore Jupiter’s icy moon.

China’s Long March 5

The Long March 5 (CZ-5) is the current heavy-lift workhorse of China’s national space program. This rocket is the foundational vehicle for all of China’s ambitious deep-space and human spaceflight goals. It is operated by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), the state-owned main contractor for the Chinese space program.

• Class: Heavy-Lift
• Payload to LEO: Approximately 25,000 kilograms (55,000 pounds)
• Payload to GTO: 14,000 kilograms (31,000 pounds)
• Reusability: The Long March 5 is fully expendable.

Unlike its Western counterparts, which often settle on one propellant combination, the Long March 5 is a technically sophisticated vehicle that uses three different types of engines. Its large 5-meter-diameter core stage is powered by two advanced YF-77 engines that burn liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Strapped to its side are four large boosters, each powered by two YF-100 engines that burn kerosene (RP-1) and liquid oxygen.

This rocket is China’s gateway to the solar system. After a failure on its second flight, it returned to service and has built an impressive record of 15 successful launches out of 16 flights. It was the Long March 5 that launched the Tiangong space station modules, the Chang’e lunar sample-return missions, and the Tianwen-1 mission, which successfully placed an orbiter and rover on Mars. With a recent successful launch of a communications satellite in October 2025, the Long March 5 remains the backbone of China’s autonomous access to space.

Russia’s Fading Fleet (Proton & Angara)

Russia’s heavy-lift capability is in the midst of a prolonged and difficult transition. For decades, its workhorse was the Proton-M rocket. A derivative of a Cold War-era design, the Proton is a powerful and proven launcher, capable of lifting 23,000 kg to LEO. However, it has two major problems: it is built in Kazakhstan, not Russia, and it uses highly toxic hypergolic propellants (nitrogen tetroxide and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine), which are a significant environmental and safety hazard.

The Proton is being phased out. Its last confirmed flight was in March 2023, and its 2025 schedule has been ambiguous, with some planned launches postponed indefinitely.

The intended replacement is the Angara A5. This is a new, modular rocket designed to be Russia’s primary heavy-lifter and to be launched from Russian soil at the Vostochny and Plesetsk Cosmodromes. It is a “cleaner” rocket, using kerosene (RP-1) and liquid oxygen. Its payload capacity is similar to the Proton, at around 23,000 kg to LEO.

After many years of development and test flights, the Angara A5 finally flew its “first operational launch” in June 2025, carrying a classified military payload. As of late 2025, the Angara A5 is technically operational, but with only a single such flight, it has not yet achieved the status of a proven, reliable workhorse. For now, Russia’s heavy-lift program is heavily reliant on a new and unproven vehicle, having all but retired its old one.

The New Guard: The Class of 2024-2025

The capability gap left by the retirement of the Delta IV Heavy and Ariane 5 has been, and is being, filled. 2024 and 2025 will be remembered as the years a new generation of heavy-lift rockets finally took flight, completely reshaping the commercial and government launch markets.

United Launch Alliance: The New Vulcan

For decades, United Launch Alliance (ULA) dominated US government launches with its two legendary rockets, the Atlas V and the Delta IV. But these rockets were expensive, and the Atlas V relied on a Russian-made engine. ULA’s replacement for both is the Vulcan Centaur.

The Vulcan is a next-generation rocket designed to be more capable and cost-effective, and it is fully American-made.

• Class: Heavy-Lift
• Payload to LEO: 27,200 kilograms (60,000 pounds)
• Reusability: The Vulcan is initially expendable, but ULA is actively developing a partial-reusability concept called “SMART Reuse,” which will attempt to recover just the first-stage engines – the most expensive part – for refurbishment and reuse.

The Vulcan’s first stage is powered by two BE-4 methane engines built by Blue Origin. This is a significant technological shift, as it’s one of the first major American rockets to use methane as a fuel. It also uses the high-energy Centaur V upper stage, a powerful and flight-proven system that gives it the ability to precisely deliver payloads to high-energy orbits. Like the Atlas, its performance can be augmented by strapping on two, four, or six solid rocket boosters (SRBs) to meet different mission requirements.

The Vulcan is now fully operational. Its successful maiden flight, carrying a commercial lunar lander, took place in January 2024. After two more successful flights by August 2025, the Vulcan achieved its most important milestone: in March 2025, it was officially certified for the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program. This was a major event for the US government. It ensures “assured access to space” by providing a second, independent, and certified launch provider for the military’s most sensitive satellites, breaking the monopoly that SpaceX’s Falcon rockets had held in the heavy-lift sector since the Delta IV’s retirement.

Blue Origin: The New Glenn Arrives

For more than a decade, Blue Origin, the “silent giant” space company founded by Jeff Bezos, has been methodically developing its heavy-lift rocket. Its company motto is “Gradatim Ferociter” – Step by step, boldly. In 2025, that patient, methodical approach has been spectacularly validated.

The New Glenn rocket, named for John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, is a monster. It is a two-stage, partially reusable rocket that stands 98 meters (321 feet) tall.

• Class: Heavy-Lift (at the very top of its class, bordering on super-heavy)
• Payload to LEO: 45,000 kilograms (99,000 pounds)
• Payload to GTO: 13,600 kilograms (30,000 pounds)
• Reusability: The first stage is designed to be fully reusable.

The New Glenn is powered by seven of the same BE-4 methane engines that ULA’s Vulcan uses on its first stage, and its massive 7-meter (23-foot) diameter payload fairing offers more cargo volume than any other rocket currently on the market.

After years of development, New Glenn took its maiden flight on January 16, 2025. Then, on November 13, 2025, the rocket had a watershed moment for the entire space industry. On only its second-ever flight, New Glenn successfully launched NASA’s twin ESCAPADE space probes on the first leg of their journey to Mars. Then, minutes later, its first-stage booster descended from the edge of space and performed a perfect propulsive landing on the company’s ocean-based recovery platform, Jacklyn.

For over a decade, SpaceX was the only company in the world that could propulsively land and recover orbital-class rocket boosters. On November 13, 2025, that monopoly ended. The landing proved that rocket reusability is not a “SpaceX-only” fluke, but the new, replicable standard for next-generation heavy-lift rocketry. It was a stunning validation of Blue Origin’s “step by step, boldly” philosophy and instantly established New Glenn as a serious, A-list competitor in the global launch market.

Europe’s Ariane 6: A New Generation for Arianespace

Europe’s answer to its “launcher crisis” is the Ariane 6. Developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and operated by Arianespace, the Ariane 6 is not designed to be a revolutionary, reusable, methane-powered rocket. Instead, it was designed to do one thing: ensure that Europe maintains its own, independent access to space for its government, scientific, and commercial payloads.

• Class: Heavy-Lift (in its A64 configuration)
• Payload to LEO (A64): 21,650 kilograms (47,730 pounds)
• Reusability: The Ariane 6 is fully expendable.

The rocket comes in two versions: the Ariane 62 (A62), with two P120C solid rocket boosters, and the Ariane 64 (A64), with four boosters. The core stage is powered by a liquid-fueled Vulcain 2.1 engine, which burns liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen – a technology Europe has mastered with the Ariane 5.

The Ariane 6 is now operational. Its first flight took place on July 9, 2024. As of November 2025, it has flown four times, including the successful launch of the Copernicus Sentinel-1D satellite. The Ariane 6 has already secured a healthy manifest of over 30 booked flights, including 18 launches for Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellite constellation.

This “Class of 2025” highlights a major strategic gamble. The new American rockets, Vulcan and New Glenn, are commercial, methane-powered, and designed for reusability. The new European rocket, Ariane 6, is state-backed, hydrogen-powered, and expendable. Europe has bet that for its institutional customers, guaranteed autonomy and proven (if older) technology are more important than the potential cost savings of reusability. The American market has bet the opposite. The next few years of commercial contracts will determine which philosophy was correct.

Beyond the vehicles that are operational today, the United States is in the active test-flight phase of two behemoth rockets that are poised to completely redefine the entire concept of space launch. These are the super heavy-lifters.

SpaceX’s Starship: The Reusability Revolution

It is impossible to overstate what SpaceX is attempting with its Starship program. This is not just a new rocket; it’s an attempt to create a new paradigm for spaceflight. Starship is a two-stage, fully reusable, super heavy-lift launch vehicle designed to be the successor to both the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy.

The vehicle is enormous, standing 123 meters (403 feet) tall when its two stages are stacked. The entire structure is built primarily from stainless steel, a design choice that is both radical and cost-effective. It is powered by SpaceX’s next-generation Raptor engines, which burn liquid methane and liquid oxygen. The Super Heavy booster (the first stage) uses 33 of these engines, while the Starship spacecraft (the upper stage) uses six.

• Class: Super Heavy-Lift
• Payload to LEO: Approximately 100,000 to 150,000 kilograms (220,000 to 330,000 pounds) in a fully reusable configuration. It is designed to lift up to 250,000 kg if expended.
• Reusability: Full, rapid reusability. Both the Super Heavy booster and the Starship upper stage are designed to fly back to the launch pad, land propulsively, be refueled, and fly again in a matter of hours.

As of late 2025, Starship is firmly in its active development phase. SpaceX is following its signature development philosophy: “rapidly testing and learning from mistakes, not fearing failure.” This involves building many prototypes and flying them hard.

Since its first integrated test flight in April 2023, the Starship/Super Heavy stack has flown 11 times from the company’s “Starbase” facility in Texas. This public, high-octane test campaign has been a mix of 6 successes and 5 dramatic, explosive failures. This “break it fast” method, while chaotic, allows for an incredibly rapid development pace. Development of the next “Block 3” version is underway, though timelines remain highly fluid.

The ultimate purpose of Starship, according to SpaceX, is to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, and, most importantly, to enable the colonization of Mars.

However, Starship’s most immediate and high-profile job comes from NASA. In a decision that changed the landscape of human exploration, NASA selected Starship to serve as the Human Landing System (HLS) for its Artemis program. This means that after American astronauts launch to lunar orbit on NASA’s own SLS rocket, they will transfer to a waiting, specialized Starship lander, which will then carry them down to the surface of the Moon.

The Two Competing American Philosophies

The American launch industry in late 2025 is defined by a fascinating contrast in development philosophies, personified by its two billionaire-funded companies.

On one side is Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Its development is public, rapid, and explosive. It flies, it fails, it learns, and it flies again, all in the open. The failures of the Starship program are seen as just another data point on the path to success.

On the other side is Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, the “silent giant.” Its development is private, patient, and methodical. Its motto is the opposite of “move fast and break things.” It’s “Gradatim Ferociter” – step by step, boldly. For years, this “slow” approach was seen as a sign of being hopelessly behind.

The events of 2025 have shown that both models can work. While SpaceX’s Starship program experienced multiple high-profile failures, Blue Origin’s New Glenn stuck the landing on only its second-ever flight, entering service with a near-perfect record. This contrast proves there isn’t one single way to build these new, giant rockets. Musk’s “break it fast” method got the Falcon 9 and its reusability to market first. But Bezos’s “perfect it first” method has resulted in a rocket that has immediately established itself as a credible and reliable competitor. The race is now truly on.

The Government Foundation: NASA’s Space Launch System

While commercial companies race to build the next generation of rockets, there is one super heavy-lift rocket in the world that is owned and operated by a government, not a company. This is NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS).

The SLS is the foundational rocket of NASA’s Artemis program, which is designed to return humans to the Moon for the first time in over fifty years. It is a government-designed, government-owned vehicle built on cost-plus contracts by legacy aerospace companies like Boeing and Northrop Grumman.

• Class: Super Heavy-Lift
• Payload to LEO (Block 1): 95,000 kilograms (209,000 pounds)
• Payload to TLI (Block 1): 27,000 kilograms (60,000 pounds)
• Reusability: The SLS is fully expendable.

The design of the SLS is a direct descendant of the Space Shuttle. Its massive, orange core stage is powered by four RS-25 engines – the very same model of liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen engines that powered the Space Shuttle orbiters for thirty years. The engines used on the first few SLS flights are, in fact, the actual, refurbished, flight-proven engines from the Shuttle program.

The core stage engines, while powerful, provide only a fraction of the liftoff thrust. The majority of the power comes from two enormous, five-segment Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs), which are larger, more powerful versions of the boosters used by the Shuttle.

The SLS is the only rocket currently flying that is designed to send the Orion crew capsule, four astronauts, and its large service module directly to the Moon on a single launch.

The SLS is currently active. It has one historic flight on its record: the uncrewed Artemis I mission, which launched on November 16, 2022. That mission was a flawless success, sending the Orion spacecraft on a 25-day journey around the Moon and back, proving the vehicle was ready for astronauts.

The next flight, Artemis II, is planned for early 2026 and will be the first crewed flight of the system, sending four astronauts on a similar lunar-flyby mission. The SLS is designed to evolve. Future missions, starting with Artemis IV, will use an upgraded Block 1B configuration. This version will feature a much more powerful, four-engine Exploration Upper Stage (EUS), allowing it to send even heavier cargo to the Moon alongside the crew. A final, more powerful Block 2 with upgraded boosters is planned for later in the 2030s.

NASA’s Two-Rocket Gamble

This puts NASA in a unique and somewhat precarious position. It is simultaneously building its own super-heavy rocket (SLS) while funding its commercial replacement (Starship) to be the official lunar lander. The Artemis architecture requires both.

This is a high-stakes gamble that hedges two different philosophies. The SLS represents the “old-school” way of doing business: a government-designed and -owned vehicle, built on massive contracts. It is reliable and politically protected, but it is also enormously expensive, with a per-launch cost of over $2 billion.

Starship represents the “new-school” way: a commercially developed, high-risk, high-reward system that is (theoretically) very cheap.

NASA’s plan is to launch its astronauts on the “safe” and proven SLS-Orion, which acts as their “lifeboat” in lunar orbit. They will then transfer to the “risky” but capable Starship HLS to perform the actual lunar landing. This dual-path strategy reveals NASA’s core dilemma: it must maintain the political and industrial base that supports the SLS program while simultaneously embracing the disruptive, commercial-led future that Starship represents. The success of America’s return to the Moon now depends entirely on both of these opposing philosophies working together perfectly.

National Ambition: The State-Led Challengers

The new space race is not just a commercial competition. It is a geopolitical one. While the US has embraced a public-private model, its chief rival, China, is pursuing an aggressive, state-funded, and methodically executed plan to become a dominant space-faring power.

China’s Methodical Leap to the Moon

China has a clear and public-facing goal: land its astronauts, or “taikonauts,” on the Moon by 2030. To achieve this, it is not building just one new rocket; it is building two distinct super heavy-lift rockets, in a two-pronged approach that perfectly mirrors the dual strategy of the United States.

1. Long March 10 (CZ-10): The Crew Launcher (SLS Competitor)

This is China’s “taikonaut-launcher.” It is a super heavy-lift rocket being developed specifically for the purpose of launching China’s new crewed lunar spacecraft, Mengzhou, and its lunar lander, Lanyue.

• Class: Super Heavy-Lift
• Payload to LEO: ~70,000 kilograms
• Payload to TLI: 27,000 kilograms (60,000 pounds)

The Long March 10 uses a more traditional kerosene (RP-1) and liquid oxygen propellant for its 21 first-stage and booster engines, with a high-efficiency liquid hydrogen upper stage for the final push to the Moon.

China’s lunar mission plan is a “dual-launch” architecture. One Long March 10 will launch the Lanyue lander to lunar orbit. A second Long March 10 will then launch the Mengzhou crew capsule. The two spacecraft will rendezvous and dock in lunar orbit, and the taikonauts will transfer to the lander to descend to the Moon’s surface.

Development of this rocket is moving at a breakneck pace. Key ground tests of its complex multi-engine propulsion system were successfully completed in 2025.

2. Long March 9 (CZ-9): The Infrastructure Builder (Starship Competitor)

While the Long March 10 is for sending people, the Long March 9 is China’s behemoth, designed to send the infrastructure. This is the rocket China will use to build its planned International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) – a permanent, robotic, and later crewed, base on the Moon’s south pole. It is also the vehicle intended for future crewed missions to Mars.

• Class: Super Heavy-Lift
• Payload to LEO: ~150,000 kilograms (330,000 pounds)
• Payload to TLI: ~54,000 kilograms (119,000 pounds)

The specifications of the Long March 9 reveal a stunning technological pivot. China has adopted the Starship model. The most recent designs show that the Long March 9 is being developed as a partially reusable rocket with a first stage powered by 30 advanced YF-215 methane engines.

This is not a coincidence. China’s state-run program is perfectly mirroring the dual-path approach of the United States. The Long March 10, with its 27,000 kg TLI capacity, is a direct performance-match for NASA’s SLS Block 1. The Long March 9, with its 150,000 kg LEO capacity and methane-reusable design, is a direct competitor to SpaceX’s Starship.

This demonstrates China’s highly effective “fast-follower” strategy. It waited to see what its competitors (NASA and SpaceX) would prove is possible, and is now pouring massive state resources into reverse-engineering the concepts and building its own versions to meet a fixed 2030 deadline.

Russia’s Yenisei: A Super-Heavy Dream on Hold

Russia, too, has long-standing plans for a super heavy-lift rocket, named Yenisei. The goal was to build a vehicle capable of lifting 90,000 to 100,000 kg to LEO, enabling a new generation of Russian deep-space and lunar missions.

However, the program has faced major political and financial headwinds. Development of the Yenisei was officially suspended in 2021. While there are recent reports that the project is slated to be “resumed” in 2025, its status remains ambiguous at best. Unlike the concrete, steel-cutting, and engine-firing progress seen in the US and China, the Yenisei remains, for now, a concept on the drawing board and is not a credible near-term program.

This sudden, simultaneous boom in giant rocket development isn’t a coincidence. It’s the result of three mutually reinforcing technologies reaching maturity at the same time, creating a “stack” that has unlocked a new era of capability.

The Reusability Revolution

This is the single most important economic shift in the history of spaceflight. For sixty years, rockets were treated as single-use items. This is like buying a brand-new 747, flying it from New York to London once, and then pushing it into the ocean. The cost was astronomical.

Reusable launch vehicles change this equation. By designing the first-stage booster – the most complex and expensive part of the rocket, containing all the engines – to be recovered, refurbished, and reflown, the economics of launch are fundamentally altered.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 proved this model wasn’t just possible, but highly reliable, logging over 500 successful landings. This has allowed SpaceX to slash the cost-per-kilogram to orbit by as much as 75%, completely dominating the commercial launch market.

Now, reusability is the new standard. Blue Origin’s successful New Glenn booster landing in November 2025 confirmed that this technology is replicable. China is designing reusability into its new Long March 9 and 10A rockets. Even the “old-guard” ULA is pursuing a partial “engine reuse” concept for its Vulcan rocket. This economic driver is the primary reason this new generation of rockets is being built.

The Methane Bet

For a non-technical audience, the choice of rocket fuel can be thought of as a “Goldilocks” problem. For decades, there were two main choices, and neither was perfect.

1. Kerosene (RP-1): This is the fuel used by the Falcon 9, Proton, and Angara. It’s dense, stable, and powerful. But it burns “dirty,” leaving behind a carbon soot (known as “coking”) on the engine internals. This makes refurbishing an engine for reuse a difficult and time-consuming process.
2. Liquid Hydrogen (LH2): This is the fuel used by the SLS, Ariane 6, and the old Space Shuttle. It is extremely efficient – it provides the most “bang for your buck.” But it’s not dense, meaning it requires massive, lightweight, and complex fuel tanks. It’s also incredibly cold and the smallest of all molecules, making it notoriously difficult to handle and prone to leaks.

Then came the “just right” solution: Liquid Methane (CH4). Methane, which is the main component of natural gas, is the “Goldilocks” fuel.

• It burns far more efficiently than kerosene.
• It is far denser than hydrogen, allowing for smaller, simpler tanks.
• Its boiling point is very close to that of liquid oxygen (the oxidizer), which simplifies the rocket’s internal plumbing and tank design.
• Most importantly, it burns cleanly, leaving minimal soot.

This clean-burning property is its key feature. It is the fuel of choice for reusability, as it means an engine can be reflown many times with minimal refurbishment. It is not a coincidence that the entire new generation of reusable rockets – Starship, New Glenn, Vulcan, and the planned Long March 9 – are all powered by methane engines. The only new heavy-lift rockets not using methane are the expendable, hydrogen-powered Ariane 6 and SLS.

Methane has one other, almost science-fiction, benefit: it’s the fuel SpaceX chose for Starship because it can, in theory, be manufactured on Mars using local carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and water ice from the soil. This makes a self-sustaining, refueling-capable colony a real possibility.

The 3D-Printed Factory

The third pillar of this revolution is manufacturing. The complex, high-performance engines that power these new rockets are extraordinarily difficult to build. A traditional rocket engine, like the Space Shuttle’s RS-25, was made of thousands of individual parts, painstakingly welded together by hand, and cost over $50 million each.

Additive manufacturing (3D printing) has changed this. Companies can now 3D-print an engine’s complex injector, a part that used to be made of hundreds of pieces, as a single, stronger, and more reliable component. NASA is pioneering new copper-based alloys (like GRCop-42) specifically for 3D-printing rocket engine components. Companies like Relativity Space are building their rockets with this philosophy at their core, aiming to 3D-print almost the entire vehicle.

This technology is what makes it possible for companies like SpaceX to mass-produce its Raptor engine, or for Blue Origin to build the complex BE-4. It allows for rapid prototyping, fast iteration, and a cost-per-engine that was unthinkable even 15 years ago.

Why We Need the Lift: The New Space Economy

This raises the most important question: Why? Why is there a global, multi-billion-dollar rush to build these giant rockets?

The answer is that they don’t just service existing markets; they create entirely new ones. The old paradigm was that launch was expensive and rare, so satellites had to be made as small, light, and compact as possible. This was a major constraint on what we could do in space.

The new rockets, especially a potential game-changer like Starship, are so large and (in theory) so cheap that they flip this logic on its head. It may soon be cheaper to launch a large, simple, and “dumb” satellite than a small, complex, and “smart” one. This new capability unlocks business models that, until now, were pure science fiction.

The Race Back to the Moon

The most immediate and well-funded driver is the global race to return to the Moon. The US-led Artemis program and the China-led ILRS program are not about “flags and footprints.” They are about establishing a permanent, sustainable human presence on the lunar surface.

This new “lunar economy” requires launching massive pieces of infrastructure that cannot be folded up and put on a medium-lift rocket. We are talking about habitats, nuclear power stations, large rovers, and mining equipment to extract water ice from the Moon’s south pole. This is a job that can only be done by the super heavy-lift rockets: the SLS, Starship, and the Long March 9 and 10.

The Martian Frontier

This is the long-term, civilization-scale goal, most famously championed by SpaceX. The entire “why” for the Starship program is to establish a self-sustaining city on Mars. SpaceX estimates this will require launching millions of tons of cargo and thousands of people, a task that is only possible with a fully reusable, rapidly-launching super heavy-lift rocket. NASA’s plans for a crewed Mars mission in the 2030s also rely on super heavy-lift capability.

National Security and Defense

This is the primary, present-day driver. The U.S. Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office have critical payloads that are so large, heavy, and complex, they can only fly on heavy-lift rockets. The NSSL program, which procures these launches, is a pillar of national defense. Having a “mixed fleet” of certified providers, like the ULA Vulcan and the SpaceX Falcon Heavy, is considered a matter of non-negotiable national security to avoid a single point of failure.

Building in Orbit

Finally, the new heavy-lift fleet creates markets that simply could not exist before.

• Commercial Space Stations: The International Space Station is scheduled to be retired around 2030. The rockets that will build its replacement – a new fleet of private, commercial space stations – are the new heavy-lifters.
• Space-Based Solar Power (SBSP): This is the concept of building massive, multi-kilometer-wide solar power plants in orbit, collecting solar energy 24/7, and beaming it safely to Earth as microwave energy. This could be a revolutionary source of clean, baseline power. Recent studies by both NASA and ESA concluded this concept is technically feasible, but economically impossible without a rocket in Starship’s class – a vehicle that can launch 150 tons for just millions of dollars. China has also stated this as a long-term national goal.

In this case, the rocket comes first. Its sheer capability creates the economic conditions for an entirely new industry to be born.

Summary

The state of heavy-lift rocketry in late 2025 is one of radical, high-stakes transition. This is not a “future” story; it is happening now. The Old Guard of reliable, expensive, and expendable rockets – the Delta IV, Ariane 5, and Proton – is either retired or being phased out.

In their place, an entirely new fleet has just arrived. The operational market now consists of a proven super-heavy workhorse (Falcon Heavy), national champions (Long March 5, Angara A5), and a “New Guard” of commercial vehicles (Vulcan, New Glenn, Ariane 6) that all became operational in the last 12-24 months.

The successful booster landing of Blue Origin’s New Glenn in November 2025 was a defining moment, proving that rocket reusability is the new, replicable standard for the industry and officially ending SpaceX’s decade-long monopoly. This event, combined with the ULA Vulcan’s certification, has solidified an American launch strategy built on a commercial, competitive, methane-fueled, and reusable future.

The only other serious competitor, China, is in a state-sponsored sprint to meet its 2030 lunar deadline. It is doing so by methodically executing a “fast-follower” strategy, building its own state-run versions of the exact same two-rocket system (an SLS-class crew launcher and a Starship-class infrastructure builder) that the US is pioneering.

Looming over this entire landscape is SpaceX’s Starship, which continues its chaotic but rapid development in Texas. It is the ultimate gamble: a vehicle so large and so reusable that it could make every other rocket on this list obsolete, or it could be a spectacular failure.

The hardware that will define the 21st century in space – the vehicles that will build the lunar economy, enable the exploration of Mars, and guarantee national security – is not on the drawing board. It is on the launch pad. The race of the new giants has begun.