Private Rocket Companies in Europe and Asia

As of 2024, there is NO PRIVATE company working on the Development of a Heavy Rocket outside of China and USA.

Individual countries of Europe with populations between 2 million to 60 million citizens, cannot invest as significant amounts into their space program, as 5 Heavy Rocket developers (USA, India, Russia, Japan and China), with populations between 120 million to 1.2 billion.

As a result, there have only been a handful of Private Rocket Companies, which are all pursuing the development of Small-lift rockets, carrying up to 1500 kg to orbit, none of which are planning to shift to Heavy Rocket development, in the next 5 years.

However, these Small-lift rocket companies will all slowly be liquidated, as their business model is not sustainable. Rocket companies targeting the Cube-Sat market (10x10cm Satellites) and small-satellite market as their commercial goal are claiming that it’s better to launch a smaller rocket for smaller payloads, thereby lowering the launch price. This statement has been an appealing selling point, based on which these companies were able to raise funds, but in reality, it will be very hard for them to return the provided investment. While being cheaper per launch, they are not cheaper per kg to orbit, which is the most important factor for customers.

This same metric is used in the airline, maritime, and rail freight industries. A smaller plane cannot possibly compete with the price per kilogram of cargo delivered by a larger plane, even though building a smaller plane is cheaper than constructing a larger one.

To make this business model functional, the single use Small-lift rocket would have to launch a 500kg payload for about 100 000 $ in order to compete on costs with the Reusable Heavy Rockets. An impossible task, which even if managed, the margins would be so minimal there wouldn’t be any additional cash flow, to sustain the business, or to repay the investors.

Another disadvantage that Small-lift rocket companies face, is the location of their launch site. Companies such as Rocket Factory Augsburg are not able to find a suitable location in Europe, due to the heavy air traffic above the European Continent.

RFA’s COO Stefan Brieschenk stated, that their company has to ship engine components from Germany, all the way to northern Kiruna, Sweden for a routine engine test, and once the rocket is ready, all the way to French Guiana in South America, where the launch takes place.

Small-lift rocket companies often claim that developing small-lift rockets is their stepping stone to learning and advancing technology, with the ultimate ambition of moving into heavy rocket development in the future. However, there are 3 key obstacles to this vision:

1. 1

   Capital - Due to their unrealistic business model, by 2030, these companies will fail to return the recently accumulated funds from investors, since they won’t be able to compete on prices with the US and China.

2. 2

   Technology - Heavy Rockets don’t use the same technology that small rocket use. Developing a reusable heavy rocket will require starting from the scratch, including the creation of reusable rocket engines, advanced thermal protection systems, landing gear, more sophisticated avionics, stronger structures, advanced machining, and much larger infrastructure possibly in a new jurisdiction.

3. 3

   Funding Rounds - These companies already have a cap table of 5 to 10+ investors, and by 2030 will be heavily in debt due to their small rocket developments. They will have very low chance to secure their future funding rounds, since in the next 5-10 years the advancements made by the US and China, will have pushed the technological gap even further.