my forecasts
Maybe I can forecast some winners and losers... first, the large rockets.
- Falcon 9: winner today, winner tomorrow, since nobody will catch their low costs except maybe Neutron.
- New Glenn: maybe a secondary winner, but won’t beat Falcon.
- Vulcan: I originally said survivor only, then I started to think winner, now I doubt it.
- OmegA: loser (yup, cancelled).
- Antares: loser, but might survive.
- SLS: loser.
- Starship: should eventually win big, but not in the short term.
- Ariane: survivor.
- Skylon: I thought some variant could eventually end up a real winner in
the very long term, but no.
- Irtysh: a temporary semi-winner, maybe, then a limited governmental role,
assuming it ever flies at all.
- Angara: looking like a loser so far.
- Proton updates: loser (came true shortly after adding this section... it and
Soyuz will retire with honor, like Atlas and Delta).
- Long March 2-4: survivor, eventually retiring with honor.
- Long March 6 and 7: semi-winner for a limited time, then settling into a
survivor governmental role.
- Long March 5, 9, and 10: probably governmental only, I’m guessing survivor.
- Long March 8 and 12: at least one winner.
- Amur: winner (by Russian standards) if they get reusability to work.
- H: survivor, governmental role.
- LVM3: survivor (RLV could be a winner).
- Neutron: winner.
Now, small rockets.
- Pegasus and Minotaur: loser (yeah, Northrop’s Orbital Sciences branch is cooked).
- LauncherOne: I previously said they’d “look like a winner for a while“ but
“may fail to make profit.” Now they’ve lost everything a company can lose.
- Vector: I previously said winner... they had me fooled.
- Alpha: I thought “has a fair chance”, but now the odds look slim.
- Vega: short term winner, long term loser.
- Electron: winner, at least for a good while.
- Astra: I previously said “winner if they can get reliable and keep
costs low enough, which looks like it’ll be tough”... then I said loser and now they’ve lost.
- Terran: loser.
- Rokot and START: losers.
- Kuaizhou, Long March 11, Ceres, and the like: short term winners, long term losers.
- PSLV: eventually will retire with honor when something better replaces it.
- SSLV: survivor, I guess.
- Miura: could be a winner, but looking shaky.
- Haas: loser, because these guys are bozos.
- Neptune: loser.
- Phantom Express: could be a big winner? Nope, they gave up on
it. Too bad — I thought the idea had potential.
- Shavit, Safir, Simorgh, Unha, Chollima: governmental role, eventual loser.
- Nuri: survivor, eventual loser due to privatization.
- VLS and MLS: loser.
- Tronador: loser.
- New Line: looked winner-like for a while, but they didn’t follow through.
- Prime: I previously said possible winner, but... no. Loser.
- Skyrora, Eris, Hanbit, Hapith: losers.
- RFA, Spectrum: one of them might be a survivor.
- LandSpace and maybe Space Pioneer: decent chance at some winner-hood.
- Nova: winner if their heat shield works... but that’s a big if.
- all the me-too small launch companies that take another four years to reach
orbit: losers.
Finally, some broad overall trends.
- Reusability: big winner.
- Solid fuel in general: loser for main stages, survivor in secondary roles.
- Hypergolic fuel in general: survivor in secondary roles.
- Small payload capacity: winner, but only for at most three companies.
- Gigantic payload capacity: eventual winner? But not any time soon.
- USA: winner.
- China: winner, but maybe not long term.
- Russia; loser, even before they alienated themselves from the world economy.
- EU: survivor.
- India: winner.
- Whoever manages to someday lift payloads without a rocket: winner.
(In another how-did-I-do update, Northrop bounced back from cancelling the
Omega by being awarded a big contract to build new replacement ICBMs. Who
thought we needed new ICBMs??)