juliensimon/launch-cost-to-leo

Launch Cost to LEO

Part of the Orbital Mechanics Datasets collection on Hugging Face.

How much does it cost to put one kilogram into low Earth orbit? This dataset tracks 63 launch vehicles from 11 countries/regions, comparing historical and current costs per kg to LEO — from the Saturn V era to Starship.

Dataset description

Each record represents one launch vehicle configuration with its payload capacity to LEO, cost per launch, and derived cost per kilogram. Costs are normalized to 2024 USD. Both expendable and reusable configurations are included where applicable.

The cheapest vehicle by cost/kg is Starship (target) at $67/kg, while the most expensive is KSLV-1 (Naro) at $2,000,000/kg. The median cost across all vehicles is $9,167/kg.

Schema

Column	Type	Description
vehicle	string	Launch vehicle name and variant
operator	string	Primary operator or manufacturer
country	string	Country or region of origin
first_flight_year	int	Year of first flight
payload_leo_kg	int	Maximum payload to LEO in kg
cost_per_launch_usd	int	Cost per launch in 2024 USD
cost_per_kg_usd	int	Derived cost per kg to LEO (cost / payload)
reusable	bool	Whether the vehicle is partially or fully reusable
status	string	Current status: active, retired, or in development
source	string	Data source citation

Quick stats

• 63 launch vehicles (40 active, 21 retired)
• 11 countries/regions
• 7 reusable vehicles
• Cost per kg range: $67 (Starship (target)) to $2,000,000 (KSLV-1 (Naro))
• Median cost per kg: $9,167

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/launch-cost-to-leo", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

# Cheapest vehicles by cost per kg
print(df.nsmallest(10, "cost_per_kg_usd")[["vehicle", "cost_per_kg_usd", "payload_leo_kg"]])

# Active vehicles only
active = df[df["status"] == "active"]
print(f"{len(active)} active vehicles")
print(active.sort_values("cost_per_kg_usd")[["vehicle", "operator", "cost_per_kg_usd"]])

# Reusable vs expendable
for reusable, group in df.groupby("reusable"):
    label = "Reusable" if reusable else "Expendable"
    print(f"{label}: median ${group['cost_per_kg_usd'].median():,.0f}/kg")

# Cost trend over time
print(df.groupby("first_flight_year")["cost_per_kg_usd"].median().tail(20))

Data sources

Costs compiled from multiple public sources including:

• NASA historical cost data and OIG reports
• FAA/AST Annual Compendium of Commercial Space Transportation
• CSIS Aerospace Security: Space Launch to LEO — How Much Does It Cost?
• SpaceX, Rocket Lab, ULA, Arianespace published pricing
• ESA, JAXA, ISRO official cost figures
• Bryce Tech / BryceTech reports
• Industry analysis and press releases

All costs adjusted to 2024 USD where historical.

Update schedule

Static dataset — updated manually when significant new vehicles enter service or pricing changes materially.

Related datasets

• gcat-launch-vehicles — GCAT launch vehicle specs, engines, and stages
• space-launch-log — Complete global launch history
• space-track-satcat — NORAD satellite catalog

Pipeline

Source code: juliensimon/space-datasets

Support

If you find this dataset useful, please give it a ❤️ on the dataset page and share feedback in the Community tab! Also consider giving a ⭐️ to the space-datasets repo.

Citation

@dataset{launch_cost_to_leo,
  author = {Simon, Julien},
  title = {Launch Cost to LEO},
  year = {2026},
  publisher = {Hugging Face},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/launch-cost-to-leo},
  note = {Compiled from NASA, FAA/AST, ESA, SpaceX, and industry sources}
}

License

CC-BY-4.0