FAA-licensed commercial space launches

American rocket launches and a Manchester pint, climbing in tandem. The pub-goer is not subsidising SpaceX. The launch director is not buying his round. The trend, as ever, has its own opinions.

FAA-licensed commercial space launches grew from a handful per year in 2010 to nearly a hundred in 2023 as SpaceX, Rocket Lab, and others industrialised the orbital business. The British pint climbed in price across the same span thanks to a separate cocktail of Brexit-era input costs, the 2022 energy crisis, and incremental beer-duty rises. Both are inflation stories in different uniforms — one in stainless steel and kerosene, the other in barley and gas bills. The same decade was costly for very different reasons.

Years that are expensive on Earth tend to be expensive in low orbit too. The economy is one weather system.