Sources and method

Vehicle specifications come from Launch Library 2, maintained by The Space Devs: payload capacity to each orbit, thrust, length, diameter, launch mass, stage count, reusability, maiden flight, published launch cost, landing tallies and turnaround records. It is the reference layer this whole site rests on, and it is run by volunteers. If you use this data, consider supporting them.

We pull their API at most weekly, cache every response to disk, and rebuild pages from the cache. We do not proxy their API, we do not re-publish it as a feed, and we host none of their imagery. Their media CDN bills them for traffic, so Rocket DB ships no photographs at all rather than pass that cost along.

Individual launch records (date, mission, pad, orbit, outcome) and the company identity behind each operator come from Space Index, a directory of the space economy, read through its public API at build time. Where a vehicle's operator has a Space Index profile, this site links it in the page body. That is where funding, contracts, headcount and news live.

Neither upstream publishes these. Every one shows its inputs on the page it appears on.

A scheduled launch has no outcome yet, so it is excluded from every success rate, and the cadence chart only draws years that have already happened. Launch cost is the operator's published list price where one exists; it is not a contract value, and it is not adjusted for inflation.