Executive Summary

The Federal Aviation Administration's Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation (FAA/AST) and the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) have prepared forecasts of global demand for commercial space launch services for the period 2004 to 2013.

The 2004 Commercial Space Transportation Forecasts report includes:

Together, the COMSTAC and FAA forecasts project that an average of 23.4 commercial space launches worldwide will occur annually from 2004 to 2013. The combined forecasts are similar to last year's forecast of 23.7 launches per year although still down from 26.8 in the 2002 forecast and 32 in the 2001 forecast.

In the GSO market, satellite demand is 211 satellites, or 21.1 satellites per year, a decrease of nine percent compared to the 2003 forecast when there was an average of 23.3 satellites per year. However, the resulting demand for launches per year overall did not decrease proportionately with the number of satellites available because the 2004 forecast identifies fewer dual-manifested launches in the future compared to last year's forecast. An analysis of GSO mass data in the report indicates that the shift to heavier-class satellites may be slowing.

The NGSO market includes 106 satellites in the market from 2004–2013, the first significant forecast increase in the total number of NGSO satellites since the 1998 forecast, mostly because of improved business conditions for two telecommunications companies. Despite a 32.5 percent increase of the number of satellites, launch demand overall is unchanged from last year's forecast of 51 total launches because an increasing number of NGSO satellites are multiplemanifested; more satellites are riding on one launch vehicle on an average basis.

COMSTAC and FAA project an average annual demand for:

• 18.3 launches of medium-to-heavy launch vehicles to GSO;
• 2.3 launches of medium-to-heavy launchvehicles to NGSO; and
• 2.8 launches of small vehicles to NGSO.

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