I'm not quite sure what you are saying. Are you saying that the Iraq war has caused some defense or NASA launches to be deferred? Keep in mind that both NASA's and the Pentagon's space budgets have grown since 2001. Or are you saying that the commercial space business is down because of the war? I'm not sure I would agree that either assertion explains most of the launch rate decline, but I'm also not sure that the war hasn't contributed in a some way to the decline. <br /><br />I wondered about this in my blog last year:<br /><br />
http://www.geocities.com/launchreport/blog010.html<br /><br />U.S. and worldwide space launch numbers actually began declining four years before 9/11/2001, largely due to the collapse of the commercial satellite launch market. During the early 2000's recession, the U.S. (and Europe) suffered a major loss of commercial launch market share to Russia and Ukraine - not unlike General Motors lost market share to Toyota, et al. - except that in this case the total comsat market had shrunk. The result was that Boeing was effectively run out of the commercial launch market altogether, while Lockheed was left with only one or two commercial launches per year. This occurred while, and perhaps because, Boeing and Lockheed were in the midst of replacing their old launchers with more expensive EELVs. NASA's shuttle fleet was grounded at the same time, cutting more potential launches out of the picture. <br /><br />Worldwide launch counts may have bottomed out in 2004, when only 50 successful launches occurred in 54 attempts. This year's launch rate matches last year's, when there were 52 successes in 55 attempts. The numbers may grow slowly from here, but only time will tell.<br /><br /> - Ed Kyle
Basic Error: The accelerating Universe conclusion - reason
SpaceX launches 21 Starlink internet satellites from Florida, lands rocket at sea (photos)
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