There is little evidence that U.S.-built launch vehicles can recapture commercial market share lost to international competitors, industry analyst Futron Corp. said in a white paper released June 8.

U.S. rocket builders lost their hold on the commercial market to new competitors and new vehicles that provide rides into obit at lower costs, Futron said in “The Declining U.S. Role in the Commercial Launch Industry.” The U.S. government plans to support Lockheed Martin‘s Atlas 5 and Boeing‘s Delta 4 through at least the end of the decade, but “the state of the overall market makes it unlikely that U.S.-manufactured launch vehicles will regain the market share they once hold in the commercial market,” Futron said.

With the market struggling to recover from the slowdown that began in the late 1990s, it will be even harder for U.S.-based launch vehicles to capture commercial business. The latest U.S. government commercial launch forecasts predict that medium- and heavy-lift launch rates will continue to decline, bottoming out at 14 in 2008 and 2009.

The decline is affecting all launch classes, with the only commercial mission currently on a U.S. manifest is the late 2005 launch of Razaksat 1 by Space Exploration‘s Falcon 1 rocket. This number does not include a pair of U.S. government satellite launches that the Federal Aviation Administration classifies as commercial missions, Futron said.