What will the European launch market look like in 2035?

Last week, with Agence de l’innovation de défense we gathered representatives from European Space Agency, CNES, Direction générale de l’armement, AVIO, MaiaSpace, Sirius Space Services, The Exploration Company, and the broader European space ecosystem to discuss the future of launchers.
 
Rather than presenting a white paper and moving on, we tested a new format: presenting our conclusions, debating them openly with industry leaders, and collecting real-time feedback from the audience through Mentimeter.
 
A few key takeaways emerged:
The launcher market is not converging, it is fragmenting. Instead of one dominant model, four distinct segments are emerging:
🔹Super-heavy launchers (50–100t)
🔹Medium-heavy launchers (10–20t)
🔹Medium launchers (1–7t)
🔹Responsive and micro-launchers

Each addresses different markets, economics, and strategic needs. Europe’s challenge is not technology. It is ambition. As ESA’s Pier-Domenico Resta put it: “The need for a launcher of this size will ultimately be proportional to the ambitions Europe sets for itself.” The discussion repeatedly returned to the same question: not whether Europe can build future launchers, but what vision, demand, and industrial strategy will support them.
 
The 10–20 tonne segment may represent Europe’s biggest opportunity.
68% of participants identified this category as the most promising segment for Europe.
 
The consensus was clear: future winners will be determined by cost, reusability, cadence, and responsiveness, not by payload capacity alone. Responsive launch is becoming a strategic requirement. One of the most interesting debates focused on resilience.
 
Should Europe invest in ever-larger constellations, or in the ability to rapidly replace lost assets? As Hugues Chopard (Sirius Space Services) highlighted, the challenge is no longer only launching satellites, but being able to do so within operational timelines measured in days rather than months.
 
When asked about Europe’s strategic objective, participants ranked:
🔹 Competitiveness (35%)
🔹Sovereignty (57%)
🔹Defense (4%)
🔹Exploration (4%)
 
Perhaps the most striking conclusion of the day was that Europe’s launcher future is no longer primarily a space question. It is an industrial, economic, and geopolitical question.
 
The challenge is not simply to maintain access to space.
 
The challenge is to build a competitive, sovereign, and scalable space transportation ecosystem capable of competing globally.
 
A huge thank you to all speakers and participants who helped challenge, refine, and strengthen the analysis before publication of the final white paper.