ROUTINE BUT NEVER BORING:

Congrats to the entire @SpaceX team for achieving 165 launches🚀 ! While we originally set out for 170, we actually revised the manifest to 165 this summer based on business and manifest needs. We have two more Falcon launches to go in 2025 for extra credit for a total of 1-6-7… pic.twitter.com/wCH1O1qmEY

— Kiko Dontchev (@TurkeyBeaver) December 17, 2025

I asked Grok to look at the record number of launches set each year by company, going back to 2005. Here are the results:

2005–2017: No single entity exceeded ~30 launches in a year. Russian state launches (via Roscosmos/RKK Energia) peaked around 25–30 in some years, but no major records were set in this timeframe compared to later surges.

2018: China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) – ~39 launches. China set a new modern-era high for a single organization, surpassing previous annual totals by any entity in the post-Cold War period.

2023: SpaceX – 98 launches (96 Falcon 9 + Falcon Heavy missions)
SpaceX more than doubled China’s mark, largely due to Starlink deployments and reusable Falcon 9 technology.

2024: SpaceX – ~134 launches (132–134 Falcon family missions)
SpaceX broke its own record again, with the Falcon 9 fleet alone achieving a Guinness-recognized high for a single rocket model.

2025 (as of December 18): SpaceX – 165 launches. SpaceX already set a new annual record mid-year, continuing the trend of rapid cadence growth. No other company (e.g., CASC in China, ~50–60 launches/year recently) comes close.

It really is SpaceX versus the world.