Japan's 'Spaceguard' CentTo Track Celestial Clutter

which I recommend. It
> shows Japan as launching 1 of 85 in the year 2000, or about 1.2 % of the
> world effort by this simple accounting. There is a

Jay, your conclusions are misleading.

The number of launches by country has absolutely no relationship to that country's space budget.

For example, by your reckoning. Russia must have an enormous space budget. But the truth is, they have one of the smallest space budgets in the world. Nearly all of the Russian launch are commercial contract launches for foreign customers, most of them non-governmental, i.e. commercial communcations satellites for a variety of countries.

In fact, nearly all the launch vehicles you listed have foreign customers, commercial and/or governmental.

Please would you expand the listing to indicate who the CUSTOMER is for each launch listed. That would be much more interesting.

Non-launcher countries such as Canada, Indonesia, Australia, Korea, pay for many of the launches listed, but by your launch reckoning they each have a zero space budget.

Charles R.