The orbital-launch business centers on Elon Musk’s SpaceX; everyone else is in orbit around it, Fast Company opined last year.
That key centrality has since flourished into total world dominance of the rocket-launch market. Musk’s private company SpaceX now has a “de facto” monopoly on rocket launches, said the Wall Street Journal.
SpaceX’s rockets powered 66% of customer flights from American launch sites in 2022 and handled 88% in the first six months of this year, WSJ reported citing launch data compiled by Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist who tracks space activity.
Back in 2021, Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX sent 31 partially reusable Falcon 9 rockets to orbit, more than all other US launch operators combined. That dominance is set to continue.
“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine put one alternative, the Russian Soyuz rocket, off limits for many launch buyers,” said the WSJ. “Rival vehicles from Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and the French launch company Arianespace haven’t flown yet.”
Roughly eight years ago, when SpaceX was one of a few commercial-space startups vying for NASA contracts to take cargo and maybe astronauts to the International Space Station in low earth orbit, this total domination was hard to imagine.
Bullish on SpaceX
“The fact is that the competition can’t field anything right now and that makes SpaceX a de facto monopoly,” John Holst, a former Air Force space operations officer who now writes a newsletter about the space industry, told the business daily.
Some satellite-internet companies pay SpaceX to launch devices that help them compete with SpaceX’s own satellite-broadband service, Starlink.
SpaceX’s next chance to defy Musk skeptics will come whenever his company launches Starship, the massive new fully reusable two-stage rocket SpaceX is developing.
According to the WSJ, SpaceX’s current total dominance spells a steady stream of revenue to support Starship which is designed to lift 110 tons to low Earth orbit.
Billionaire Musk wants to use Starship, which exploded after four minutes during its inaugural test flight in April, for satellite launches, human missions, and the exciting trip to Mars that he has long envisioned.
Musk has teased when humans will reach Mars for years predicting a 2029 landing most recently.
Contact the author Uttara Choudhury at uttara@proactiveinvestors.com
Follow her on Twitter: @UttaraProactive