Elon Musk’s SpaceX has become a de facto monopolist in the space launch market.

2023-07-07 16:50:24

SpaceX successfully completed 21 commercial launches in the first half of this year. This is 64% of the total number of launches worldwide and is already close to the company’s figure for the whole of last year. The situation on the market has developed in such a way that Elon Musk’s company has become a virtual monopoly in space. And this is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

Elon Musk created SpaceX in 2002 to fulfill his audacious dream of sending a man to Mars. He has not yet succeeded in doing this, and the Starship intended for this purpose exploded in April of this year, four minutes after launch. But technical failures, accidents, trial and error are an integral part of the construction of such complex devices as space rockets. Yes, and Elon Musk has no reason to be upset – his company is already a monopolist in the market, earning tens of millions of dollars for each commercial launch.

As writes The Wall Street JournalSpaceX has practically no competitors on the market and is not expected in the near future.

SpaceX has completed 21 successful commercial launches in the first six months of this year. This is almost two-thirds of their global number. For the whole of 2022, Elon Musk’s company made only 27 launches, which means that this result will most likely be surpassed this year. Moreover, these statistics do not take into account launches to put Starlink satellites into orbit, a division of SpaceX itself.

Other companies simply cannot launch rockets as often and as cheaply, the WSJ notes. The closest pursuer of SpaceX in terms of the number of launches is New Zealand’s Rocket Lab. On account of this year, as many as five launches – four times less than SpaceX. Next on the list is the Indian Space Research Organization with three launches in six months. Everyone else has a maximum of one commercial launch, or even none.

All of SpaceX’s main competitors are now busy building their own next-generation rockets. Work on them has been underway for several years, but none of them has yet been launched. This is the Vulcan Centaur from United Launch Alliance (a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin), and New Glenn from Richard Branson’s Blue Origin, and Ariane 6 from the French ArianeGroupe. By the way, Ariane 5 last Wednesday, July 5, completed its last flight in history. When the next generation rocket will be ready is not known.

Helped SpaceX and anti-Russian sanctions imposed after the start of a special military operation in Ukraine. Clients who counted on Soyuz rocket launches are now forced to turn to other operators.

And the choice on the market, as already noted, is small. Most end up with SpaceX. So, Elon Musk’s company only last Saturday made such a launch for the European Space Agency.

SpaceX has at its disposal the heavy Falcon 9 rockets and the super-heavy Falcon Heavy, which the company eventually learned to use more than once. One Falcon 9 launch costs the client $67 million, and Falcon Heavy costs $97 million. The price is $6.5 thousand per 1 kg of cargo on the Falcon 9.

Deutsche Bank estimates that worldwide corporate revenue from launches in 2022 was $8 billion. By 2025, this amount could increase to $13 billion, the lion’s share of which will come from SpaceX. But now Elon Musk’s company is busy developing the Starship rocket. The money from the current launches, in turn, goes to its development. Market participants and analysts are confident that if successful, this project will finally turn Mr. Musk into the king of space.

Kirill Sarkhanyantz