MARK R. WHITTINGTON
Recently, there has been musing that SpaceX has become an “accidental monopoly” in the space launch business. Elon Musk has dominated the launching of things and even people into space, and some people think it’s a problem. But the situation may be temporary.
SpaceX has become the go-to rocket company for a variety of services, With Boeing’s Starliner still faltering, unable to get off the launch pad, the SpaceX Crew Dragon is the sole commercial American ride for astronauts to low Earth orbit. The Falcon 9 is the cheapest and most reliable way any customer has to put anything into Earth orbit. With the launch of the Psyche mission, the Falcon Heavy has become a choice launcher for interplanetary missions. The heavy lift rocket will loft the Europa Clipper to Jupiter space in 2024.
SpaceX is also deploying the Starlink communications system, designed to provide voice, text and internet directly from space throughout the world, even those parts that hitherto have had trouble getting the service. Starlink has the potential to break through the efforts of totalitarian regimes to deny their people access to free and uncensored information. The latest customer may be Israel, currently engaged in a war with Hamas terrorists.
Let’s not forget Starship, the monster rocket now under development at the SpaceX Star Base facility in Boca Chica, Texas. When the Starship is operational, it will be able to launch immense payloads into low Earth orbit, land people and cargo on the moon and fulfill Elon Musk’s dream of establishing a settlement on Mars. These things will happen, provided that government regulators authorize more test flights. Government paperwork seems to be a bigger impediment to getting Starship off the ground than the technical challenges.
How did SpaceX come seemingly from out of nowhere to become the dominant rocket company on the planet? Billionaire Marc Andreessen reportedly suggested that SpaceX, as well as electric car company Tesla, would have gone under had it not been for Elon Musk. Indeed, as the Falcon 1 failed over and over again to launch during the early part of the 21st century, as cash quickly leached away, SpaceX going under would have seemed a safe bet.
What is it about Elon Musk that allowed him to succeed at commercial spaceflight when so many others had failed before? The 1990s was a decade replete with rocket companies like Beal Aerospace and Rotary Rocket that flourished briefly, only to fade away.
Walter Isaacson’s bestselling biography of Elon Musk provides some insights into the mind of the man who changed the economics of space travel. Musk has a number of qualities few people that have created his success, He has the ability to relentlessly drive his employees to perform feats that they never imagined themselves capable of. He has an obsession to look at processes and examine whether they can be done at a lower cost.
Most important, Musk has a vision that goes beyond wealth acquisition. Because of his childhood love of science fiction, he really wants to expand human consciousness into space. He wants to save the human race by making sure that a planetwide catastrophe such as a nuclear war or climate change will not wipe it out.
Another factor is that, after the Columbia disaster, NASA became interested in outsourcing space launches to the private sector with the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services and Commercial Crew programs. The space agency became a huge market for commercial space companies. In Elon Musk, the man met the moment.
The dominance SpaceX enjoys is being challenged. Rocket Lab, for example, is gaining interest with its Electron rocket. The company is building a larger Neutron rocket that will be reusable and is designed to challenge the Falcon 9 for space launch market share.
And, who knows? Maybe one day Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket company will change from taking the well-heeled and adventurous on suborbital joy rides and get the New Glenn operational to directly challenge SpaceX, as well.
Once the Starship becomes operational and revolutionizes space travel, will Rocket Lab and Blue Origin even matter? Fortunately, if SpaceX is a monopoly, even an “accidental” one, it is so far not acting like it.
In any case, because of SpaceX and its up-and-coming competitors, it is an exciting time to be alive for space aficionados.
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