Breaking down the business of space

Welcome to the Launchpad Newsletter, your top source for political, economic, and social developments in the New Space Economy, built by real entrepreneurs shaping it.

Ready-for-launch into the insights of the most impactful industry of the 21st Century.

This Week’s Next-Gen Newsflash

🚀 SpaceX’s Starship rocket survives reentry with industry-defining test flight

🛰️ The satellite ground systems market grows with billions in contract value

💸 Think you can get a rock back from Mars? NASA’s willing to pay big to find out.

Today’s Subject of Space: Does SpaceX Have a Monopoly, and Will it be Broken?

Does SpaceX have a monopoly? It depends on who you ask.

After all, the space industry is a wider ecosystem than it looks from the outside, with everything from startup hardware manufacturers to legacy service providers. A single launch company cannot account for every corner of the board, but for the metrics that matter, SpaceX is the dominant player:

• Regarding mass-to-orbit, SpaceX launches just shy of 90% of it. 

• Regarding total launch cadence, SpaceX alone controls 45% of it.

• Accessibility to the ISS? Currently the only operating domestic provider outside of test flights.

• Total number of satellites? Over 6000 out of 14,450 launched. Ever.

• Operational reusable spacecraft? Now a fleet of three, thanks to Starship’s latest test flight, each ranging in size & payload capacity.

With numbers like these, it’s easy to understand why people point to SpaceX as a modern monopoly. Easy to understand why SpaceX isn’t going anywhere, with an intrinsic connection to US national security and space power (to be a superpower in the 21st century and beyond, you need a top-of-field space program).

And easy to understand why some in the annals of government are crying foul.

The Biden Administration has pushed new legislation to tax launches. The DOJ has sued SpaceX for alleged hiring discrimination. And the Federal Aviation Administration and US Fish & Wildlife have routinely delayed Starship launches over ecological concerns (because in the eyes of some, mud shrimp apparently take priority over multiplanetary life).

But these spotlights, although sweltering, are far from anti-trust. Little has been levied against SpaceX for monopolistic practices, because SpaceX hasn’t explicitly taken anticompetitive measures.

Being good at launching rockets does not equate to market manipulation, no matter how much pressure it puts on the underdog.

So despite some scrutiny online and atop Capitol Hill alike, SpaceX isn’t in any danger of being anti-trust regulated, far less broken up, anytime soon. Especially in a country like America that values affordable and rapid space accessibility over its geopolitical competition.

State of the New Space Economy

• NASA has entered into an agreement with Amazon’s AWS to host and store open data on the space agency’s discoveries for free.

• The United States outspent everyone else on space spending in 2023, but China is rapidly catching up.

• Looking for launch and payload data to customize your own with? Check out The Space Report’s free analytics!

Top Space Creators to Follow in 2024

📸 Instagram: All Around Science (442k followers)

👔 LinkedIn: G. Pettit (11k followers)

✖️ X: Curiosity Rover (4.2m followers)

📽️ TikTok: AstroKobi (2.7m followers)

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