SpaceX is the fastest growing space company worldwide. It has achieved major successes since its creation in 2002, and its level of technical executio

SpaceX and the categorical imperative to achieve low launch cost

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2024-06-07 17:00:06

SpaceX is the fastest growing space company worldwide. It has achieved major successes since its creation in 2002, and its level of technical execution has established the company as a benchmark for the newspace community and as a model to follow for countless start-ups in the sector.

Incumbent players in the launch sector have been looking at SpaceX, first with skepticism, then incredulity, and now with awe, witnessing the company unfolding its business model, initially sparked by Elon Musk’s criticism that access to space was too expensive.

Today it is generally recognized by all observers that SpaceX, with its partially reusable Falcon launch system, has achieved major cost reduction for orbital launch.

The same observer also notes that the customers of SpaceX, as a whole, are not yet benefiting from any significant reduction of the cost of access to space, because SpaceX is not incentivized to pass the economies they achieve to their customers, or only very marginally, if they do.

We believe that the economies achieved by SpaceX on launch are irrevocably tied to the success of SpaceX, to the point that they provide the foundation of Starlink’s seemingly unstoppable development.