r/space • u/techreview • 3d ago
Rivals are rising to challenge the dominance of SpaceX
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/04/03/1114198/rivals-are-rising-to-challenge-the-dominance-of-spacex/?utm_medium=tr_social&utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=site_visitor.unpaid.engagementSpaceX is a space launch juggernaut. In just two decades, the company has managed to edge out former aerospace heavyweights Boeing, Lockheed, and Northrop Grumman to gain near-monopoly status over rocket launches in the US; it accounted for 87% of the country’s orbital launches in 2024, according to an analysis by SpaceNews. Since the mid-2010s, the company has dominated NASA’s launch contracts and become a major Pentagon contractor. It is now also the go-to launch provider for commercial customers, having lofted numerous satellites and five private crewed spaceflights, with more to come.
Other space companies have been scrambling to compete for years, but developing a reliable rocket takes slow, steady work and big budgets. Now at least some of them are catching up.
A host of companies have readied rockets that are comparable to SpaceX’s main launch vehicles. The list includes Rocket Lab, which aims to take on SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 with its Neutron rocket and could have its first launch in late 2025, and Blue Origin, owned by Jeff Bezos, which recently completed the first mission of a rocket it hopes will compete against SpaceX’s Starship.
Some of these competitors are just starting to get rockets off the ground. And the companies could also face unusual headwinds, given that SpaceX’s Elon Musk has an especially close relationship with the Trump administration and has allies at federal regulatory agencies, including those that provide oversight of the industry.
But if all goes well, the SpaceX challengers can help improve access to space and prevent bottlenecks if one company experiences a setback.
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u/Bensemus 3d ago
This article is counting its eggs a bit soon. One rocket hasn’t launched yet and the other has had a single launch without a landing. New Glenn also doesn’t compete with Starship. It competes with the F9 and FH.
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u/ergzay 3d ago
Precisely. And they're repeating steps that SpaceX did a decade ago. There's a decade's of progress to gain still and it's not like SpaceX is sitting still.
I want a more competitive launch market but you don't get there by deceiving people or yourselves that something is something its not. That's exactly how the industry got in this position in the first place, by continuously lying that SpaceX/Falcon 9/reusability weren't a threat or that they'd never work.
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u/Adept-Alps-5476 3d ago
Yes and no. It will take years for other companies to catch up, but it will also be far easier for them due to two factors. One, it’s been proven possible and a highly successful architecture demod. Getting that right is among the hardest things in engineering. Two, a lot of previous tenured SpaceX employees (myself included) have moved on from SpaceX to their competitors. Doing something the second time is 5-10x easier than doing the first. A ton of the nuanced dead ends and mistakes that SpaceX had to work through the first time will be short-circuited to the correct thing. But it’s still hard and failure is still easy.
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u/ergzay 3d ago
I think you are sort of misreading what I'm saying. Yes I agree it will be faster for companies to figure out what SpaceX figured out, however it's still the case that they're a decade behind.
Also while SpaceX helps chart the architecture to create, implementation and detailed engineering isn't helped at all by what SpaceX has done, unless maybe you're in the same industry of the same country in which case talent can carry over. So while I think American companies (other than Rocket Lab) can get an edge up on SpaceX a bit in timelines, that doesn't apply to European companies or Rocket Lab (as they're in NZ) because they can't exactly hire SpaceX engineers.
I think we're more or less in agreement and just disagreeing on degrees.
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u/restitutor-orbis 2d ago
Rocket Lab is largely in the US. Specifically, they are building Neutron in Virginia, near the Wallops launch facility.
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u/ExternalGrade 1d ago
Rocket lab and BO are two companies that are in the same country. In terms of degrees… as someone also in the industry, I personally trust the guy that worked at SpaceX and now works for the competition on the details and judgement call on this front.
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u/A-Generic-Canadian 3d ago
Correct, but Starship itself has seen some delays, and isn't operational yet. Counting on Starship is a bit the same. We don't know the true extent of the challenges facing it, and until it is reliably flying the market is dominated by F9/FH.
IFT-9 could prove this comment wrong in a few weeks, but right now Starship isn't doing anything but testing. Until they have a reliable cadence the market is F9/FH.
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u/FlyingBishop 3d ago
Starship has successfully launched every single booster except for the first one, and now they're getting ready to reuse one. Even if Starship itself is a dud (and I would bet Starship reaches orbit before the end of 2026), the booster is already a pretty reliable rocket.
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u/Bensemus 2d ago
I’m not counting on Starship. I only even mentioned it to say New Glenn isn’t competing with it. SpaceX right now is way ahead of the mentioned companies.
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u/ergzay 3d ago edited 3d ago
But they actually aren't yet though. None of them have made a partially reusable rocket that works yet. They will have actually risen to the challenge the first time one gets a partially reusable rocket to land and make it back to port and launch it again successfully. Blue Origin has done an attempt and should be commended for that but they're a good way away from succeeding still.
And that's all only competitive against SpaceX as of a decade ago as they had their first successful rocket recovery in 2015. SpaceX is in the process of obsoleting its own Falcon 9 with that of Starship which they've successfully landed 3 times now. Once that's flying they'll further drop the cost of launch another order of magnitude and no one is even attempting to compete with Starship really.
I want a competitive launch market, but to get competitive you need to be honest about the situation with yourselves and with others, not pretend something is something it isn't.
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u/fifichanx 3d ago
Good, they do have a lot of work to do to catch up to falcon 9
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u/Reddit-runner 2d ago
And even more to catch up again to Starship in 2-5 years when they actually flying customers.
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u/posthamster 3d ago
Neutron’s first stage is intended to be reusable after it parachutes down to the ocean
I think doing some research before writing the article might have been a good idea.
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u/DreamChaserSt 3d ago edited 3d ago
This is good. More reusable rockets will help push the technology over the edge to become commonplace, not just something NASA tried, or a strategy only SpaceX seriously pursued.
No one really knows how many will actually survive, but I think Rocket Lab and Blue Origin both have good chances. RL because of their diversification into in-space services and Blue because of their deep pockets and massive capabilities. RL will be able to carve out their place in the market, while Blue will brute force it, but both will get there in the end.
I think ULA is the most in danger this decade. Their place in the market was being the most reliable, having a good launch history, or having the best assured access for the government, while SpaceX was the upstart. With SpaceX now argubly being in that position, with new upstarts rising, what place will ULA have?
This will take time, though. Even Falcon 9 took years to build up cadence, become further developed, and taking contracts in left, right, and center. SpaceX's dominance was also partially the fault of established players underestimating how long it would take to develop their next vehicles, leaving SpaceX in the position to take almost anything that was open. If they underestimate their position again, SpaceX will continue to win.
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u/DreamChaserSt 3d ago
Yeah, that's fair. I think it's more accurate to say they'll be feeling the pressure this decade then.
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u/FlyingBishop 3d ago
The ULA contracts should've been cancelled/renegotiated around the time SpaceX reused the same Falcon 9 20 times. In principle I think the president unilaterally cancelling contracts is illegal and wrong, but Trump is doing it left and right, I'm surprised he hasn't done it here already.
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u/redstercoolpanda 3d ago
Ula has its fangs dug deep into red states, and a lot of southern senator’s will fight tooth and nail to keep it around.
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u/FlyingBishop 3d ago
ULA can't deliver rockets at a fast enough pace. ULA is as much a second option as Rocket Labs. Even if Starliner/Vulcan/Atlas were perfectly meeting their contract they still wouldn't actually be capable of maintaining our presence on the ISS independently, SpaceX would still be doing the majority of the trips.
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u/FlyingBishop 3d ago
SpaceX has launched 12 rockets in the past month. If you have the money, you can launch with SpaceX, probably within 3 months. Even if you have the money, it's not guaranteed you could possibly launch with ULA.
Just realistically, say I want to launch a rocket in 2026. What do you think I would have to spend, and what would the chances that a rocket would actually launch? If I paid SpaceX $60 million there's a 90% chance I could launch a rocket in 2026. If I paid RocketLab or ULA $120 million I think there's exactly the same chance that I could launch a rocket in 2026, which is approximately 10% and I'm being generous, it's probably closer to 0% for either company. ULA and Rocket Labs are not "options" in the commercial sense, they are high-risk research projects.
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u/FlyingBishop 3d ago
Realistically, the lead time on launching a rocket with ULA is probably 5 years, and that might be optimistic. And I don't know which is more likely - that Rocket Labs can deliver a rocket 5 years from now or that ULA doesn't fall apart by then. I'm not saying that I think Rocket Labs is a viable competitor, I'm saying that practically speaking ULA is not a viable competitor given the long lead time, high prices, and uncertainty around their technology.
I'm not saying Rocket Labs is a viable second option, I'm saying none exists.
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u/CamusCrankyCamel 3d ago
Except Neutron will never be able to hit all the reference missions NSSF wants, which is first and foremost what Vulcan was designed to do. Even NG would need a kick stage to have a chance and BO is just as slow as ULA.
Also Starliner is a separate Boeing thing, has nothing to with ULA outside ULA being the LSP and sharing a parent company
And as far as Atlas goes, its only issue, outside of being expendable ofc, is that its contracted payloads are behind schedule, not the rocket itself
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u/FlyingBishop 3d ago edited 3d ago
I don't care about the schedule, I'm talking about manufacturing capability. The schedule is defined to make ULA look like a competitor, but SpaceX is manufacturing 4 rockets/year at least and ULA is struggling to do a single rocket/year, and ULA's rockets are expendable, so SpaceX is generating 80 rockets/year in new launch capacity while ULA is generating, if we're being generous, 3 rockets/year.
It's like saying some guy with a car is competing with a Taxi company that owns a fleet of taxis, he isn't and cannot. And Rocket labs, as a guy who thinks he can maybe get a car if we pay him is about as reliable.
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u/CamusCrankyCamel 3d ago
And? They’re not competing for launch capacity, they’re competing for launch contracts. ULA doesn’t give a shit how many rockets SpaceX has, they care about having customers for their rockets
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u/FlyingBishop 3d ago
The idea of competition is that you have two companies competing for a pool of contracts, but that's just not the case. In fact, at this point, all of ULA's contracts are invented so ULA has work. SpaceX is the only capable bidder who bids on most contracts, ULA is not capable.
ULA doesn't have customers, they have corrupt congressmen who give them money.
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u/Mike__O 3d ago
This is good, but by the time they catch up to Falcon 9, SpaceX will be winding down that rocket and working toward retiring it. Then the industry will be right back to playing catchup to Starship
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u/parkingviolation212 3d ago
Retiring the falcon nine depends on where the market is at. They did say they’ll continue to use it as long as people continue to want to buy it. I think there’s always a use case for medium lift rockets, even with a fully functional and reusable starship
But on principle you’re right. Everybody else is way too far behind.
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u/Mike__O 3d ago
It all depends on where they end up with the launch cost of Starship. If they meet their goals of cost per kg to orbit, there's no market case for the Falcon 9 (or any comparable Falcon 9 competitors), since it will be vastly cheaper to fly on Starship.
It seems overkill to use such a large rocket for relatively small payloads, but if you're talking about a launch cost that's half or less of launching your payload on a Falcon 9, why would you pay more for a "right size" rocket?
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u/CamusCrankyCamel 3d ago
You’re conflating cost and price. F9 already costs between 1/5 to 1/10 of other LSPs but the price is more like 3/4 to 1/2 and yet ULA still has no problems getting orders
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u/Ncyphe 3d ago
The cheap factor highly depends on schedules and ride sharing.
When it comes to satellites, those things can be launched whenever. Anything that needs a specific time frame to launch may end up in a scenario where they would have to cover the entire Sarship launch bill.
While it could be argued that it shouldn't be difficult to find rideshare partners when launching those special timed payloads, it may not always be the case.
I know SpaceX has been quoted that they want to discontinue the Falcon 9 once Starship is 100%. The question comes down to whether Space-DX is willing to maintain the Falcon 9 rockets alongside Starship for those rare cases when they can't fill Starship's payload? Or will they be willing to lose that profit to 3rd parties who can offer smaller, more independent launches for time-sensitive payloads.?
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u/FlyingBishop 3d ago
One thing is that a lot of the costs for a launch are fixed, and also, a lot of the Falcon 9 costs are inflated (possibly wildly inflated because SpaceX's only real customer, NASA, wants to pretend that SpaceX's competitors offer competitive pricing.)
What this means is that a Starship launch could plausibly cost roughly what a Falcon 9 launch costs. Even if it only costs 2x, there's a question of margin here. SpaceX may not have any interest in launching a Falcon 9, if 75% of the launch costs are fixed (the land required/exclusion zone isn't actually any larger for Starship, the mission control crew pay is the same, maintenance is maybe a little more work, but not necessarily that much more expensive) that remaining 25% being 2x, it's just not that meaningful.
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u/MS3FGX 3d ago
You could say that now when comparing Electron to Falcon 9. If you've got a small satellite, it would be cheaper to ride share on F9 than launch it on Electron.
But there's more to consider than just cost. There's always going to be value in being the primary payload. If you've got a particular orbit you need to be in, or have a very specific launch window, a ride share scenario may not meet your needs.
Plus, some customers just don't care. If it's a NASA or DoD payload, they'll happily pay extra to have the rocket all to themselves.
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u/Ncyphe 3d ago
The current head of Space-X (just below Musk) got her position because of her ability to market and sell flights on Falcon . . . long before it was even ready.
Assuming a company needs a specific orbit and/or time frame, I would not put it past her to be able to find 3rd parties who needs stuff in a similar orbit.
Think of it like in manufacturing. A small company may only need 10 units of something for a customer, but it's cheaper to just buy 100 units. They're going to take the 100 units, sell the 10 to their customer, then mark down the remaining 90 units as a overstock pricing. If a launch is purchased early enough, it should not be too difficult for Space-X to reach out to 3rd parties about the launch date to find companies needing products in similar orbits.
Think of it this way, the primary contractor probably paid extra to guarantee their flight, and whoever else rideshares the launch will merely have to split the difference. I would expect many smaller companies to jump at that possibility.
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u/monchota 3d ago
No they haven't, when they make a reusable rocket and can challenge SpaceX. They will be competition , the sad truth here is that SpaceX won by a large margin. Anyone else is at least a decade away, no matter what they spend. They all wanted traditional rockets and old as dirt politicians made it happen. This is the result, many companies spent a decade wasting money, instead of invwsting in reusable.
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u/CollegeStation17155 3d ago
New Glenn is on the verge of becoming a serious Falcon 9/H competitor; the relight failure on attempted landing is likely an easy fix, meaning that by this summer they will likely be capable of launching Falcon Heavy payloads while getting the equivalent of recovery on all 3 Falcon cores, which SpaceX gave up on. Depending on how many boosters they have and how cheap they can build second stages, they could conceivably undercut Falcon launch costs, taking away everything other than Starlinks.
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u/monchota 3d ago
In 5 years maybe, it might be close to the launch cadence and cost per Kilogram as SpaceX. Thats not included Starship, that is what the New Glenn is really competing with. So maybe. They can catch up if SpaceX just does nothing for 5 years
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u/CollegeStation17155 3d ago
New Glenn cannot compete with Starship until they have a reusable second stage and that's not even on the drawing boards yet. As long as it's second stage expended, it remains just a super Falcon Heavy. Starships (V1s) have already demonstrated reentry and soft landing (albeit somewhat the worse for wear) and SpaceX just static fired the second booster they caught in preparation for launching it again. By the time the first "Jarvis" is actually launched, SpaceX is probably going to be recycling Superheavies and Starships on a daily basis.
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u/FlyingBishop 3d ago
Maybe they're changing their culture, but it still doesn't seem like Blue Origin has the same cadence as SpaceX. Pretty much as soon as they had a Falcon 9, they were manufacturing Falcon 9 and Dragons every 3 months, this was back in 2010 after only 5 years of development. BO has been developing for 13 years and they're not even producing one rocket per year.
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u/CollegeStation17155 3d ago
I hope they are being honest when they say that they have 4 NGs under construction and the second one almost ready to fly... but yes, under Bob Smith, they seemed to be playing the cost plus game with Bezos for a long time. But Dave Limp seems to be made of sterner stuff; We'll just have to see whether his massive layoff was just getting rid of a bunch of useless hangers on or he just wrecked all the progress he made over the past year.
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u/CamusCrankyCamel 3d ago
What? From the first launch of F9 in 2010, it took them 2 years to just get to 3 launches total
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u/FlyingBishop 3d ago
Wikipedia says
By December 2010, the SpaceX production line was manufacturing one Falcon 9 and Dragon every three months
Launches are not the same thing as manufacturing, and like, even if Blue Origin's launch had been a disaster, if they were building a rocket every 3 months, I would be like "cool they are iterating." It's the same with Starship. People have this idea of a test flight being an end unto itself, it isn't. It's building that manufacturing cadence and being able to iterate that is important. When it takes you years to get to the point where you can do a single launch, those test flights are huge do-or-die moments, and it's still that way for Blue Origin. Even in Falcon 9's early days, even if a launch failed they had several more on the assembly line that would be ready to go soon. (Of course, it helps that their launches usually go well too.)
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u/CamusCrankyCamel 3d ago
Unless they weren’t ready to go soon, like when SpaceX didn’t launch anything in 2011 and only twice in 2012.
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u/TurgidGravitas 3d ago
I'll believe it when I see it. I'd love to see proper rocketry competition but there just hasn't been.
Compare tonnage to orbit. SpaceX has no competition right now.
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u/Adeldor 3d ago
... Neutron’s first stage is intended to be reusable after it parachutes down to the ocean.
This isn't so. Neutron's booster will land much like the Falcon 9 booster and Super heavy - under power.
While it might seem like a fiddly detail, paying attention to such is important for the credibility of the article.
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u/peaches4leon 3d ago
This was exactly the point of SpaceX in the first place!! All this new competition is Awesome!
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u/lurenjia_3x 3d ago
Saying they’re challenging SpaceX is a bit of an exaggeration, aiming for a spot in the top five is a more realistic take.
But compared to a decade ago, things have improved a lot: better hardware performance, a more mature supply chain, and plenty of reference material from SpaceX’s pathfinding efforts and breakdowns by enthusiastic space fans. All of that makes it possible to get off the ground faster now.
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u/lethalrainbow116 3d ago
Rival to F9 or FH? Sure. Thinking anyone can compete with Starship is just delusion right now. Nothing even comes close. As much as I hate to admit it.
We desperately do need a starship competitor, but it's going to be a long long time until we see one.
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u/ParagonRenegade 3d ago edited 3d ago
It’s easy to compete with starship, seeing as it still isn’t in active service and may never be.
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u/faeriara 3d ago
Compared to the development timelines of other rockets and given Starship's capabilities it's being developed at hyperspeed.
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u/ParagonRenegade 3d ago
On-paper capabilities for imagined missions a.k.a jack-shit. It remains an unproven, unreliable and dangerous design not suited to many of the missions people say it's built for.
For now the only iterative design is burning wreckage sinking to the ocean floor.
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u/DexClem 3d ago
People kept saying the same thing about F9 and reusable rockets, and now we've this thead.
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u/ParagonRenegade 3d ago
The literal child logic of "since unrelated x, unrelated y" that so infests this place isn't an argument.
Falcon 9 is just a moderately more efficient launch platform, it doesn't fundamentally change any realities of space travel, which is and will always be outrageously expensive and not economical. Nor does Starship for that matter, which yes, still doesn't work and may never work and is an inherently less practical design.
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u/DexClem 3d ago
Except x is developed by the same company that is developing y. Falcon 9 is launch platform now, it wasn't back then. Starship isn't trying to anything more outrageous than what falcon 9 set out to do back then. "Still doesn't work, may never work", is exactly what people said about F9. It's may not be a perfect design right now, but it will be iterated upon further to reach payload targets and efficiency, otherwise they would've likely scrapped it by now.
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u/ParagonRenegade 3d ago
Success in the field, let alone a highly technical one, is by no means an assurance of success in something else, especially seeing how badly the Starship launches have gone. The actual fundamentals of the design may just not be practical for widespread use, or too unsafe for human use, or any use at all.
The time to celebrate Starship is when it actually brings a full payload to orbit, and not when it delivers a banana to the Indian Ocean.
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u/DexClem 3d ago
No one is celebrating starship right now, its an in development/testing rocket. People just celebrate its significant testing milestones. I'm sure spaceX would've moved on from the design if it was as impractical as you say it is.
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u/ParagonRenegade 3d ago
Starship has missed its milestones, by years. Several years ago Musk (🤮) said 2024 would see Starship being certified for a moon mission LOL.
I'm sure NASA would've moved on from the Shuttle if it was so impractical smh. (there's any number of reasons why they wouldn't move on)
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u/G0TouchGrass420 3d ago
I dunno. I work for a company that does work for blue origin monthly maintenance type stuff on their water treatment.
The place has been a ghost town for 5 + years. I mean gigantic facilities with like 3 people in the entire building. Everything is really nice and clean tho
Its crazy I maintenance stuff that.....has never been used since the building was built 10 years ago.
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u/Ncyphe 3d ago
I hate to say this, but this is all old news. Many of these companies have existed for a while now. After SpaceX proved that space can be "affordable," many companies have been jumping into the arena to try and replicate what SpaceX has done.
Before the Falcon 9, companies were laughing at the idea of a self-landing booster. Now, companies are striving to build their own self-landing boosters.
After Space-X caught Super-Heavy, some of those same companies have now opted to research into catching their boosters instead. The increase in payload capacity by sacrificing the landing gear is a huge boon. I think it was Rocketlabs who decided to abandon their in air catch of a booster via plane to just catching it back on the pad, eliminating the need for a parachute or even risking pilots to catch the booster.
The big difference between SpaceX and all the other companies is their willingness to not only forego years of theoretical simulation testing but also to burn money in the hopes to study the real thing.
Additionally, Space-X wants to decommission Falcon 9 after Starship is 100% operational. There are already 3rd parties working on rockets they hope will replace Falcon 9 for "light" launches.
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u/CamusCrankyCamel 3d ago
RTLS will always have a far greater payload penalty vs down range recovery, landing legs or not. Starship was designed to be caught ultimately for size and turnaround reasons, the mass fraction bonus is relatively minor
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u/cstar1996 3d ago
Who was laughing at a self landing booster?
What made SpaceX different was Musk’s willingness to gamble billions on a reusable rocket, not engineering brilliance. If the government wanted a reusable, self landing booster, and was willing to pay for it, it would have gotten one.
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u/Ncyphe 3d ago
Everyone was laughing at SpaceX until they did it. Before SpaceX succeeded, companies like ULA, Lockheed, and Boewing scoffed at the idea of a self-landing rocket, believing the idea to be more expensive than simply recovering the boosters from the ocean and refurbishing them.
They simply could not look beyond their own experience.
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u/cstar1996 3d ago
Who and where? Repeating the claim doesn’t make it true.
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u/Ncyphe 3d ago edited 3d ago
I gave you the who.
The following is an excerpt from an article by Quartz that I could find on such short notice. But there are more articles that echo the same notion. People had zero faith on self landing boosters.
The latest launches are a sign it is starting to become routine. But until recently, the mere idea was scoffed at by the most experienced players in the industry. Rockets were only economical as “expendable” systems, used once and abandoned.
“There was a chief engineer of another launch provider, I will not say the name, who told me, categorically, to my face, you will never land a first-stage booster. It is impossible, and even if you do it, it will be completely wrecked,” Martin Halliwell --------------- https://qz.com/1016072/a-multimedia-history-of-every-single-one-of-spacexs-attempts-to-land-its-booster-rocket-back-on-earth
A post from 4 years ago on r/SpaceXLounge explained it better than I can
‐--------------
Vertically landing reusable boosters were studied roughly for as long as people have been making civilian rockets (for military ones obviously it would be rather pointless), NASA even performed studies on it for Saturn I and V. But in the 1960s the assumption was that any rocket design would be obsolete long before it recouped the R&D cost of reuse. Which is probably an accurate assumption, seeing how quickly all of those rocket designs were killed off.
You try finding articles you read from years ago.
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u/Ok-Mycologist5955 3d ago
ULA famously created a graph showing booster reuse made no sense economically
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u/faeriara 3d ago edited 3d ago
Here's Arianespace describing reusability as "a dream" in 2013: https://x.com/timsoret/status/1833990024049631738
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u/TheVenusianMartian 3d ago
"the company has managed to edge out former aerospace heavyweights", This seems untrue, since the demand for rockets from the old heavyweights is still more than what they can supply.
"it (SpaceX) accounted for 87% of the country’s orbital launches in 2024", This is not from them consuming all available launch contracts, this is because they created more launches from within SpaceX for Starlink.
"Since the mid-2010s, the company has dominated NASA’s launch contracts and become a major Pentagon contractor", Typically, this has been because they were willing to place a bid, and they can deliver. NASA has often tried to get more bids but other companies don't have a product to bid, or they can't meet all the requirements. Basically, SpaceX is often the only company to even show up.
"A host of companies have readied rockets that are comparable to SpaceX’s main launch vehicles", This seems an exaggeration IMO. BO has a New Glenn that will likely be the first to actually compete with Falcon 9, though it is a larger class of rocket, but it has not yet accomplished reuse (hopefully it will soon). Rocketlab has Nuetron in the works that might can compete but is quite a bit smaller (reuse is planned for this rocket too). I don't know of any other rockets that come close to being considered comparable.
"the companies could also face unusual headwinds, given that SpaceX’s Elon Musk has an especially close relationship with the Trump administration and has allies at federal regulatory agencies, including those that provide oversight of the industry.", This claim has no backing. What are the headwinds? What has actually been done by SpaceX or Elon that is harming the other rocket companies? Where is the information to back this claim? I can certainly see why some would worry that SpaceX would want to return the favor of endless roadblocks and frivolous lawsuits (looking at BO) but, I have not heard of any evidence that this has actually happened.
Everyone (even SpaceX) say they want more companies competing in this market. We have been waiting for a long time. However, what we are seeing from the industry is still falling short of expectations and desires IMO. Still, it is encouraging to see that two companies are starting to get close. I do expect great things from both BO and Rocketlab.
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u/travturav 3d ago
I'm all for competition, but spaceX has an enormous lead and currently still has the best tech. Competitors will have to work hard to develop very small niches.
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u/Martianspirit 3d ago
Let's hope that other companies can compete at cost. Spacex was always laser focused on cost.
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u/Decronym 3d ago edited 1d ago
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| ATK | Alliant Techsystems, predecessor to Orbital ATK |
| BO | Blue Origin (Bezos Rocketry) |
| CST | (Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules |
| Central Standard Time (UTC-6) | |
| DoD | US Department of Defense |
| EELV | Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle |
| EUS | Exploration Upper Stage |
| EVA | Extra-Vehicular Activity |
| GAO | (US) Government Accountability Office |
| ICPS | Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage |
| LEO | Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km) |
| Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations) | |
| LIGO | Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory |
| LSP | Launch Service Provider |
| (US) Launch Service Program | |
| NG | New Glenn, two/three-stage orbital vehicle by Blue Origin |
| Natural Gas (as opposed to pure methane) | |
| Northrop Grumman, aerospace manufacturer | |
| NSSL | National Security Space Launch, formerly EELV |
| RTLS | Return to Launch Site |
| SLS | Space Launch System heavy-lift |
| SRB | Solid Rocket Booster |
| ULA | United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture) |
| Jargon | Definition |
|---|---|
| Starliner | Boeing commercial crew capsule CST-100 |
| Starlink | SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation |
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
[Thread #11224 for this sub, first seen 3rd Apr 2025, 16:21] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
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u/potato-shaped-nuts 3d ago
This, friends, is what capitalism looks like.
Space X, through innovation, is creating a market.
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u/Ok_Helicopter4276 3d ago
I’m a Rocket Lab fan and dislike SpaceX but the fact is SpaceX has no true rivals right now because of their payload capacity and launch cadence.
Wake me up if anyone else gets to a cadence of 12/yr or better for more than 1 ton of payload.
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u/nickik 1d ago
New Glenn is far closer to Falcon 9/Heavy then Starship. People just think it Starship because it looks big. And the only reason Blue Origin is relevant at all is becuase they literally have an infinity money hack. They are losing billions over billions over billions. Its not even funny.
And a host of companies have been 'readying' rockets for many many years now. This is nothing new.
When these rockets launch more then 1-2 a year we can start talking about them being relevant.
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u/Iamthe0c3an2 3d ago
More competition is good, just hope they can catch up, cause they’ve got an incredible head start with reusable rockets.
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u/ParagonRenegade 3d ago
When did /space get taken over by libertarian losers.
Space is and always should be the common heritage of mankind.
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u/CrystalMenthol 3d ago
If only the ones we put in charge of "common heritage" were technically competent. SLS is an overengineered waste of taxpayer money precisely because they let everyone be a "stakeholder" and make demands about where and how it was built, focusing more on politics than technology.
For some objectives, small focused teams that don't have to answer to society at large are simply a better option. Notions about "the common heritage of mankind" come after we've actually done something worth commemorating, like getting to Mars.
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u/ParagonRenegade 3d ago
Government agencies and their subordinate contractors have achieved huge feats of science and engineering, including launch vehicles that have surpassed anything in modern use. And don't put "common heritage" in quotes, that is what it is, full stop.
Starship is also a titanic waste of money and time (that may not even amount to anything, it's been a continuous failure!), as are virtually all other private space projects, which are just money pits. Their sole saving grace and what keeps the lights on are government contracts and putting commercial satellites in orbit. Not science, not exploration, not colonization, nothing that meaningfully pushes the boundaries.
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u/js1138-2 2d ago
The money making division of SpaceX is StarLink. Launches are not really profitable.
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u/Reddit-runner 2d ago
private space projects, which are just money pits. Their sole saving grace and what keeps the lights on are government contracts and putting commercial satellites in orbit.
Well, except SpaceX.
Not science, not exploration, not colonization, nothing that meaningfully pushes the boundaries.
Sure. Landing F9 boosters has not pushed any boundaries.
Starship is also a titanic waste of money and time
This has also been claimed about the F9 booster landing. Look where we are now.
Starship will make Starlink even more profitable. It is perfectly cut for that roll.
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u/Runaway-Kotarou 3d ago
Good for competition but sad that space will be exploited by corporate asshats.
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u/greenw40 3d ago
As opposed to being used as a tool of war?
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u/Runaway-Kotarou 3d ago
Lots of govts at least do some things for the benefit of the people through some things like research on top of the bad stuff.
Corporate asshats will do none of that and still fill it with war, Idk what universe you're living in to think they won't, so my point still stands.
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u/greenw40 3d ago
Lots of govts at least do some things for the benefit of the people.
And so do corporations. If you think they're doing it just to get paid then governments are doing it just to get elected.
Corporate asshats will do none of that and still fill it with war, Idk what universe you're living in to think they won't, so my point still stands.
Yeah, you sound like a rational individual and not just another leftist weirdo trying to push their class war.
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u/Runaway-Kotarou 3d ago
If there ain't immediate profit corps don't give a shit. And do you forget about the military industrial complex? They would happily jump into space militarization cuz it's big $$$ for them. You sound like someone who would rather make ad hominem attacks rather than admit you either have your head in the sand, are paid to push silly talking points, or just don't know what they are talking about
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u/greenw40 3d ago
If there ain't immediate profit corps don't give a shit.
This makes no sense at all. If it were true the amount of corporate research would be zero and something like Space X wouldn't even exist.
And do you forget about the military industrial complex?
So why are they making these weapons for? Other corporations, governments?
They would happily jump into space militarization cuz it's big $$$ for them.
And that money is coming from governments. If they can make just as much money peacefully moving people around or providing another service, they would do that instead.
You sound like someone who would rather make ad hominem attacks rather than admit you either have your head in the sand, are paid to push silly talking points
Or, get this, I'm not a brain dead reddit socialist whose entire identity revolves around "corporations bad".
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u/stocksandvagabond 3d ago
The military industrial complex comes from exorbitant government spending and lack of governmental controls…
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u/stocksandvagabond 3d ago
American Corporations used satellites to create gps and now it’s provided for free to the entire world. You have a skewed view if you think governments have launched that level of innovation and are willing to make it available to every other country
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u/Runaway-Kotarou 3d ago
GPS was made for the military by the military industrial complex and then govt under Reagan allowed it to be used freely after the Korean airlines disaster in the early 80s. It wasn't a corporate act of good will. So you can quit with the revisionist history.
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u/CollegeStation17155 3d ago
And I guess Starlinks haven't been used to aid in disaster recovery in any major incident since 2020?
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u/stocksandvagabond 3d ago
The GPS that you and me and everyone else in the world uses today was developed by corporations and made available by corporations. Who provided the platform and usability of it?
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u/TheGreatAutismo__ 3d ago
Good, making Space Karen Apartheid Hitler cry so much more brings joy to the cockles of m' 'art.
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u/gresendial 3d ago
Till Elon is removed from SpaceX, I'm happy if someone treats them the same as Mordecai's father treats his competitors.
Career day - SNL - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7HD2xG92-0
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u/Mrstrawberry209 3d ago
Good! The more competition on different continents the better.