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“I've done crazier things than dry out a radio antenna.” //
Demo-2, the first orbital human spaceflight to launch from the United States since NASA's space shuttle fleet retired in 2011, is a joint SpaceX-NASA effort. The company holds a $2.6 billion contract with NASA's Commercial Crew Program to fly six operational crewed missions to the ISS, and Demo-2 is designed to fully validate Crew Dragon and the Falcon 9 for those flights. //
Approximately two-thirds of the global launch market is effectively closed to competition because these are national payloads. For example, Russia and other space-faring countries will typically launch their military and science satellites on domestic rockets. Only about one-third of the overall launch market—consisting of satellite constellations, communications and imaging satellites for nations without launch programs, and other payloads—is truly open to competition.
Decades ago, US launch companies ceded this commercial market as they began to focus on winning more lucrative contracts to launch payloads for the US military. By 2006, when Boeing and Lockheed Martin consolidated their rocket businesses into a single company, United Launch Alliance, America essentially captured zero percent of the competitive launch market. Customers in the United States and abroad turned to more economical launchers in Europe, Russia, and elsewhere to reach orbit. Meanwhile, with a monopoly on launching missions for NASA and the US Department of Defense, United Launch Alliance’s prices steadily rose.
The success of the Falcon 9 rocket reversed this trend dramatically. Seeking lower cost delivery of supplies to the International Space Station, NASA invested $396 million in SpaceX from 2006 to 2010 to develop its Cargo Dragon spacecraft, the Falcon 9 rocket, and a launch pad at the Cape. This investment, which precipitated the June 4, 2010 launch from Florida, delivered not just value for NASA, but for the country. //
“Because of the investments that NASA has made into SpaceX we now have, the United States of America now has about 70 percent of the commercial launch market,” said the space agency’s administrator, Jim Bridenstine. “That is a big change from 2012 when we had exactly zero percent.” //
Most visibly, the company demonstrated reuse of the first stage booster. On its very next mission following the CRS-7 failure, in fact, SpaceX landed a Falcon 9 first stage for the first time. The next April, the company nailed its first drone ship landing. Then, in March 2017, the company successfully re-flew a Falcon 9 first stage for the first time. In the three years since, SpaceX has landed more than 50 rockets and flown the same booster five or more times.
Carissa Christensen, founder of Bryce Space and Technology, an analytics firm, said the reuse of vertically launched and landed rockets had been discussed in the aerospace community for decades. "This was always something that would make a difference, and it was desirable, but it never happened," she said. "Then SpaceX made it happen."
Moreover, she said, the company did this on its own initiative. Typically in spaceflight, a government agency will offer a contract for some type of project and pick a contractor to do the work. Although SpaceX received a substantial amount of NASA funding for cargo and crew delivery to the space station, it got no money for reuse. Instead, Christensen said, the company invested its own funds to clear a "very, very high" technical hurdle that others had aspired to. In return for chancing its own funds on reuse, SpaceX now has the world's only reusable, orbital rocket, and it has just furthered its ability to dominate the commercial satellite market. //
"It's clear that the space industry is on a path toward next-generation launch vehicles," she said. "But SpaceX is 10 years ahead of those next-generation launch vehicles. SpaceX had its first launch of its next-generation launch vehicle 10 years ago." The world of launch, she marveled, has tilted almost beyond recognition from a decade ago. Then, SpaceX was the upstart. Now the Falcon 9 is considered the old, reliable launch vehicle. //