Elon Musk’s SpaceX Now Has a ‘De Facto’ Monopoly on Rocket Launches

The company’s rock­ets are fer­ry­ing astro­nauts, launch­ing satel­lites and dom­i­nat­ing any competition

Satel­lite oper­a­tors and gov­ern­ment agen­cies doing busi­ness in space are increas­ing­ly depen­dent on one com­pa­ny to help them reach orbit: Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

SpaceX has cor­nered much of the rock­et-launch mar­ket, with a proven fleet of reusable rock­ets that can fly at a pace that rivals can’t match—and at low­er prices. The company’s rock­ets pow­ered 66% of cus­tomer flights from Amer­i­can launch sites in 2022, and han­dled 88% in the first six months of this year, accord­ing to launch data com­piled by Jonathan McDow­ell, an astro­physi­cist who tracks space activity.

To read the full arti­cle, please vis­it: WSJ

Pho­to: SpaceX used a Fal­con 9 rock­et to launch a Crew Drag­on space­craft with NASA astro­nauts on board to the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion from the Kennedy Space Cen­ter last Octo­ber. JOEL KOWSKY/​NASA VIA GETTY IMAGES