Huda Thomas@huda.thomas

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SpaceX and the Space Force launch squeeze

A ride to orbit is the scarcest thing in space, and the company that controls most of it also has its own AI satellites waiting to go up. That is the squeeze nobody priced in. Three Space Force missions came up and SpaceX said no to all three. Not one other rocket company stepped forward to take them. Federal law says the Pentagon has to keep at least two launch vehicles alive that can carry any national security payload, and for those three missions the count of willing companies was zero. Rewind to April 2014. SpaceX went to court over the Air Force handing United Launch Alliance a sole-source block buy of 36 rocket cores for national security launches. Musk's pitch was that military launches belonged in open competition, and if SpaceX entered and lost, fine. ULA was running on Russian-made engines back then and he made sure people heard about it. Twelve years later the company that sued to break a monopoly is the monopoly, and the week made that concrete. The board: SpaceX flew 85% of American launches in 2025. ULA's Vulcan sat grounded this year after booster trouble. Blue Origin's New Glenn blew up on its only Florida pad in May and probably is not back until next year. Seraphim does not see launch capacity easing before 2029, and capacity is what binds the entire industry right now. Layer in SpaceX's own AI arm, which pulled $7.5 billion of the company's $14.6 billion in revenue last quarter. The 2027 Starship flights are aimed at Starlink V3 and prototype data centers. Falcon 9 is on the way out, and plenty of military satellites will not fit on Starship. So the one thing everybody needs, a lift uphill, sits with a company that has its own hardware in the queue. Meanwhile the same man is reportedly set to join a Pentagon commission on the future of warfare, and nine current and former officials told Politico that raises conflict-of-interest concerns. Here is the part that gets skipped: no rule got broken. A private company can decline a customer. That is exactly the issue. Washington allowed national security to rest on a vendor that can say no. SpaceX got here by being cheaper and better than the field, and the stumbles at ULA and Blue Origin are not Elon's fault. A Space Force general says the gaps are temporary and the military is working through them. But if launch counts as national-security infrastructure, then regulate it like infrastructure. Whoever holds most of the capacity should set aside a slice for military missions. The Pentagon should fund a second provider even at a premium, since the law already asks for it. And no launch company should be in the room drafting the Pentagon's war plans. SpaceX won the fight it opened in 2014. The trophy was the Pentagon's dependence, fr

2h

Huda Thomas@huda.thomas

Follow

SpaceX and the Space Force launch squeeze

A ride to orbit is the scarcest thing in space, and the company that controls most of it also has its own AI satellites waiting to go up. That is the squeeze nobody priced in. Three Space Force missions came up and SpaceX said no to all three. Not one other rocket company stepped forward to take them. Federal law says the Pentagon has to keep at least two launch vehicles alive that can carry any national security payload, and for those three missions the count of willing companies was zero. Rewind to April 2014. SpaceX went to court over the Air Force handing United Launch Alliance a sole-source block buy of 36 rocket cores for national security launches. Musk's pitch was that military launches belonged in open competition, and if SpaceX entered and lost, fine. ULA was running on Russian-made engines back then and he made sure people heard about it. Twelve years later the company that sued to break a monopoly is the monopoly, and the week made that concrete. The board: SpaceX flew 85% of American launches in 2025. ULA's Vulcan sat grounded this year after booster trouble. Blue Origin's New Glenn blew up on its only Florida pad in May and probably is not back until next year. Seraphim does not see launch capacity easing before 2029, and capacity is what binds the entire industry right now. Layer in SpaceX's own AI arm, which pulled $7.5 billion of the company's $14.6 billion in revenue last quarter. The 2027 Starship flights are aimed at Starlink V3 and prototype data centers. Falcon 9 is on the way out, and plenty of military satellites will not fit on Starship. So the one thing everybody needs, a lift uphill, sits with a company that has its own hardware in the queue. Meanwhile the same man is reportedly set to join a Pentagon commission on the future of warfare, and nine current and former officials told Politico that raises conflict-of-interest concerns. Here is the part that gets skipped: no rule got broken. A private company can decline a customer. That is exactly the issue. Washington allowed national security to rest on a vendor that can say no. SpaceX got here by being cheaper and better than the field, and the stumbles at ULA and Blue Origin are not Elon's fault. A Space Force general says the gaps are temporary and the military is working through them. But if launch counts as national-security infrastructure, then regulate it like infrastructure. Whoever holds most of the capacity should set aside a slice for military missions. The Pentagon should fund a second provider even at a premium, since the law already asks for it. And no launch company should be in the room drafting the Pentagon's war plans. SpaceX won the fight it opened in 2014. The trophy was the Pentagon's dependence, fr

2h