SPACEX AND THE RISE OF ALTSPACE
SpaceX is the foundation of the new space economy, but their focus will shift to prioritizing Starship, Mars, and the moons of Jupiter. Altspace is rising to meet new commercial demand.
Before SpaceX: Space was the domain of governments and a handful of defense primes. Visionaries had tried and failed to commercialize it.
After SpaceX: Elon Musk and SpaceX succeeded. SpaceX not only succeeded where others couldn't but birthed the modern space economy: a high-cadence, reusable, vertically integrated platform that slashed launch costs and reshaped global strategy.
Altspace Rising: Falcon 9 will remain a backbone of orbital launch, but circumstances will accelerate SpaceX’s turn to focus on development of making life interplanetary. A new wave of companies – Altspace – is rising to expand the launch market and fill in every other orbital and lunar niche. For example, Rocket Lab has emerged as a competitive force in launch with recent year-over-year growth on launch cadence outpacing SpaceX. Alternatives to Starlink have emerged with global satcom companies.
Passing the Torch: What began as a one-company revolution is becoming a true market. SpaceX will remain a dominant force in the industry for many years but having more options for government and commercial customers, and for investors, will be a long-term positive.
COMMERCIAL SPACE RISING: THE SPACEX STORY
Before Musk: Valiant Visionary’s Space Efforts
"If people say I'm doing something crazy, that's usually a good sign."
- Andrew BealThe difficulty of building a successful space company is exemplified by the numerous previous attempts that had either limited success or failed despite vision, deep pockets, and engineering expertise. With this mission history, the accomplishments of SpaceX are remarkable.
The SpaceX Breakthrough
"I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble."
- AugustusSpaceX began with a vision and a failure; Elon Musk first attempted to buy refurbished Russian missiles without success in 2001 and 2002. This trip included current Phantom Space CEO Jim Cantrell. The decision was subsequently made to build rockets in-house. Musk began reading textbooks and assembled a team of engineers, including current Impulse Space CEO Tom Mueller. They ultimately designed and built Falcon 1 from scratch. After three failed launches, SpaceX was at risk of failure. The 4th flight, in 2008, was successful and was followed by a $1.9B NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) contract. SpaceX later, in 2014, sued the U.S. Air Force to compete for national security launches. The Air Force ultimately did agree to open up competition.
The reusable Falcon 9 rocket became the workhorse of modern launch and ushered in the era of commercial space. The Falcon 9 completed the first commercial supply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2012 and the first commercial launch of humans to space in 2020. The company launch cadence now exceeds that of any government and is the only reason that the U.S. doesn’t trail China in launch.
From False Starts to Leading the World in Launch
"I don't think there is any deeper fulfillment that can capture a human heart than the feeling of an inventor seeing his ideas materialized."
- Nikola TeslaBefore SpaceX, making space launch profitable had not been demonstrated; space launch remained the domain of governments and a small number of defense contractors.
When Elon Musk founded SpaceX in 2002, the company’s early focus was the aforementioned Falcon 1 with Merlin engine, a small expendable rocket built in-house from first principles. When the fourth launch succeeded in 2008, the company was saved from the brink of bankruptcy and went on to win a critical $1.6B NASA COTS contract to supply the ISS. Reliable commercial launch revenue was beginning.
The development of Falcon 9, beginning in 2005 and launching in 2010, is what ultimately reshaped global launch economics. Falcon 9 started as an expendable medium-lift vehicle, powered by clustered Merlin engines and designed with a vertical integration in mind; SpaceX built nearly everything in-house including engines, structures, avionics, and software. This method allowed rapid iteration and cost control; a defining characteristic of SpaceX engineering success.
The next major innovation came with autonomous drone ship recovery. In 2015, SpaceX landed a Falcon 9 booster on a floating platform at sea; a feat previously considered impossible. What began as a proof-of-concept became routine. Over the next several years, using the paradigm of airplane travel, SpaceX transformed the launch paradigm from disposable rockets to reusable hardware, dramatically reducing costs and increasing launch cadence.
In 2018, the company introduced the Block 5 version of Falcon 9. This was a fully reusable booster. Turnaround times shortened. Falcon 9 flights grew from a handful per year to dozens, outpacing every national launch provider on Earth.
The rest of the world is still catching up. Russia's launch cadence declined. Europe's Ariane 6 launched once in 2024 and once in 2025. China developing and testing reusable rockets but does not yet have any in operation. In contrast, SpaceX completed over 100 orbital launches last year, most of them with reused boosters. This is a cadence unmatched by any nation or alliance.
Today, Falcon 9 is the backbone of the modern space economy powering not just Starlink and Starshield, but also delivering satellites for commercial customers, NASA missions, and U.S. national security payloads. It is both a launch platform and an economic engine.
From Leading the World in Launch to Leading the World in Satellite Communications
After redefining space launch and proving a viable business model, SpaceX provided a second viable business model in satellite communications.
In 2019, SpaceX launched the first satellites of the Starlink constellation: a low-Earth orbit (LEO) broadband network designed, built, and deployed entirely in-house. Within five years, Starlink had grown into the largest satellite network in history, no with over 7,600 satellites in orbit. This expansion created a second major revenue stream for SpaceX, and demonstrated that commercial space constellations could be not just technically feasible, but profitable and scalable.
Starlink delivers high-speed, low-latency internet to more than three million users across over 70 countries, including rural communities, ships at sea, aircraft in flight, and deployed military units. The service has proven resilient in conflict zones, offering crucial communications in Ukraine, the Middle East, and other areas where terrestrial infrastructure is degraded or censored. Its modular hardware and global reach have disrupted telecom models and reframed what’s possible for satellite connectivity.
In parallel, SpaceX launched Starshield, a classified counterpart to Starlink built for government and defense customers. With direct contracts from the U.S. Department of Defense, Space Force, and intelligence agencies, Starshield provides secure communications, tactical networking, and satellite data relay. These systems are designed to integrate with existing military command structures and can operate as a hardened, survivable layer in future conflicts.
Together, Starlink and Starshield have positioned SpaceX not just as the world’s dominant launch provider, but as the operator of the most consequential communications infrastructure in orbit. For the first time in history, a private company, not a national government, leads in both access to space and space-based connectivity.
THE RISE OF ALTSPACE: FROM MONOPOLY TO MARKETPLACE
SpaceX will remain the dominant force in heavy launch and the leading candidate for crewed Mars missions. Just as Netscape and AOL Time Warner were foundational but did not define the totality of the internet economy, SpaceX will not be the entire story of the space economy. A commercial ecosystem, Altspace is emerging.
AltSpace refers to the growing network of venture-backed space companies with bona fide achievements, accomplished leadership, and differentiated technical capabilities. These are not paper companies or PowerPoint startups. Many have completed orbital missions, secured defense and civil contracts, and are led by veterans of SpaceX, NASA, and national labs and space programs. AltSpace is the commercial frontier.
Varda Space has completed three successful downmass missions, demonstrating controlled re-entry and space-based pharmaceutical manufacturing; a foundation for orbital biotech and advanced materials.
Impulse Space, founded by SpaceX propulsion architect Tom Mueller, has developed orbital transfer vehicles that bridge the gap between launch providers and precise orbital targets.
Relativity Space introduced the world’s first 3D-printed rockets and has now shifted focus to a fully reusable medium-to-heavy launch system, Terran R, with capability similar to Falcon 9.
Space Nuclear Power Corporation (SpaceNukes) is leading the race to deploy a fission reactor in space, with a TRL-6 reactor on a $34M USAF contract and designs ready for Golden Dome deployment.
Virtus Solis is pioneering space-based solar power (SBSP), aiming to beam wireless energy from orbit to Earth or lunar surface receivers.
The Amazon Kuiper constellation has begun satellite deployments to compete directly with Starlink. Meanwhile, Lynk Global and AST SpaceMobile are building direct-to-cellphone satellite networks, already in trial phases with major telecom partners.
These new entrants will reduce launch costs even further and are proving profitable business models in the space economy. Altspace companies are targeting specific verticals: space stations, satellite servicing, lunar mining, in-space logistics, orbital manufacturing, persistent surveillance, and distributed power.
SPACEX 2.0: MARS OR BUST
With thousands of Starlink satellites in orbit and Falcon 9 as the foundation of global launch, SpaceX has established the backbone of today’s space economy. Having achieved large revenues and profitability in launch and space-based internet, it is now entering a new phase. The next engineering challenge is laying the foundation for humanity’s expansion to Mars.
At the heart of this pivot is Starship: a fully reusable super heavy-lift vehicle capable of delivering over 100 tons to orbit. Designed to carry cargo and crews to the orbit, the Moon, and Mars, Starship represents a leap in technical ambition. It aims to make interplanetary spaceflight affordable and routine. It will have secondary results like effective point-to-point travel across Earth; any destination within one hour. Early tests have validated core systems, but the development path remains arduous. Full reusability, thermal protection, orbital refueling, and Moon/Mars-specific operations each present formidable engineering challenges. Progress is real, but slower than Elon Musk’s projections, and it requires focused, company-wide intensity.
Accelerating this transition is the recent public rift between Musk and Donald Trump. While the rift is essentially resolved, the dispute has shown the vulnerability of relying on a single company for government space. The defense and civil space communities further recognize the need to reduce overreliance on a single private provider.
Starship is both a risk and an opportunity. If SpaceX succeeds, it will once again redefine the space industry, this time unlocking planetary-scale logistics and enabling industrial-scale infrastructure off-Earth. But if delays persist, it should not be relied upon as the thing that will fully unleash the space economy.
SpaceX 2.0 is no longer just a launch and satcom company. It is an interplanetary logistics firm, betting everything on a future beyond Earth.
THE NEXT TEN YEARS
The decade ahead will be defined not just by SpaceX’s continued leadership, but by the emergence of a truly competitive and diverse space economy. SpaceX will maintain launch dominance for the coming years and Starship will play a central role in NASA’s Artemis program. Around that backbone, a new generation of companies is building out the next layer of the space economy, transforming space into a functional domain for business, defense, logistics, and science. The market size of space will end up dwarfing the one on Earth.
What SpaceX did for launch, other companies are now doing across every subsequent segment. Varda has proven commercial downmass. Rocket Lab has matured into a dependable launch and spacecraft platform. Intuitive Machines has successfully landed on the Moon. Lynk is enabling direct-to-device satellite texting. These are not speculative ventures, they are real systems operating in space, with real customers and revenue.
The next ten years are about infrastructure: orbital tugs, lunar power stations, in-space manufacturing, communications, servicing, and return logistics. This is the AltSpace opportunity: building space into a working economy.
As in the early days of the internet, the platform phase is over. The buildout phase has begun.
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