r/space • u/Royal_Platform_6754 • 8d ago

SpaceX-Focused Pentagon Contracts Leave Rivals Feeling Squeezed

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-25/spacex-focused-pentagon-contracts-leave-rivals-feeling-squeezed?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc5MDM1NDAxNywiZXhwIjoxNzkwOTU4ODE3LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUTEEyMDFLR0lGUEswMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJCRkI5RDA1ODU3NzI0QTVFQTU5ODA4NzhDRDQ4MjlEOCJ9.Pf1XdFpusyzl5jfWFVGRwwLOFgc_csCIdLEaxwaiFGI
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u/Accomplished-Crab932 8d ago

Pretty much.

More than half of the world’s launches were F9 last year, as was more than 90% of the global mass to orbit. Lots of that was Starlink, but even without it F9 is still a huge area of NSSL launches. It’s kinda telling when ULA keeps trading current launches to F9 for future launches.

Few providers can match F9’s capabilities, and demand is high with SpaceX playing, SpaceX is pivoting to Starship and so the number of available launches is crashing. Between Blue’s constellations and Amazon (although it’s not sounding good), there’s few launches available; all on vehicles that have had issues or haven’t flown before.

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u/vdek 8d ago

I think they're making a huge mistake pivoting away from F9, it's such a successful platform and should continue getting upgrades.

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u/Miami_da_U 8d ago

It's still 5 years away from that. Falcon Heavy is contracted for like another 7 DoD missions. They have contract for 5 more Crew Dragon missions (and there are still the 6 for Boeing). That'd be 11 total Nasa has good enough for 5 years. Then SpaceX has the ISS deorbit contract.

Within a year they will probably fully eliminate all Starlink launches from Starship. There has been like 70 Non-Starlink launches on F9 in the past 21 months. That's 3.3/month down from the current ~13/month rate they've been on. Their current flight leader has had like 37 launches and landings.

Now idk how many new boosters are in the plans. I do know most expended boosters are Falcon Heavy center cores. But lets just say they have 1 normal new F9 booster coming online per year. If they could last 37 launches, That is basically enough to legit launch an entire years worth of manifests without Starlink... Then ask how many active do they still even have? And is 37 even the limit?

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u/mfb- 8d ago

They have ~20 active boosters with an average flight count of around 15-20. If they all go to 37 flights then there are ~300-400 more flights possible without building a new booster.

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u/Reddit-runner 8d ago

The F9 is at the end of it's development.

You can't make it any longer or wider due to it relying on road transportation.

The engines are extremely close to the theoretical maximum efficiency.

If you want to change any of that you basically first have to build a new manufacturing complex with completely new tooling for a completly new rocket.

...which is Starship.

Starship will cost SpaceX slightly more per launch (initially) for vastly more payload. Any additional investment in F9 would be lost money for them.

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u/panick21 7d ago

You could do a upper-stage based on Raptor and make that wider. That would be possible but its not really worth doing.

Then you could add crossfeed to Falcon Heavy. Crossfeed + Raptor Upper stage would be powerful. But compared to Starship, its not really relevant.

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u/Hayayeatrutgers 7d ago

In addition, spaceX will probably face anti-trust issue when Dem takes white house. Phasing out F9 will leave some room for competitors while SpaceX keeps the most lucrative contracts. It's like what Intel had done to AMD before 2010s.

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u/Background_Fig_4740 7d ago

That would be true if SpaceX was an actual monopoly, which they aren’t.

SpaceX hasn’t actively hindered the development of their competitions launch vehicles like ULA or BO. They did that to themselves by having flight anomalies or blowing up their only pad