SpaceX’s grip on the launch market is already enormous, and Elon Musk says the next phase will make today’s dominance look modest.
In a recent post on X, Musk said the company is “accelerating rapidly,” and projected that once Starship reaches a high-cadence schedule, flying “several times a day,” SpaceX will handle about 99% of all Earth payload mass to orbit. That prediction holds, Musk said, “even if the others triple their current launch rate.”
The comment was sparked by third-quarter launch data shared by longtime SpaceX investor Steve Jurvetson, who highlighted just how lopsided the market has already become.
Jurvetson noted that, based on The Launch Report, SpaceX currently accounts for:
- 97% of all kilograms launched to orbit from the United States
- 83% of the global total
“The eight Chinese launchers add up to 8.6%,” Jurvetson wrote, adding that when zooming in on the “magnifying box” of smaller players, the Israel Defense Forces recently overtook Rocket Lab in payload mass.
Musk reposted the data alongside his projection about Starship’s role in widening the gap even further.
SpaceX completed its 11th Starship test flight in October, pushing the vehicle closer to operational readiness. The company’s long-term mission roadmap still includes delivering Mars cargo missions by 2030, with Musk previously estimating a cost of $100 million per ton to the Red Planet.
He has also floated far more speculative ambitions, including the idea that Starship could one day deploy 300 gigawatts of solar-powered AI satellites annually, a scale that would dwarf anything currently in orbit.
For now, though, the numbers already speak loudly. SpaceX’s Falcon family continues to fly at a pace unmatched by any competitor, and Starship’s eventual integration into the fleet would expand total lift capacity by orders of magnitude. If the high-frequency launch cadence Musk envisions comes to pass, the global market share could tilt even more dramatically.
For an industry where national agencies and private firms once jockeyed for incremental percentages, the conversation is now shifting to what it means when one company carries nearly all of Earth’s orbital payloads, and what happens next if Starship really does fly daily.
Source: Benzinga