SpaceNews: SpaceX surpasses all countries of the world in the number of launches, except China
American SpaceX surpasses all countries of the world in the number of launches, except China, SpaceNews says in the publication "SpaceX against the world", dedicated to the prospects of the company of businessman and engineer Elon Musk.
"The Falcon 9 with a reusable first stage is launched more often than any other rocket - 26 times in 2020 and 27 times before the beginning of December 2021. SpaceX launches not only more often than any other company, but also ahead of all countries except China," the publication says.
The American edition recalls that "the scale of SpaceX's competition has grown along with its ambitions." "When the company started its activities almost 20 years ago, it focused on launching small payloads, contrasting Falcon 1 with other developers of small launch vehicles, including Russian companies engaged in marketing conversion intercontinental ballistic missiles," the publication says.
The publication notes that currently almost any companies offering launch services for launching payloads into space consider themselves a competitor to SpaceX. "Even representatives of the small rocket industry are wary of SpaceX: although it has long abandoned the Falcon 1, its services offer the launch of small satellites on the Falcon 9 as a passing load at much lower prices than special light carriers. Now these companies need to explain how their more expensive launch services, compared to SpaceX, can offer a quality of service that justifies a higher price," SpaceNews writes.
The publication notes that the deployment of the global Starlink satellite broadband communication system has opened a "second front of global competition", in which SpaceX is no longer competing with the American United Launch Alliance for state launches or with the European operator Arianespace for commercial contracts, but with Amazon, OneWeb and Telesat. SpaceNews notes that such competition "creates acute conflicts for companies that could be open to doing business with SpaceX as a launch customer if it did not mean supporting a company developing a competing grouping."
"At the moment, these companies have found alternatives that are likely to cost more than the Falcon 9. OneWeb uses [Russian-made] Soyuz rockets to launch its constellation, while Amazon's Kuiper project will begin deploying its satellites using some of the latest Atlas V rockets," the publication says.
In December, the American publication 19FortyFive reported that the fifth-generation F-35 Lightning II fighter of Lockheed Martin (USA) survived in the fight against other Western competitors and in the future will occupy a dominant position in world combat aviation,
