Elon Musk Drinks Your Milkshake: The Impact of SpaceX Rideshare Missions on the Small Launch Market
Part I in a Series
At the end of the film, “There Will be Blood,” wiped out in the Depression preacher Eli Sunday (Paul Dano) offers to sell millionaire Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) land to be drilled for oil. Plainview agrees at first, forces Sunday to renounce his faith, and then coldly tells him that that there’s no oil under the property because he has already drilled all the land around it.
“”Drainage! Drainage, Eli, you boy. Drained dry. I’m so sorry. Here, if you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw. There it is, that’s a straw, you see? Watch it. Now, my straw reaches across the room and starts to drink your milkshake. I… drink… your… milkshake! I drink it up!” Plainview tells Sunday.
A similar thing has happened over the last few years in the space industry. As the use of small satellites went from a trickle to a gusher, more than 100 startups formed to develop small rockets to launch the hundreds and eventually thousands of payloads that would need rides to orbit.
But, these startups have found the wells to be, if not exactly dry, then seriously depleted. The problem is not drainage but rather rideshares. And Daniel Plainview in this case is Elon Musk, whose SpaceX has found a way to capture a large share of the small satellite launch market with a series of Transporter missions.
Let’s take a closer look at what has happened since SpaceX launched the Transporter-1 mission in January 2021. We’ll start with what small launch providers have achieved during this period.
Small Launch Vehicle Flights
Smaller rockets can be be used for dedicated launches for a single customer or rideshare missions with satellites from multiple clients. The table below shows launches by boosters with payload capacities below 1,500 kg over the past 22 months.
Small Launch Vehicle Rideshare & Secondary Flights
Payload Capacity: Under 1,500 kg
Jan. 1, 2021 – Nov. 3, 2022
| Booster | Successful Launches | Failed Launches | Payloads Launched | Payloads Lost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Electron (USA) | 13 | 1 | 55 | 2 |
| LauncherOne (USA) | 4 | 0 | 34 | 0 |
| Rocket 3.3 (USA) | 2 | 3 | 23 | 7 |
| Long March 6 (China) | 4 | 0 | 19 | 0 |
| Kuaizhou-1A (China) | 7 | 1 | 10 | 1 |
| Ceres-1 (China) | 2 | 0 | 8 | 0 |
| Alpha (USA) | 1 | 1 | 8 | 12 |
| Long March 11 (China) | 3 | 0 | 7 | 0 |
| Minotaur I (USA) | 1 | 0 | 3 | 0 |
| Pegasus (USA) | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Qased (Iran) | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Hyperbola-1 (China) | 0 | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| Simorgh (Iran) | 0 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
| SSLV (India) | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| Total: | 39 | 11 | 169 | 30 |
Eleven boosters successfully launched 39 times carrying 169 satellites into orbit. There were 11 failures in which 30 payloads were lost. Three of the 14 rockets failed to orbit a single satellite.
Collectively, the launch vehicles have a failure rate of 22 percent since the beginning of 2021. There are wide disparities in reliability, of course. Rocket Lab’s Electron booster has a record of 13-1. LauncherOne, Long March 6, Long March 11 and Ceres-1 have launched 13 times with no failures. Kuaizhou-1A has launched eight times with one failure.
Many of these boosters are relatively new and have not flown very often. Failures are not uncommon during early launches. Firefly Alpha failed during its first flight, but succeeded the second time. The same is true for South Korea’s Nuri booster. India’s Small Satellite Launch Vehicle failed during its maiden launch attempt in August.
Although 39 launches and 169 satellites sounds like a lot, these numbers are dwarfed by the what SpaceX has launched over the past 22 months.
Transporter Missions
SpaceX made a big splash on Jan. 24, 2021, when its first Transporter rideshare mission launched a world record 143 satellites. Four more Transporter missions have followed with smaller numbers of payloads. A sixth Transporter flight is scheduled for next month. SpaceX has also launched 40 secondary payloads on other missions since January 2021.
SpaceX Transporter & Secondary Payload Missions
Jan. 1, 2021 – Nov. 3, 2022
| Date | Customer Payloads | Starlink | SpaceBees | Payloads |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transporter-1 | 133 | 10 | – | 143 |
| Transporter-2 | 85 | 3 | – | 88 |
| Transporter-3 | 114 | 0 | 0 | 114 |
| Transporter-4 | 28 | 0 | 12 | 40 |
| Transporter-5 | 59 | 0 | 0 | 59 |
| Subtotal: | 419 | 13 | 12 | 444 |
| Secondary Payloads (10 Launches) | 40 | – | – | 40 |
| Total: | 459 | 13 | 12 | 484 |
The five Transporter missions carried 444 payloads into orbit. The number included 459 payloads for customers, plus 13 SpaceX Starlink satellites and 12 SpaceBee spacecraft produced by Swarm Technologies. SpaceX acquired Swarm in August 2021. SpaceX launched 64 SpaceBee satellites on the Transporter-1 and Transporter-2 missions prior to the acquisition.
SpaceX has also launched 40 secondary payloads on 10 different flights since January 2021. Six secondary payloads were launched on four dedicated Starlink missions, with four Cargo Dragon flights carrying 26 satellites for deployment from the International Space Station. Four secondary payloads were carried on the launch of a GlobalStar communications satellite in June 2022. The Falcon Heavy launch on Nov. 1 carried four CubeSats.
Other Rideshare & Secondary Payload Launches
Other large rockets have launched dedicated rideshare missions and secondary payloads.
Rideshare & Secondary Payload Launches*
Payload Capacity to Orbit: 1,500 kg and Above
Jan. 1, 2021 – Nov. 3, 2022
| Booster | Successful Launches | Failed Launches | Rideshare Payloads | Secondary Payloads | Lost Payloads |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Soyuz-2.1a, Soyuz-2.1b (Russia) | 5 | 0 | 56 | 11 | 0 |
| Antares (USA) | 3 | 0 | 27 | 0 | 0 |
| Long March 8 (China) | 1 | 0 | 22 | 0 | 0 |
| PSLV (India) | 3 | 0 | 22 | 2 | 0 |
| Vega, Vega-C (Europe) | 3 | 0 | 18 | 0 | 0 |
| Long March 2D (China) | 2 | 0 | 16 | 3 | 0 |
| Long March 2C (China) | 3 | 0 | 10 | 2 | 0 |
| Epsilon (Japan) | 1 | 1 | 9 | 0 | 8 |
| Atlas V (USA) | 3 | 0 | 8 | 0 | 0 |
| Nuri (South Korea) | 1 | 1 | 7 | 0 | 1 |
| ZK-1A | 1 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 0 |
| Long March 4B (China) | 1 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 |
| Long March 4C (China) | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| Total: | 31 | 2 | 204 | 20 | 9 |
Source: Wikipedia
There have been 31 launches that have carried 224 payloads — 204 rideshare and 20 secondary — into orbit since SpaceX began its Transporter missions in January 2021.
There were two launch failures with the loss of nine payloads. South Korea’s Nuri rocket failed on its maiden flight in 2021 with the loss of a dummy satellite. Nuri successfully launched seven payloads earlier this year. Japan’s Epsilon rocket failed with the loss of eight satellites on Oct. 12. It was the first failure in six Epsilon launches.
Dedicated Launches
The trend toward launching large constellations composed of hundreds or thousands of satellites has limited opportunities for small satellite launch providers. This can be seen in the launches of SpaceX’s Starlink and OneWeb’s satellite broadband constellations.
Starlink & OneWeb Launches
Jan. 1, 2021 – Nov. 3, 2022
| Booster | Service | Launches | Satellites | Secondary Payloads |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Falcon 9 | Starlink | 49 | 2,600 | 6 |
| Falcon 9 (Transporter-1, 2) | Starlink | 2 | 13 | 0 |
| Subtotal: | 51 | 2,613 | 6 | |
| Soyuz-2.1b | OneWeb | 8 | 284 | 0 |
| Soyuz ST-B | OneWeb | 1 | 34 | 0 |
| GSLV Mk III | OneWeb | 1 | 36 | 0 |
| Subtotal: | 10 | 354 | 0 | |
| Total: | 61 | 2,967 | 6 |
SpaceX has launched 49 Falcon 9 rockets carrying 2,600 Starlink satellites and six secondary payloads since the beginning of 2021. Two Transporter flights carried an additional 13 Starlink satellites into orbit. In total, SpaceX has launched 3,568 satellites on 65 dedicated Falcon 9 missions and three rideshare flights since Feb. 22, 2018.
Seven dedicated launches orbited 354 OneWeb broadband satellites during the same period. Nine Russian Soyuz rockets and one GSLV Mk III booster have launched 354 OneWeb satellites since January 2021. A total of 464 OneWeb satellites have been launched aboard 14 rockets since Feb. 27, 2019.
A Tall Order
The majority of smaller satellites have been launched during rideshare missions or as secondary payloads on large rockets.
Rideshare & Secondary Payload Launches*
Payload Capacity to Orbit: 1,500 kg and Above
Jan. 1, 2021 – Nov. 3, 2022
| Providers | Customer Payloads | Starlink Satellites | SpaceBee Satellites | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SpaceX Transporter Rideshares | 419 | 13 | 12 | 444 |
| Other Rideshares | 204 | 0 | 0 | 204 |
| Subtotal: | 623 | 13 | 12 | 648 |
| SpaceX Secondary | 40 | 0 | 0 | 40 |
| Other Secondary | 20 | 0 | 0 | 20 |
| Subtotal: | 60 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Total | 683 | 13 | 12 | 708 |
Source: Wikipedia
Rideshare launches by large rockets have carried 648 payloads into orbit since January 2021. SpaceX launched 444 of those payloads on only five Transporter missions. An additional 60 satellites have been orbited as secondary payloads on a range of launch vehicles. Nine payloads were lost in two launch accidents.
By comparison, 39 launches of smaller boosters have orbited 169 satellites. Eleven launch failures resulted in the loss of 30 spacecraft.
It’s a very difficult market for small satellite providers. Launch tends to be a high-cost enterprise with low profit margins. And providers flying expendable boosters are up against SpaceX, a company that has reused the first stages of its Falcon rockets up to 14 times.
In the next article, we will examine how small launch companies are marketing their services and pivoting to the meet the challenges posed by SpaceX and other large launch providers.
35 responses to “Elon Musk Drinks Your Milkshake: The Impact of SpaceX Rideshare Missions on the Small Launch Market”
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Gotta love that SpaceX. Now I’m learning to love Twitter too.
As a Space X fan, I think they should be “banned” from the small sat market. They will kill the whole industry because they are so good.
Legally is there a mechanism within current US law to do that?
No, other than one or more of the small launch firms filing an anti-trust lawsuit to and trying to prove SpaceX is engaging in anti-competitive behavior.
Historically, big anti-trust suits have always been initiated by “competitors” who couldn’t actually compete.
Now I would have no problem with Space Force propping some small LV firm for some kind of launch-on-warning deal…having some asset or other at the ready not having to depend on SpaceX time-tables…you could make a national security case for that perhaps.
SpaceX currently has by far the most launch capacity of any provider – with current DoD procurement they’d be waiting on the government, not the other way around, and if that ever changes, it will likely be accompanied by multiple firms launching reusable vehicles, and thus no need to prop up a small LV firm anyway.
And flexibility, since the Falcon Heavy boosters could be used as Falcon 9 and both Falcon Heavy and Falcon 9 use the same second stages. So they don’t need to have a constant stream of Falcon Heavy launches, or have a separate production line, to be ready on short notice to launch a Falcon Heavy.
Perhaps. But I think the headspace within which to make such a case is diminishing by the day. Wars are not won via one-off stunts by small start-ups. If Space Force ever needs “responsive launch” for real, it’s going to need an open-ended number of launches and they’re going to have to be made at the maximum cadence possible. There’s only one current launch provider that can do that.
Sure…let’s ban SpaceX. I’m very interested in seeing your list of who we ban next…and after that…
Er… what?
You think government interference in payload selection would be a good thing for everyone?!
So you think government should regulate out the company who is solely responsible for developing the industry you feel government should regulate out of market. Spacex I believe is only20 yrs in business and invested untold recources to develop a product that government seemed at a loss to deliver despite massive tax recources thrown at it, you now feel government should return with new plan of knecapping its competition which just started saving taxpayers untold investment which seemed to be open-ended possibly never ending circus act of excuses and failure. And now you feel best to regulate out of industry the only team currently capable of delivering your targeted industry demands and instead rely on hope that others in industry Magicly figure out how to deliver a product that up till now they could not. Likley space progress by humanity would become another open-ended circus while waiting now for another to hopefully develop a product which has already been delivered but regulated out of use. And your making a really big assumption that if somehow another developed the product that they would offer better pricing than musk does.
I presume you are intending to reply to Archie, as my point was (in much shorter form) the same as yours. 🙂
You are, in effect, advancing the proposition that launch customers should, for some reason, be considered less important than launch services companies. A market includes both customers and vendors. But the number of viable vendors is not preordained. Nor is the tenure of their viability. Start-up companies tend to have a high failure rate. And there is no patent of immunity to failure that attaches to long-time going concerns either. There are a number of healthy and growing industries that have single very dominant vendors and many more that have but a handful of significant players. If space launch winds up being another such, then so be it.
Good article. My main concern vis a vis hurting (to extent of prematurely killing off?) small LV market, is that it prevents the rise of future larger launch vehicles that are necessary to bring true competition across the spectrum, such as RocketLab, Relativity, et al have planned. Up until now, SpaceX’s dominance of space transportation has been relatively ‘benign’; i.e., they’ve forced everyone else on Earth to actually come into the 21st century, haven’t charged monopoly prices- in fact have led to industry-wide cost-reductions- etc. But, this could, possibly, be the first indication of a ‘malign’ strategy; i.e., stealing the ‘seed corn’ customers for small launch vehicles that would end up feeding the (competitor) larger launch vehicles to come. I truly hope that isn’t the case.
Dave Huntsman
It’s certainly an open question as to whether any other producer will come up with anything capable of seriously pressing SpaceX, but there is still no shortage of those looking to give it the old college try. One or two might even succeed to some degree.
But difficulty competing with SpaceX is hardly the unique affliction of NewSpace launch
start-ups. None of the venerable OldSpace firms, both here and abroad, have had any luck doing so either.
To speak of “stealing” customers is to speak nonsense. Customers are not the chattels of vendors. No company has an entitlement to land business.
Don’t you think a lot of the SpaceX rideshare payloads only flew because SpaceX reduced the entry price? So I wonder how much they’ve expanded the market as opposed to taken away market share for small launch providers?
Yeah, Transporter missions have been a boon to small satellite makers. So, it’s increased the market. Of course, the price could be so low as to try to drive the competition out of business, Rides are booked well in advance, so emerging companies have had to compete with a company run by the world’s wealthiest man that doesn’t necessarily have to make much money (if any) on these flights.
And your point is?
That Doug nurses a strong animus toward Elon Musk. Given Doug’s lefty politics, one might suppose the reason to be Musk’s status as world’s richest man. But Doug has been taking shots at Elon since well before he knocked Bezos off the top of the wealth hill or became the latest Emmanuel Goldstein to the cult of woke progressivism.
Not to mention that Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have turned Mojave into a backwater for space development. Sure a few firms like Virgin Orbit and Stratolaunch cling to the vision of air launched systems, but it is clear now that it is a technology with a limited future beyond some specialized military and political applications.
Well, yeah….
Did they? Mojave had one hell of a lead on Bezos. He lived up to his motto and it worked per Aesop’s recipe. The loss of Mojave to Bezos was totally the fault of Mojave. He presented such a slow target that they lost to themselves.
Actually it was just picking the wrong horse to run and ignoring the limitations of air launch systems. You know the military experimented with them in the 1950’s, launching sounding rockets from F-86’s, and even a small ballistic missile from a B-58. Yet, never put any funds into follow up ideas. Even the X-15 heir apparent, the X-20, was going to be launched on a Titan. Folks were somewhat surprised when Pegasus actually worked, but even Orbital all but abandoned air launch after the X-34. The firms in Mojave just focused on the wrong architecture which is why although they made a lot of noise nothing productive emerged, unless you count VG and VO which is basically just an upgraded Pegasus system.
The question is if the folks in Mojave going to recognize that and reinvent themselves as a hub for research on space settlement technology. They have all the elements, good engineers, proximity to Los Angeles for financing and tech support from the universities there, lots of empty desert and proximity to the Central Valley whose farmers are going to need space farming technology to survive climate change and the drying out of their water sources. But the question is if someone will have the vision to pull it together like Burt Rutan did promoting air launched systems.
It is certainly true that Mojave hasn’t exactly been a strong locus of good luck in recent decades but it would still seem to have a lot to recommend it as a location for less-than-flush space start-ups.
The drying up of the Central Valley, by the way, does not trace back to climate change but to Sacramento.
Nobody is making Doug stay in Mojave. If there was anywhere else Doug regarded as a more happenin’ place, he could have moved there long-since. And, as we live in the Age of the Internet, journalism – even specialized journalism – is a trade that can be practiced from damned near anywhere. Parabolic Arc is an existence proof of that.
Oh FFS.
You take every opportunity to repeat this tired rant, even when it has nothing to do with anything I’ve written.
Grow up.
I did that decades ago. I recommend it.
SpaceX recently cut its rideshare rates for future missions. But its previous rate of $5,000/kg didn’t really constitute any discount off of normal mission prices for larger payloads. The Transporter missions are all to sun-sync orbits. F9 can probably put 10 to 12 tonnes into such orbits. Thus, a fully subscribed Transporter mission would pull in $50 – 60 million in revenue. I don’t think the Transporter missions typically are fully subscribed from a mass standpoint so SpaceX may, in practice, make a bit less on these missions, but still plenty enough to make a very tidy profit on each one.
That this is tough on rivals with small launchers is unfortunate, but that’s what
comes of attempting to compete with a very reliable reusable large rocket using small throw-aways of problematical reliability. Astra thought it could build ultra-cheap small throw-aways and tolerate less-than-perfect reliability but less-than-perfect turned out to be less-than-coin-flip and failed as a strategy – at least for the nonce. A bigger, but still cheap throw-away rocket is now in the works. The odds are against that being a viable vehicle even if it can be brought to market.
Rocket Lab is working to reuse the 1st stages of its existing small vehicle and build a bigger and still more reusable vehicle as a follow-on. Relativity is de-emphasizing its as-yet-unlaunched initial vehicle and moving to get its reusable
2nd-generation offering up and running as soon as possible. Firefly and NorGrum have teamed up to have a go at significant reusability too for next-gen vehicles.
SpaceX has a big first-mover advantage which also constitutes a steep barrier to effective market entry for start-ups, but that is hardly a challenge unique to the launch industry.
Right now only three small launch vehicles are making flights to orbit. Two as test articles one of those is going back to the drawing board, and one as an operational vehicle. This after a 14 year period where a lot of money was poured into small launch vehicle development. And a lot still is. I don’t see musk drinking anyone’s milkshake yet. The current stable of small sat launchers could not launch the contents of any of the Transporter flights. Not yet at least. That day may come, but we’re not there yet.
SpaceX is quickly becoming the “FedEx” of space launch, when it absolutely, positively has to reach it’s orbit.
Not Fedex. The historical analog is the Boeing Airplane Co. of the late 1920s before it got broken into today’s Boeing Co., United Airlines & the former United Technologies. However the old Boeing company didn’t operated the airports.
If Starship fails, SpaceX’s strategy with rideshare will likely need re-evaluating. The pressure is on SpaceX to get all the new Starlink satellites into orbit, and time is limited, so they’ll have to optimize use of F9, and watch their budgets more closely.
More likely Starship will take longer to develop and evolve IF the current (evolving) design falls far short of expectations – abandoning it entirely is probably the least likely outcome.
The author of the work wrote a falsehood into his story. By law and tradition, a well may remove the fluid that will flow into it. Pumping oil out of the fictional wells, or even real wells, is not drinking someone else’s milkshake. Likewise, Musk selling launch service is not stealing anything belonging to, nor even in the possession of, anybody else. Elton John sold records. So did Stevie Wonder and Patsy Cline. No thievery nor dishonesty on their part. Bearing false witness, casting aspersions using fictional accounts? That can take something away from someone that you have no right to take. As my mom said “the pot calling the kettle black.” Doug Messier is drinking Musk’s milkshake.