https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_spaceflight#Orbita...
Space activity is really picking up. There were 177 successful orbital launches this year, and 135 last year. The best year after that was 1967 with 120 launches... We are in interesting times!
So really the true measure should be tons to orbit, not number of launches.
And by that measure I would assume SpaceX alone out-flies 1967.
Not really, even in theory. It's only even remote current participation in the orbital market is the very overdue BE-4 engines it is developing for ULA (which I assume is “the consortium” that the upthread poster excluded in asking about competition.) Currently, its a suborbital launch company with aspirations of sometime becoming something more.
Could also be referring to "the National Team".
RocketLab (Neutron), Relativity (Terran R), and Blue Origin (New Glenn) are all trying. But none of them are there yet.
Out of the bunch, RocketLab has the most operational experience. They're also the only company (of the above three) that isn't currently aiming for 2nd stage reuse.
It'll be interesting to see how things shake out.
In head to head competition ULA won a larger share of NSSL launches than SpaceX. Obviously a lot of people think this will result in taxpayers overspending and was not a really fair competition.
ULA and Arianespace have had more success against SpaceX for GEO than LEO missions, though I believe that has lessened over time. GEO is more competitive because SpaceX uses RP1 for its upper stage which is not as efficient as the others that use hydrogen.
Part of this is due to SpaceX bidding Starship for NSSL phase 1 (development) and getting rejected by the Airforce, while ULA, Blue Origin, and Orbital ATK (now Northrup Grumman) got development money for their respective rockets. This meant that SpaceX had to amortize the cost to develop vertical integration, a larger fairing, etc. over their NSSL phase 2 (operational) bid.
> ULA and Arianespace have had more success against SpaceX for GEO than LEO missions, though I believe that has lessened over time. GEO is more competitive because SpaceX uses RP1 for its upper stage which is not as efficient as the others that use hydrogen.
From what I understand, this is mostly ArianeGroup. ULA does some high energy missions, but they're mostly for NASA/DoD. I'm sure they're hoping to improve their commercial competitiveness with Vulcan, though.
There is also some reason to believe that some of the European GEO missions were given insentives in various ways to fly on Arianespace. And then finally Arianespace simply had to sell all the Ariane 5s that were left. The Ariane 5 had at base something close to competitive in a very niche market of dual GEO launches and had to go away.
ULA won a larger share of NSSL but have done almost no commercial contracts ever. The slightly larger share of NSSL probably has more to do with the existing relationship and the long history and understanding of airforce processes. However, ULA is already going to miss their target launch dates for NSSL.
So the reality is that Arianespace and ULA are closer to being state entities then anything else.
In terms of actually BUILDING rockets and engines they are not even playing in remotely the same league as SpaceX. Ariane 6 is a slightly upgraded Ariane 5 and cost a huge amount more then the whole Falcon program including reusability and the Heavy (including Marlin development).
And Ariane 6 given its further delays is probably adding another couple 100 million on top of what is already committed. A follow up to the Ariane 6 will likely not show up until more then a decade.
So while these are big players, I don't think they are actually endangers competitors, more like big niches.
> GEO is more competitive because SpaceX uses RP1 for its upper stage which is not as efficient as the others that use hydrogen.
This is actually not true. SpaceX second stage is perfectly capable of doing what it needs and cheaper to produce.
This is a golden age of (new)spaceflight and I'm thrilled to be living it.