It’s been a dizzying year of activity so far, further cementing SpaceX’s dominance over the commercial launch vehicle industry. Led by SpaceX, the industry is on track to surpass the annual space race launch highs of the mid-20th century, when most launches were conducted by governments rather than the private sector. According to data from research firm Quilty Analytics, 2021 already set a new record with a total of 145 launches, compared to 129 in 1984, the previous record year.
If SpaceX keeps up its current pace, it could launch more than 52 rockets this year alone, far surpassing its record of 31 set last year.
“Just 10 years ago, launches were rare,” Chris Quilty, founder of Quilty Analytics, told CNN Business.
In 2001, the total number of launches worldwide was just 51, he noted.
“So put that in the context of SpaceX, which alone has been launched 52 times,” he said. “It’s pretty incredible.”
While SpaceX stands out from its rocket competitors, that doesn’t mean the company is or will be unchallenged.
Two new rockets that will rival SpaceX’s Falcons — the workhorse rockets the company uses to launch satellites and, more recently, astronauts — are slated for launch in the next year or so. They are New Glenn, which is being developed by Blue Origin, backed by Jeff Bezos, and Vulcan Centaur, a line of missiles from the old launcher United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
Others are more optimistic that SpaceX and others take these risks seriously enough to avoid catastrophe.
“The companies that might produce space debris would be immediately and directly affected by this space debris,” said Carissa Christensen, CEO of space research group BryceTech, noting that the collision debris would threaten their own satellites — their own investments.
With all of those rockets active — and a few other smaller launchers also slated to launch from Florida’s Space Coast, SpaceX’s primary launch site — SpaceX could run into bottlenecks on the launch pad, too. Each launch requires a ground support team, including military weather personnel, to ensure a safe launch. And there’s only a limited number of launches they can handle at the same time.
“There’s not an infinite number of days or launch pads or launch sites where you can put things into orbit,” Quilty noted.
However, Christensen added that the Space Coast ground support has proven flexible, as evidenced by SpaceX’s ability to bring a group of astronauts back from the International Space Station off the coast of Florida last Friday and then launch a Starlink mission from one Launch pad a few miles away just hours later.
Capt. Jonathan Eno, a U.S. Space Force deputy chief of operations tasked with monitoring weather and other potential disruptions ahead of a launch, said ground support crews in Florida have been working for years to prepare for the dramatic increase in the number of launches from spaceport. In the year he was assigned his role, 2019, the Space Coast — which includes NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral — supported just 18 launches. This year it’s on track to support more than 60, in particular the first launch of NASA’s new moon rocket, called the Space Launch System. His team is now ready to support multiple launches on the same day, even within minutes.
“SpaceX makes a lot of headlines. They’re the ones launching the vast majority of launch vehicles right now,” he told CNN Business. “Obviously we are preparing for a different reality.”