SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell speaks during a visit by NASA Commercial Crew Program (CCP) astronauts at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, USA, Monday, August 13, 2018.
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SpaceX’s second-in-command called out competitors in comments on Friday, describing healthy competition for Elon Musk’s space company.
“I hope others can come close, right? Competition is good for the industry. … It remains tight; so we are very focused,” said SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell, speaking at the Baron 2024 Investment Conference in New York.
“It’s going to be hard to catch us, but hopefully people will try,” added Shotwell.
SpaceX has reached a dominant position in the global launch industry as its reusable Falcon rocket has launched more than 100 times this year and counting. The next closest US rocket company, Rocket Labhas launched for the 12th orbit this year, with the rest in the single digits.
In addition, the 15,000-person company has won billion-dollar government contracts from the Department of Defense and NASA, making it the U.S.’s only choice to send crews to and from the International Space Station in Dragon capsules.
And SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet network now serves nearly 5 million customers, Shotwell said.
Starlink has become disruptive to the remaining satellite telecommunications companies. With nearly 7,000 Starlink satellites in orbit, SpaceX has expanded its Starlink product offering from consumer to enterprise markets such as aviation and maritime.
But the satellite broadband market is “huge,” Shotwell said. Several companies are working on competitors for Starlink, such as Eutelsat’s OneWeb, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, Telesat’s Lightspeed and AST SpaceMobile.
Billionaire investor Ron Baron, who said that the ownership of the eponymous company in privately held SpaceX shares is more than $ 2 billion, noted that about 30% of the 8 billion people in the world do not have access to broadband.
“I’d love to say … SpaceX is going to serve everybody,” Shotwell told Baron, but “there’s going to be competition — I think there’s a lot of room in this industry, a lot of room for competition.”
Shotwell noted that SpaceX is also moving forward with development of its giant Starship rocket, recently holding the vehicle’s booster on its first attempt during its fifth test flight last month.
“Starship is really a replacement. It obsoletes the Falcon 9 and the Dragon capsule. Now, we’re not shutting down the Falcon, we’re not shutting down the Dragon – we will fly that for another six or eight years,” he said.
“But at the end of the day, people want to fly in a Starship: It’s bigger, it’s more comfortable, it’s going to be cheaper,” added Shotwell.
SpaceX is targeting as soon as Tuesday for Starship’s sixth flight test, Shotwell said, as the company aims to improve the rocket’s capabilities with additional demonstrations during the mission. The Starship system is designed to be reusable and aims to be a new way to fly cargo and people beyond Earth, unlike the Falcon rocket, which only has a reusable booster and nosecone.
“We just passed 400 (total) launches on the Falcon and I wouldn’t be surprised if we fly 400 Starship launches in the next four years,” Shotwell said.
