Elon Musk aggressively elbowed his way into the space launch business over the past two

decades, combining engineering genius and an entrepreneurial drive with a demand that the U.S.
government stop favoring the big, slow-moving contractors that had long dominated the industry.
Today, it is Mr. Musk who is dominant. His company, SpaceX, is the primary provider of launch
services to NASA and to the Pentagon. His rockets carry far more commercial satellites into orbit
than anyone else’s, including those for his own Starlink communications network. He has set
new standards for reaching space cheaply and reliably. But in one striking way, the former
outsider has come to resemble the entrenched contractors he once fought to topple: He is
increasingly using his vast power and influence to try to keep emerging rivals at bay, his
competitors say, even as his success is prompting qualms within the government about such
heavy reliance on a mercurial billionaire. The new generation of space entrepreneurs trying to
emulate Mr. Musk is sufficiently concerned about what they see as his anticompetitive tactics
that some of them are now willing to take him on publicly. Tim Ellis started Relativity Space
after being inspired by Mr. Musk’s pursuit of a rocket that could carry humans to Mars. Then he
heard from other industry executives that individuals with ties to SpaceX were trying to block his
efforts to raise money for his own Mars project. Jim Cantrell worked with Mr. Musk at the
founding of SpaceX in 2002. When he started to build his own launch company, Phantom Space,
two potential customers told his sales team they could not sign deals because SpaceX inserts
provisions in its contracts to discourage customers from using rivals. Peter Beck, an aerospace
engineer from New Zealand, met in 2019 with Mr. Musk to talk about Mr. Beck’s own launch
company, called Rocket Lab. Several months later, SpaceX moved to start carrying small
payloads at a discounted price that Mr. Beck and other industry executives said was intended to
undercut their chances of success.

“I don’t think this is an accidental monopoly,” Mr. Beck said in an interview about SpaceX and
Mr. Musk. “These are business decisions that are being made.”

None of these executives said they had taken legal action against SpaceX. And no one in the
industry disputes that Mr. Musk and SpaceX deserve enormous credit for making spaceflight
more affordable and almost routine.

But his tactics are generating a backlash within the industry. And they are adding to concerns in
the government about relying so heavily for a critical technology on someone known as much for
his divisive public statements, his increasingly outspoken political positions that are at odds with
U.S. policy and his deep business ties to rivals like China as he is for his engineering prowess.
Mr. Musk endorsed an antisemitic theory late last year on his social media platform X. He has
nurtured relationships with right-wing leaders around the world. And he has publicly stated that
Russia will not lose its war against Ukraine, endorsing an argument that the United States should
not have provided Kyiv with additional military assistance.

“Elon Musk’s rhetoric and behavior undermines his credibility and reliability on a global scale,”
said Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, who this spring questioned
Pentagon officials about Mr. Musk. “Commercial services, including SpaceX, that do business
with the U.S. government need to be thoroughly vetted to ensure that the U.S. military can
depend on them in times of crisis.”

ImageA close-up image of Elon Musk’s face with his hand on his mouth.
Elon Musk’s competitive tactics are generating a backlash within the space industry, and his
divisive public statements and outspoken political positions have raised concerns within the
government.Credit...David Swanson/Reuters
Last month, a bipartisan group of 36 House lawmakers sent a letter to Frank Kendall, the Air
Force secretary, urging him to make sure that the Air Force pushes for “increased competition
among launch providers.”

Representative Dale Strong, Republican of Alabama, whose office helped draft the letter, said he
was concerned that a dominant Pentagon launch provider might squeeze out upstart rivals.
“These smaller companies, they’re just trying to cut their teeth,” he said.

SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment. But when interviewed at a recent industry
conference, one of SpaceX’s senior executives disputed any suggestion that the company was
trying to force other new launch companies out of business.

“I don’t buy that, not at all,” Gary Henry, who works on national security contracts for SpaceX
after earlier posts with Boeing and the Air Force, said in the interview. “I can see if you are on
that end of it, it might feel that way. But people in those companies who know us personally
know that is not the case.”
In a presentation to SpaceX employees in Texas this year, Mr. Musk did not directly address
claims of anticompetitive behavior from rivals in the launch industry. But he noted that SpaceX
had carried cargo to orbit, or agreed to do so in the future, for competitors in related businesses
including Amazon, Telestat, OneWeb and Apple-backed Globalstar, all of which are rivals of
SpaceX’s Starlink communications network.

“We’re actually on contract to launch Amazon’s Kuiper constellation,” Mr. Musk said, evoking a
round of laughter from the gathered SpaceX employees. “And we treat everyone fairly.”

SpaceX’s defenders also point out that the launch business appears to be growing more
competitive, not less.

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is close to its first launch for its New Glenn rocket. Rocket Lab is
building what it calls Neutron, and Relativity Space is working on its Terran R, among other new
entrants. After years of delays, Boeing is soon expected to start launching NASA astronauts into
space on its new Starliner spacecraft.

For now, though, the ability of the United States to reach orbit, particularly for its most vital
classified military and spy satellites, remains largely dependent on Mr. Musk and his Falcon 9
rocket.

“Heaven forbid we have a mishap with a Falcon 9 launch,” said Col. Richard Kniseley, who
helps run Space Force’s Commercial Space Office. “That means it is grounded, right? And that
means we could be without launch. So that’s where my concern is.”

SpaceX has collectively been awarded $14.7 billion in federal launch prime contracts over the
last decade, according to an analysis performed by The New York Times by the Center for
Strategic and International Studies.

Notes: Totals are inflation-adjusted and account for prime contracts on space transportation to
orbit and related research and development. As of 2021, this includes contracts for Sierra Nevada
and Sierra Space.Source: Federal Procurement Data System; Greg Sanders, Center for Strategic
and International StudiesBy Scott Reinhard
Last year alone, SpaceX secured $3.1 billion in federal prime contracts, according to the data,
nearly as much as the combined amount the federal government committed for space
transportation and related services from its nine competitors, from giants like Boeing and
Northrop Grumman to startups like Blue Origin.

SpaceX is privately held, so it does not release revenue figures, but Payload, an industry research
site, estimated that nearly 60 percent of SpaceX’s launch-related revenue last year came from the
federal government.

This means that despite Mr. Musk’s early disdain for government subsidies granted to his rivals,
including Lockheed and Boeing, SpaceX’s own rise has been bankrolled in large part by NASA
and the Pentagon.

At the same time, SpaceX has increasingly adopted business tactics that Mr. Musk once
condemned, including expanding its lobbying presence in Washington and hiring top Pentagon
and NASA executives after they played key roles in awarding contracts to SpaceX.

SpaceX now employs William H. Gerstenmaier, who supervised the NASA commercial cargo
program that hired SpaceX.

SpaceX also hired Terrence J. O’Shaughnessy, a former Air Force general who first moved to
retain SpaceX to provide its Starlink satellite service to the military, and Kathy Lueders, who
was the lead NASA contract official who picked SpaceX for a $2.9 billion contract for the
spacecraft that will take NASA astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface of the moon for the first
time in 50 years. (SpaceX did not respond when asked about these hires. No one has accused the
former officials of favoritism.)

SpaceX has boosted its spending on lobbyists by 30 percent since 2020, reaching $2.9 million
last year, federal records show. (That is still far less than the spending on lobbyists by giant
military contractors like Lockheed and Boeing, or Amazon.)
Lori Garver, a former NASA official who pushed for NASA to hire private companies to take
astronauts to and from the space station and has repeatedly praised SpaceX’s performance, said
she too has been surprised by the company’s aggressiveness.

“I underestimated how it would play out over the long term and the dominant position they
would get to,” she said. “And the lengths to which they would go, once in the dominant position,
to fight to keep that dominance.”

Outsider No More
It was a foggy morning in February at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, as
bursts of supercooled oxygen sprayed from the upper sections of the Falcon 9 rocket — a sure
sign that yet another SpaceX rocket was about to blast off.

At the moment the launch window opened, the Falcon 9 lifted off, carrying 23 Starlink satellites
to low Earth orbit — about 230 miles up in space. It marked the start of a burst of activity that
demonstrates just how dominant SpaceX has become.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets have made frequent launches from Cape Canaveral Space Force
Station in Florida.Credit...Joe Raedle/Getty Images; Gregg Newton/Agence France-Presse —
Getty Images; Joe Skipper/Reuters
Three days later, at an adjacent Kennedy Space Center launchpad, another SpaceX Falcon 9
lifted off, this one carrying four astronauts on a NASA-funded flight to the International Space
Station.

Two more Falcon 9 launches followed, later that day and the next. One, launched from
California, was stuffed with 53 spacecraft from companies that had shared a ride on SpaceX’s
Transporter service, which allows companies to book a slot for their cargo online.

In South Texas, SpaceX then had its third test flight of Starship. It is the largest rocket ever
created — big enough to carry three times as much cargo as NASA’s Space Shuttle was capable
of lifting into orbit and at a price so low, it could completely upend the commercial launch
market again.

Finally, by late March, SpaceX had launched its 30th cargo delivery toward the space station.

SpaceX’s 96 successful orbital launches during 2023 contrast with seven launches to orbit from
the U.S. in total last year by all of SpaceX’s competitors, and were more than all launches from
Russia and China combined. The majority of SpaceX launches last year were to put its own
Starlink satellites into orbit, but even without Starlink, it has a dominant role.

The United Launch Alliance, a joint venture set up by Lockheed and Boeing, sent only three
rockets to orbit last year.

Those figures are a striking shift from a decade ago, when SpaceX sued the Air Force asserting
that it had illegally directed launch business to the Lockheed-Boeing joint venture, known as
ULA.

Image
Four astronauts in white space suits and helmets, and tall black boots, standing in front of a
doorway with NASA’s emblem on both sides.
Four astronauts preparing to launch to the International Space Station on a SpaceX Falcon 9
rocket in March.Credit...Joe Raedle/Getty Images
“Boeing and Lockheed joined forces to convince the Air Force that the culprit was competition
itself, and formed ULA to monopolize,” the company wrote in its 2014 bid protest. The lawsuit
demanded that the Air Force award some of its military launches to SpaceX, which at that point
still had not been certified by the Pentagon as reliable enough to carry high-value national
security cargo.

Mr. Musk also slammed what he said was unnecessary federal funding that was going to these
companies, suggesting that such subsidies were wasteful.
Now SpaceX is enjoying a steady flow of government money as its record of reliability and low
costs fosters more federal contracts.

Even when major contractors like Boeing have attempted to compete with SpaceX, it has taken
them longer to get their spacecraft built, and what they produce comes in at a much higher price.
One example is the Starliner that Boeing is building under a $4.3 billion contract for NASA to
deliver crews to the International Space Station.

Once Starliner is operational, it will cost NASA an estimated $90 million for each astronaut
launched to orbit through 2030, compared to $55 million a seat on SpaceX, according to the
agency’s inspector general.

Image
A large piece of a rocket being transported on a flat vehicle in front of a building featuring a
large NASA emblem and the American flag.
Boeing is building its Starliner spacecraft under a $4.3 billion contract from NASA to deliver
crews to the International Space Station.Credit...Gregg Newton/Agence France-Presse — Getty
Images
Mr. Musk’s fierce competitive tactics were on display in 2014, when he pushed the federal
government in a lawsuit to enforce a plan to prohibit the Lockheed and Boeing joint venture
from continuing to rely on a Russian-made engine for the Atlas V rocket it used to send military
and spy satellites into orbit.

Congress and the Obama administration were already pushing the companies to find an
American-made replacement. But banning the use of the Russian engine before a reliable
alternative could be put in place would have left United Launch Alliance unable to meet the
Pentagon’s launch needs — in turn creating an opening for SpaceX.

“We design and manufacture the rockets in California and Texas with key suppliers throughout
the country,” Mr. Musk told a Senate committee in 2014.

Air Force officials worried even then that a ban on use of the Russian engines might mean
replacing one monopoly with another.
“We have been concerned for some time that with the course that we are on, we may end up with
one launch service provider,” Mr. Kendall, now the Air Force secretary, told the Senate in 2016,
when he was serving as the service’s top acquisitions officer.

That prediction has to some extent come true.

Forced to phase out its use of the Russian engines, ULA ultimately declined to bid on at least
four additional federal government launch contracts beyond those it already had on its books.
The four new launches, cumulatively worth about $850 million, went to SpaceX, NASA and
Pentagon records show.

Mr. Henry, the SpaceX executive, said the United Launch Alliance had no one to blame but
itself.

“So they had a good thing going and got complacent,” he said. “And then to their misfortune,
Elon and SpaceX showed up.”

Squeezing Upstarts
Mr. Beck, the chief executive of Rocket Lab, started the company in 2006, just four years after
SpaceX was created and before SpaceX had sent its first rocket to orbit.

Since then, Rocket Lab’s Electron launch vehicle has had more than 40 successful trips to orbit,
delivering almost 200 satellites to space at one of the lowest costs in the industry.

Now the second most frequent orbital commercial launch company globally behind SpaceX,
Rocket Lab is moving to build Neutron, a larger rocket that will compete directly with SpaceX’s
Falcon 9.

Image
Three people in white lab coats, hair nets and orange gloves work on a piece of machinery
covered in shiny metallic coating.
Rocket Lab workers building a Capstone lunar orbiter. Founded in 2006, just four years after
SpaceX, Rocket Lab is now the third most successful commercial launch company behind
SpaceX and a joint venture of Lockheed and Boeing. Credit...via Rocket Lab
Mr. Beck said he had observed early on that SpaceX was willing to go after its business rivals.

He and other industry executives said they were convinced that SpaceX had set the price for its
Transporter service — where small satellite companies can book slots on a Falcon 9 launch —
with the explicit goal of undermining the financial plans of emerging competitors.

Transporter’s low price — initially $5,000 per kilogram — was below what some industry
executives calculated was SpaceX’s basic cost. They concluded that SpaceX could only offer
such a low price by subsiding those flights with some of its government contracting revenue.

More recently, SpaceX started what it called Bandwagon, which offers satellite makers launches
to orbits that provide them better coverage over key sections of the world. SpaceX is selling
these flights at far below its own costs to undermine its competition, Mr. Beck said, citing his
own estimates.

“Bandwagon is like, the most bold and obtuse anti-competitive thing you can do,” said Mr. Beck,
whose company charges about $21,500 per kilogram for its launches to specific orbits.

Mr. Henry, the SpaceX executive, disputed that SpaceX might be using its market dominance to
hurt its competitors.

“We make money on all our launches,” he said.

Flights that carry multiple private and government payloads on a single Falcon 9 launch, he said,
are benefiting the commercial space industry by making it more affordable for small firms to get
satellites into orbit.
Mr. Ellis of Relativity Space said SpaceX had made explicit and repeated efforts to limit the
growth of his business.

“Every single funding round that was done once we started to become a larger company, and
every single customer deal we have signed, has been followed with a swift and large number of
outreach calls from SpaceX to all of those entities berating them for doing things with us,” he
said. “This is not theoretical.”

Image
A portrait of Tim Ellis wearing a black suit, walking down a path lined with banners for the 35th
Space Symposium.
Tim Ellis of Relativity Space said SpaceX had made explicit and repeated efforts to limit the
growth of his business.Credit...Jason Connolly/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Mr. Cantrell, whose company Phantom Space has received funding from NASA to help build its
new launch vehicle, said his sales team had been told by Sidus Space and a second company that
SpaceX had demanded contract provisions intended to limit their ability to hire other launch
providers.

Carol Craig, the chief executive of Sidus Space, confirmed in an interview that SpaceX had a
“right of first refusal” provision in a deal she had signed for five launches, allowing SpaceX to
counter any offers from its competitors.

“Are they saying you absolutely have to? No,” she said, adding that her company has a
nondisclosure agreement with SpaceX that prohibits her from discussing the exact terms of her
deal. “It doesn’t feel like they’re trying to monopolize.”

But Mr. Cantrell said he was convinced that SpaceX was trying to block out emerging
competitors.

“It’s anti-competitive and anti-American and I don’t like it,” Mr. Cantrell said.
Even with these impediments, Mr. Cantrell said he had been able to build a manifest with
approximately $80 million worth of contracts for future launches. But he has been delayed in
getting his new rocket built and operating because of trouble raising the necessary capital.

Fickle Billionaires
The concerns about SpaceX’s dominant position only escalated when Mr. Musk denied a request
from Ukraine in 2022 to turn on his Starlink coverage over Crimea so that Ukraine could use it to
target Russian military assets, as was first reported by Walter Isaacson last year in his biography
of Mr. Musk.

Mr. Kendall, the Air Force secretary, said the Pentagon subsequently reviewed its contracts with
SpaceX to address “whether I was comfortable depending upon billionaires and their potential
fickleness for military services.”

Image
Frank Kendall seated at a table in front of an American flag.
Frank Kendall, the Air Force secretary, suggested that the military wanted to ensure that it had
adequate protections to force SpaceX to comply with agreements it had made with the Defense
Department.Credit...Lukas Coch/EPA, via Shutterstock
The Pentagon announced soon afterward that it had reached a new deal with SpaceX for a
satellite-communications system it calls Starshield that is much like the existing Starlink
network, but “will be owned by the U.S. government and controlled” by the Space Force, Mr.
Musk confirmed. Reuters later reported that the National Reconnaissance Office, an intelligence
agency, also has a classified $1.8 billion contract to get access to Starshield.

Pentagon officials said that SpaceX has honored its commitments.

But the Defense Department has moved recently to try to expand its launch providers, both for
small payload launches and its most expensive, classified, national security launches.

Pentagon officials said that SpaceX had argued that another national security launch provider
was unnecessary, an assertion that Mr. Henry did not dispute.
“We did say we don’t think there’s a supply shortage,” he said. “But we are all good.
Competition is good.”

SpaceX’s Starship, its newest rocket, which is now undergoing testing, is likely to have a far
lower price for hauling cargo to orbit than any of its competitors, according to industry analysts.
Its rates to carry a satellite into orbit could be as low as $200 a kilogram, compared to $65,000
per kilogram by NASA’s Shuttle before it retired, or the $6,000 now that SpaceX charges for its
Transporter flights.

That means SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Starship could dominate the space launch industry for the
decade to come, some industry officials predict, with Mr. Musk already projecting that SpaceX
could deliver 90 percent of the world’s cargo to space this year even before Starship is counted,
up from about 80 percent in 2023.

“There’s not a lot of industries where a company is doing like 80 percent of everything,” Mr.
Musk told his employees, expressing pride over how dominant SpaceX has become.

Mr. Beck, the founder and chief executive of Rocket Lab, said no matter what actions SpaceX
takes, he believes the best way to respond is to keep launching, including the climate science
satellite his company put into orbit last weekend for NASA.

“Whatever shady practices he wants to do along the way, then so be it — we don’t care,” Mr.
Beck said. “Because at the end of the day, you have to compete. And if you can’t compete, then
you can’t compete.”

But Mr. Henry of SpaceX said that the impact of its continued expansion is clear to those inside
the company.

“My heart bleeds for these small launch companies, right?” he said. “Because they’re not all
going to make it. Most of them are not.”
Kenneth Chang contributed reporting from New York.