One thing that the feud between President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk has put the spotlight on is the degree to which the U.S. government depends on the launch services of Musk’s SpaceX. Musk’s threat—since rescinded, at least for now—to decommission the Dragon spacecraft could cripple NASA, while Trump’s threat to cancel all SpaceX contracts could have serious ramifications for U.S. national security, and especially the U.S. military and intelligence apparatus, which relies very heavily on the firm for space launches and space-based communications services, reported The War Zone site.
This is because SpaceX is by far the top space launch provider globally, dominating the orbital access marketplace, The War Zone explains. TWZ cites data reporting that the company carried out 134 orbital launches using its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets last year, “more than everyone else in the world combined,” and accounted for 84% of satellites put into orbit in 2024.
Much of that work is for the U.S. military, as shown by new contracts recently issued by the Pentagon. Just in April, U.S. Space Forces’ Space Systems Command announced it had awarded SpaceX a new contract worth nearly $6 billion for 28 launches. At that time, the United Launch Alliance, a Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture company, and Blue Origin, founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, also received contracts worth close to $5.4 billion (for 19 launches) and $2.4 billion (for 7 launches), respectively. TWZ notes that these contracts also highlight the significantly lower cost per launch that SpaceX offers compared to its current competitors, helped in no small part by its use of reusable rocket boosters. This massive difference in cost means that SpaceX’s services are only replaceable, as far as long-term launch planning and budgeting goes, at a much higher price tag.
Similar plans to defund government R&D in fundamental biomedical research, as reflected in the 40% proposed cuts in the budgets of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Cancer Institute (NCI), and “let the private sector pick up the slack,” are guaranteed to produce similar results.
