SpaceX to account for more than half of all orbital rocket launches worldwide by 2025 – Jalopnik

What a year for SpaceX, and what a year for space travel. Worldwide, humanity has attempted to put 320 rockets into orbit by 2025. If that sounds like a lot, that’s because it is: the previous record, set in the distant year 2024, was a paltry 259 attempts. That is an increase of 23.5% year on year. Even more striking is the growth of the now dominant force in rocketry, Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The company managed to achieve a truly breathtaking 165 launches with the Falcon 9. That’s more than half of all rocket launches on the planet that year. Out of all of them, everyone successfully delivered their cargo, and only one – one! – booster recovery failed. Another two boosters were deliberately left in orbit. That’s a 23.1% year-over-year increase in launches for the company, and a 660% increase in just five years.

SpaceX’s much more ambitious Starship rocket got the most headlines because it exploded. But while it was busy falling back to Earth in pieces, the workhorse Falcon 9 simply silently shuttled into space, delivering satellite after satellite and occasionally rescuing stranded astronauts. It wasn’t long ago that the idea of ​​salvaging a rocket’s first stage booster was science fiction. This year, SpaceX did it 162 times; one of those boosters has now flown 32 times and is still going strong.

It’s hard to imagine how much this is. If Space.com says it, this amounts to a successful orbital launch every other dayby one company! The rest of humanity combined did almost as well. Of course, with successful test flights of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, Rocket Lab’s neutron rocket debuts next year, and China’s own record yearSpaceX cannot easily sit on the throne.

It’s the Wild West in orbit, and there is no agreed-upon traffic management system. As the space race with China intensifies, the US wants to maintain its lead in the sector even as the Trump administration tries to cut NASA’s budget. The need for now seems to be to become as good as possible at putting as much stuff into orbit as possible. How to manage the new world that is emerging is apparently a problem for tomorrow. But if SpaceX’s Falcon 9 proves anything, it’s that tomorrow is a lot sooner than you think.