Vikram Nidamaluri, Managing Director of Telecom, Media, and Entertainment at Lazard, speaks during a panel on the World Satellite Business Week conference on Sept. 11, 2023.
Michael Sheetz | CNBC
PARIS – A Lazard investment banker sounded the alarm in regards to the dominance of Elon Musk’s SpaceX within the rocket launch market, because the industry waits for U.S. competitors to start flying latest vehicles.
“I believe it’s an enormous concern,” Vikram Nidamaluri, managing director of telecom, media, and entertainment at Lazard, said during a panel on the World Satellite Business Week conference on Monday.
“Having such a dominant launch provider might be not healthy just typically for the business prospects of the industry,” Nidamaluri added. “Nobody wants a monopoly choking out one point of the worth chain. There are obviously other players which are ramping up capability but I believe the timeline hasn’t moved forward rapidly enough.”
Nidamaluri echoed concerns a few rocket launch monopoly raised by others within the space industry this 12 months. Rocket launches are a possible bottleneck within the strategy of flying useful satellites, spacecraft, and astronauts in orbit. Several other U.S. firms are working to launch competitors to SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon rockets, but delays mean American rivals are struggling to field next-generation operational rockets.
Enroll here to receive weekly editions of CNBC’s Investing in Space newsletter.
Just a few days ago, SpaceX launched its 63rd mission of 2023 – and the corporate has already topped last 12 months’s record of 61 missions while flying at a blistering average of a launch every 4 days. Beyond the U.S. rocket market, SpaceX leads the world in each launches and spacecraft mass delivered to orbit each quarter. The corporate alone keeps the U.S. ahead of China, the subsequent closest geopolitical competitor, in satellite and astronaut launches.
A Falcon 9 rocket launches a Starlink mission on January 31, 2023 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
SpaceX
SpaceX Vice President Tom Ochinero, during a separate panel at World Satellite Business Week on Monday, responded to Nidamaluri’s concern by framing it around whether the rocket-builder would fly satellites of competitors to its Starlink satellite web service.
“We have proven that, yeah, we are going to,” Ochinero said. “We’re a launch company first, we’re here to supply launches.”
While Starlink is clearly SpaceX’s “big internal customer,” Ochinero noted that the corporate has moved launches for its own satellites “out of the best way as needed sometimes to supply launches for competitors and customers” alike. SpaceX recently signed a deal to launch 14 missions for Canadian operator Telesat to deliver its Lightspeed web satellites to orbit, and has previously launched satellites for other Starlink communications competitors comparable to OneWeb, Viasat, and EchoStar.
“I’m not super apprehensive about this – we’re here to launch,” Ochinero said
Tory Bruno, CEO of United Launch Alliance, through the same panel pushed back on the concept SpaceX has full control of the launch market. ULA, historically the subsequent largest U.S. rocket competitor, has accomplished only two launches thus far in 2023, and is working toward the inaugural launch of its next-generation Vulcan rocket in the approaching months.
“I appreciate the sentiment that [SpaceX] can be a benevolent monopoly, I do not think you are a monopoly and I do not think it’s our plan so that you can change into one,” Bruno said.
