Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

On September 13, an investment banker at Lazard, an international investment bank, warned of SpaceX's dominance in the rocket launch market, saying the industry needed more competitors to test more rockets.

"I think this is a huge problem," Vikram Nidamaluri, managing director of Lazard Telecom, Media and Entertainment, said on Monday during a panel discussion at the industry conference World Satellite Business week (World Satellite Business Week).

Nida Maruri added: "overall, such a completely dominant launch service provider could be bad for the business prospects of the industry as a whole."No one wants a monopoly to stifle any part of the value chain. Obviously there are other companies trying to increase capacity, but I don't think the plan is moving fast enough."

Nida Maruri's comments also reflect the concerns of other people in the aerospace industry this year about SpaceX's monopoly on the rocket launch market. Rocket launch is a key link in putting valuable satellites, spacecraft and astronauts into orbit, as well as a potential bottleneck. While several other American companies are trying to develop products that can compete with SpaceX's main rocket falcon, the delay means competitors face huge challenges in launching a new generation of operational rockets.

A few days ago, SpaceX just completed its 63rd rocket launch mission in 2023. The company has broken the record of 61 launches last year and is making great strides at the rate of an average of one launch every four days. Throughout the global rocket launch market, SpaceX takes the lead in the number of launches and the number of spacecraft carried each quarter.

Tom Ochinero, vice president of SpaceX, responded to Nida Maruri's concerns in a separate panel discussion on Monday, explaining whether the company would send satellites that compete with Starlink's satellite Internet service into space.

"We have proved that, yes, we will," Ochnero said. "We are first of all a launch company, and we provide launch services."

Although Star chain is SpaceX's "big internal customer", Ochinello also said that "sometimes his own satellite launches will be moved aside according to demand to provide launch services to competitors and customers." SpaceX recently signed an agreement to launch 14 satellites for Canadian operator Telesat to put its Lightspeed Internet satellite into orbit. SpaceX has previously launched satellites for competitors in other chains, such as OneWeb, Viasat and EchoStar, Ochinello said.

"I'm not particularly worried about that, we're here to launch rockets," Ochinello said.

In the same panel discussion, Tory Bruno, chief executive of the United launch Alliance (ULA), refuted the idea that SpaceX would have complete control of the launch market. ULA, the second-largest rocket launcher in the US market, is also a competitor to SpaceX. ULA has only completed two rocket launches this year and is working on launching a new generation of Vulcan rockets for the first time in the coming months.

"I appreciate the idea that SpaceX is going to be a 'benevolent' monopoly, but I don't think you are a monopoly and I don't think our plan is to make you a monopoly," Bruno said.

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