So don’t let any sour punditry confuse you. What happened in Texas last week is a man-made miracle—emphasis on man-made, because it took the men and women of SpaceX 20 years to build a sustainable company that could pull off such a feat.
Oh, and billions of dollars of cash.
To build rockets, especially big rockets, you need money. Lots of it. NASA gets it from Congress—about $25 billion a year. SpaceX didn’t have money from Uncle Sam at the beginning. It had to raise money from private investors—about $10 billion since 2002.
In 2024, the company projects billions in profitsfrom two major revenue sources: launching rockets for commercial and government clients, and providing internet via Starlink satellites.
SpaceX has won an effective monopoly on space launches in the West by making them much cheaper and more reliable thanks to reusable rockets. The company launches the outright majority of worldwide material to orbit—that’s mostly commercial satellites and cargo for the International Space Station, though Elon Musk did once launch his personal Tesla Roadster sports car as well (it passed Mars in October 2020 and will swing past Earth in 2047). Outside of Russia and China, SpaceX accounted for over 99.9 percent of material sent to orbit at the end of 2023. The Falcon Heavy has achieved a cargo-cost-per-kilogram of just $1,500, about a quarter of the closest Chinese competitor.