SpaceX is the rocket company that turned orbital launch into Uber Eats. Falcon 9 goes up, comes back down, does it again next week, and the world barely blinks. What used to be the crown jewel of national prestige is now background noise in Musk’s personal content feed.

The legacy operators spent years insisting reuse was impossible while SpaceX was already landing boosters like they were bowling pins. Ariane and ULA still act like this is sorcery. To SpaceX it’s Tuesday.

The company sells itself as humanity’s ticket to Mars, but the bills are paid by Starlink. Thousands of little satellites, more than the entire rest of the world combined, spamming orbit to beam internet into villages, warzones, and fishing boats. Every GEO operator now starts their investor calls by explaining why latency “isn’t that important,” which is the corporate equivalent of saying “please stop comparing us to broadband that actually works.” Starlink might never print money, but it doesn’t need to. It’s a regulatory crowbar that keeps governments hooked and competitors panicked.

Starship is pitched as the ark for human civilization. In reality it’s a stainless steel oil drum designed to dump even more Starlinks into orbit and maybe lob a few DoD payloads on the side. If it flies regularly, it will nuke the economics of every other heavy launcher. If it doesn’t, Falcon will keep pounding away while everyone else tries to explain why their rockets cost three times as much. Either way, SpaceX wins.

The cult of Musk is the gravitational force holding it all together. Investors tolerate the chaos because the results arrive anyway. Governments tolerate the volatility because they need the capacity. Customers tolerate the drama because the price is unbeatable. SpaceX has turned the industry into a hostage situation: everyone complains, no one leaves.

So yes, SpaceX dominates. It has made launches cheap, GEO broadband irrelevant, and national champions obsolete. It is also one impulsive tweet away from policy disaster and one Starship explosion away from being forced back into Falcon 9’s grind. The miracle is that somehow the chaos works. SpaceX is not a company that operates in space. It is a circus that happens to own orbit.