![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/falcon_9_flight_20.jpg\")
<\/a>A Falcon 9 lands on a ground pad for the first time during Flight 20 in December 2015, claiming a significant milestone in commercial space technology. Credit: SpaceX, CC0 1.0<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s kind of been the fortune and the misfortune of our industry that we were the focus of Elon Musk,\u201d Darlington said, referring to how SpaceX\u2019s CEO has also forced legacy players to adapt and find ways to take on their deep-pocketed rival.<\/p>\n
The industry\u2019s support ecosystem has also expanded to include telecommunications, IT and other sectors once considered outside the traditional space industry.<\/p>\n
SpaceX\u2019s recent IPO could enrich another cohort of veterans to set up more space ventures and forge their own legacies, while the engineering talent the company develops could further lift the broader sector.<\/p>\n
Or not. SpaceX plans to use its own proceeds from selling shares to greatly expand Musk\u2019s sprawling, vertically integrated empire, which will likely require even more talent to be sucked in.<\/p>\n
\u201cSpaceX may not be churning through the engineers that they once did because now they\u2019re working on so many things that they may become more of a black hole of hiring,\u201d Kasaboski said.<\/p>\n
The company now also has even more firepower to acquire companies to quickly absorb engineers, technologies and other scarce capabilities.<\/p>\n
A more aggressive expansion strategy from SpaceX risks squeezing an already constrained supply chain that challengers rely on for growth.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, SpaceX\u2019s dominant position sets a high bar for competitors as it has become an almost essential service, Kasaboski noted, particularly for U.S. government missions that would suffer major disruption without access to its rockets and spacecraft.<\/p>\n
Competing with SpaceX<\/p>\n
In the past, heritage, expertise and experience were key to avoiding many of the operational challenges and costs that can make space so challenging.<\/p>\n
Those factors are still necessary, Kasaboski said, but with enough funding an aggressive team can help absorb failures and keep moving.<\/p>\n
\u201cSpaceX can afford to fail,\u201d he said, adding that maybe the industry\u2019s upstarts can also find ways to put Silicon Valley\u2019s \u201cfail fast\u201d mantra into practice for space to rapidly innovate and grow.<\/p>\n
This \u201chype margin can eat away at the value proposition of heritage,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But there are limits.<\/p>\n
Beyond investment, when the time comes to contract vital, full-fledged capabilities, Deville said users still scrutinize the ability to deliver.<\/p>\n
\u201cLarge manufacturing, launch and transportation contracts (especially government contracts) are still passed to actors with heritage, or at least to a pool of actors including some with heritage,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn fact, the trend we are seeing now, especially in the U.S., is more a hyper-concentration of the largest government markets by a single actor with extensive heritage, SpaceX, than a balanced distribution across actors.\u201d<\/p>\n
That includes major defense communications, national security, International Space Station transportation and lunar landing contracts where SpaceX has become the central player for the United States.<\/p>\n
What heritage is still worth<\/p>\n
While companies with little or no heritage have managed to raise billions of dollars since the late 2010s in the wake of SpaceX\u2019s first major successes, Deville said track record still matters, though its importance varies.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt matters more to users procuring a capability than to private investors with large amounts of cash and a VC \u2018move fast, fail fast\u2019 mentality,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday still, the more capabilities are important, the more they are procured from companies with strong heritage or at least to a diversified pool of companies including some with heritage [and] others still emerging.\u201d<\/p>\n
And then there are companies like SES that are blurring the line.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe see ourselves as a combination of legacy, experienced player with startup mentality,\u201d Al-Saleh said.<\/p>\n
That is very different from the company\u2019s approach a decade ago, when SES took over the O3b MEO constellation and folded it into a more traditional satellite operator model.<\/p>\n
Today, Al-Saleh said, SES \u201cwould have enabled them to go build the technology and scale\u201d it, rather than simply \u201cspeccing it and giving it to somebody else.\u201d<\/p>\n
In other words, SES would now be more likely to preserve and accelerate O3b\u2019s own development inside the company, instead of folding it into the traditional satellite operator model of specifying requirements and outsourcing work to manufacturers.<\/p>\n
As for \u201cspace is hard,\u201d a phrase used as early as 1992 in a speech from former NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin to encourage students not to fear failure, the influx of capital may be changing who gets to challenge the adage, but not the risks they must overcome.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an aphorism that echoes John F. Kennedy\u2019s historic 1962 speech about going to the moon not because it is easy, but because it is hard.<\/p>\n
More than 60 years later, space remains hard. What\u2019s changing is how much money investors are willing to commit before companies show they can make it look easy.<\/p>\n
An abridged version of this article first appeared in the July 2026 issue of SpaceNews Magazine with the title \u201cWhen space ambition outruns heritage.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Space is hard, as the decades-old adage goes. For much of the industry\u2019s history, \u201crocket science\u201d was as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":791629,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[147476,64,63,34986,366107,10786,6680,372885,115250,128,33608,7410,285,5437,43558],"class_list":["post-791628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-astroscale","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-blue-origin","tag-cowboy-space","tag-feature","tag-from-the-magazine","tag-orbit-fab","tag-orbital","tag-science","tag-ses","tag-sn","tag-space","tag-spacex","tag-united-launch-alliance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/791629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/blue_ghost-1.jpeg\")
<\/a>Another significant commercial landing: The Blue Ghost 1 lander casts a shadow on the lunar surface after touching down on the moon March 2, 2025. Credit: Firefly Aerospace<\/p>\n