Elon Musk is hardly preoccupied with his Telsa endeavors. His privatized SpaceX has been highly productive as of late. Musk’s dream of launching rockets on a weekly basis are slowly becoming a reality. With ambition like that, the space world could soon become his. The next move is on Blue Origin to see if they can keep up.
SPACEX SHOWING INTENSE AMBITION
The motivation from SpaceX executives is almost cartoonish at times. At first, just launching a couple of rockets per year was seen as an impressive feat, but that was hardly enough for the organization. SpaceX now looks to launch 18 rockets by the end of this year with hopes of making two a month soon after that. This will be a full three times more than a number of rockets they launched last year. In addition to reaching personal goals, Elon Musk will be helping out NASA for the very first time. With this partnership, Musk is putting a pretty solid footprint on the grounds of space that Blue Origin should be concerned with.
BAD REPUTATION FOR RELIABILITY HURTS ELON MUSK
As they say, quality always beats quantity. That notion is especially true for SpaceX. Despite their steadily increasing tempo, their reputation for reliability isn’t exactly top notch. Rocket’s failing and exploding have become an issue for the company and several customers have been on the search for something more reliable since then. Most recently, they have been seeing problems with the Falcon 9. The craft is notoriously fickle to do running on a new, super-cooled kerosene and liquid fuel. While this makes the ship move light weight, it has been prone to damage. It’s scheduled March launch was delayed twice because of technical issues.
HOW WILL BLUE ORIGIN COMPETE?
If SpaceX really wants to succeed in their space monopoly then they need to do much more than just increase launch tempo. Blue Origin, on the other hand, should take full advantage of this weakness. If Blue Origin can focus on providing a highly reliable rocket, they may be able to steal some profits from their competitor. It’s safe to say they won;t be matching Musks launch rate increase of 50%, but if Blue Origin wants to have any part in this space race, they have to produce a better product.
