After initiating a space price war, SpaceX has become now one of the top players in the world in the space business.
According to an interview for the Defense News, the founder of SpaceX, Elon Musk, declared that for people living back 40 years ago would be difficult to believe that nowadays the United States will count on Russia for access to space. In his vision, it is necessary to take steps to get the U.S. out of this situation.
The billionaire was indeed successful in correcting the balance of forces in space. According to Bloomberg, even the Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin came to recognize that SpaceX has become an important competitor of Russia in the space business.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the American and Russian space programs have went through a love-hate relationship. United Launch Alliance partners Lockheed Martin and Boeing use to buy cheap Russian rocket engines for powering their expensive Atlas V rockets. Russia enjoys using the currency from foreign rivals for its own space program. But, on the other side, NASA resents the costs of renting rides on Russia's rockets and the U.S. Air Force is worried to rely on Russian engines for American rockets.
The revolution in the U.S. commercial space program was sustained by the recent moves in Congress to restrict the use of Russian rocket engines, particularly on American national security missions. Companies such as Aerojet Rocketdyne, Blue Origin and SpaceX came to offer homemade rocket engines to NASA.
In the meantime, Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, has abolished the Federal Space Agency replacing it with a corporation. However, this is not a private corporation like SpaceX, but rather one fully owned by the Russian state. Analysts consider the move as part of Russian strategy to restructure its space industry in order to make it cheaper and better compete with American private ventures.
