Troubles Mount for United Launch Alliance, While SpaceX Sets Records

[Elderberry]

The Motley Fool By Rich Smith – Jul 25, 2023

Key Points

•  More than halfway through 2023, SpaceX is less than halfway to its goal of launching 100 rockets this year.

•  But SpaceX is accelerating the rate at which it launches rockets.

•  Meanwhile, rival United Launch Alliance has suffered a pair of explosions during testing that are slowing it down.

ULA suffers by comparison to SpaceX -- and that's not great news for two space companies that are trying to sell ULA.

Six months ago, I made a prediction about SpaceX: As good as 2022 was for the space company, 2023 would be even better. And while the future is never certain, it's starting to look like that prediction's coming true.

2022 was a grand year for Elon Musk's pioneering space company, as the company rode the success of its Falcon 9 reusable rocket to a record-setting 61 successful spaceflights in a single year. This was an impressive accomplishment, something no other space company had ever done before. But with SpaceX already launching rockets more frequently than once per week, Musk then climbed even farther out on a limb in August, and predicted that in 2023 the company would hit a new milestone: 100 rockets launched in 2023.

And SpaceX is already nearly halfway there.

100 rockets for Elon

The first six months of 2023 saw SpaceX launch a total of 44 times (if you include one aborted test flight of its new Starship megarocket). And while that appears to put the company on a flight path to only 88 flights by year's end, launches at SpaceX are continuing to accelerate in frequency -- and frequently come in spurts.

The first couple weeks of July, for example, saw SpaceX launch four separate times (including three batches of Starlink satellites). And seeing as SpaceX controls both Starlink and the rockets that launch it, SpaceX is really in control of how frequently those launches go up -- and has the ability to juice the launch rate even more if necessary to reach is 100-launches-per-year goal.

More: https://www.fool.com/investing/2023/07/25/troubles-mount-for-ula-while-spacex-sets-records/