SpaceX launches 29 more Starlink satellites, sets new record for Falcon 9 reuse, dominates the world in rocketry

First stage after landing for the 32nd time
SpaceX today launched another 29 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket (B1067) flew for its 32nd time, a new record for a Falcon 9 first stage. As shown in the rankings below of the most reused launch vehicles, this stage is now just one flight from tying the space shuttle Atlantis:
39 Discovery space shuttle
33 Atlantis space shuttle
32 Falcon 9 booster B1067
30 Falcon 9 booster B1071
29 Falcon 9 booster B1063
28 Falcon 9 booster B1069
28 Columbia space shuttle
Nor will it be long before SpaceX’s fleet surpasses all the shuttles.
Meanwhile in the 2025 launch race SpaceX’s dominance is overwhelming, as shown by the leader board:
161 SpaceX (a new record)
77 China
15 Rocket Lab
15 Russia
To put some perspective on SpaceX’s dominance, it has completed more than twice as many launches as the nation of China, even though China has been trying to develop multiple launchers from many competing government-run or government-supervised entities. Even more amazing, SpaceX is beating the entire world combined, by a wide margin, 161 to 129.
In fact, even though China has two launches scheduled for today, one of which supposedly occurred a little over an hour ago but has yet been confirmed, neither launch will put much dent in SpaceX’s lead.
Furthermore, today’s launch of Starlink satellites now happens so routinely no one even notices. In the past week alone the company launched six times, putting up a total of 170 satellites. Though there are a half dozen other competing constellations that have begun launching (OneWeb, Amazon LEO, AST-SpaceMobile, China’s Guowang, SpaceSail, and Geely constellations), only OneWeb has come close to matching SpaceX’s numbers, but it has completed its constellation of about 648 satellites, a number far less than the thousands SpaceX continues to put up.
As for the rest, while SpaceX can routinely launch almost two hundred satellites in a week, the best any of those competitors have done so far is launch 150 to 200 total, and even that took months.

“Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all
the inhabitants thereof.” Photo credit: William Zhang
It is rare for one entity, private or public, to maintain such a dominance for long. And it isn’t healthy for such a single entity to be so dominant. The world needs competition. It is time for others, both in the U.S. and worldwide, to step up to the plate and produce.
Note that I’m not demanding we rein in SpaceX in some manner, the typical response of our government when a private company becomes too dominant. We are supposed to believe in freedom, and SpaceX has demonstrated its proper use to the fullest, to the benefit of tens of thousands of people whose jobs exist solely because of that success. The last thing we should do is punish them for this.
No, the answer to SpaceX’s success is more success, by others. The rest of the launch industry has to step up to the plate and begin hitting home runs. And there is no reason they can’t, other than a sad lack of desire and competitiveness that must change.
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Direct competitors to SpaceX are very few on the global stage. What is needed now is the next new space launch companies with innovations that could change the game. Old Space gave way to New Space. Soon even that group will need to be surpassed by the next generation. If that doesn’t happen, things will begin to stagnate in new and more dreadful ways.
The future of space is very bright as long as we give it room to grow, allow for more competition, and provide reasonable regulations. It is that last item that I think will trip the process up.