Comments on: Rocket startup MaiaSpace picks Polish institute to build its rocket’s upper stage engine

By: Dick Eagleson

Dick Eagleson — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 01:26:14 +0000

The Russians and the PRC would, without doubt, be delighted to get their hands on a late-model Falcon 9, but federal law prohibits that. Federal law, in fact, would make it quite difficult to peddle F9s to any foreign nation, even allies. And our allies already have their own expendable rockets so it’s hard to see what advantage there would be for them in buying F9s stripped of their main reason for being. Then there’s the considerable additional complication of standing up F9-compatible launch facilities outside the US – which would also be subject to just as many US government legal and regulatory obstacles as any notional sale of the rockets themselves.

But the main reason this will never happen is that SpaceX isn’t interested. Its business model has always been launch-as-a-service, not rocket sales. That keeps everything here in the US, thus avoiding much government red tape and hoop-jumping.

And this will not change once SpaceX finally retires the Falcons. It has already retired Falcon 1, several earlier versions of Falcon 9 and its 1st-generation Dragon cargo capsule. It has made no effort to sell any actual hardware of these types or even production licenses for any of it. It would certainly be possible to find takers, but the money to be made simply wouldn’t justify all the legal and regulatory drama that would attend the effort.

By: Yngvar

Yngvar — Sat, 26 Apr 2025 22:28:25 +0000

Maybe SpaceX could make some extra money by just selling Falcon 9 rockets, stripped of its reuse capabilities, to any customers. Seems to be a market for it.

By: Dick Eagleson

Dick Eagleson — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 23:49:46 +0000

“Europe’s aerospace industry has completely freed itself from the dictates of those government apparachiks” is an overstatement, but this is a good step. The MaiaSpace vehicle won’t be very large – which likely explains the lack of traditionally suffocating bureaucratic “oversight” – but any degree of reusability in a European-built launcher would constitute a solid step forward. That doesn’t mean the Euros will be closing the yawning capability gap between themselves and SpaceX, but perhaps it will mean the rate at which that gap continues to increase will diminish at least a bit.