Could SpaceX’s retirement of Falcon 9 spark a launch crisis?

Scientific American · Ramin Skibba · 2026-11-04 17:15 UTC

What happens when the most successful rocket in history stops flying? The world is about to find out

SpaceX’s ubiquitous Falcon 9 rocket has lofted astronauts, NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer spacecraft, the European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope, the Space Force’s GPS satellites and thousands of the company’s Starlink Internet satellites into orbit over the past few years. By most any measure, the rocket is the most successful launch vehicle ever flown. But if SpaceX has its way, the Falcon 9 era will soon come to an end.

Since SpaceX engineers developed the innovative rocket and its reusable first stage in the 2000s and 2010s, it has become a mainstay for space access, accounting for 85 percent of U.S. launches in 2025. Now SpaceX plans to wind down the Falcon 9 within the next few years to better accommodate the company’s sprint toward using Starship, its fully reusable megarocket meant to spark another even greater spaceflight revolution. But unless and until Starship demonstrates Falcon 9–like reliability, SpaceX’s shift away from its current mainstay seems destined to produce major ripple effects across the space industry, affecting numerous customers.

From NASA and the Pentagon to start-ups, universities and international organizations, many entities depend on SpaceX’s Falcon 9. “Whenever you rely on one launch provider, especially one that’s commercial, you’re kind of at their whims,” says Kathleen Curlee, a senior research analyst at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

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