#Guest post
With SpaceX, America has built a giant that controls almost the entire value chain. Europe does not have to draw the conclusion that it wants to build a comparable giant. A guest article by Daniel Niemi (Atlantic).
The SpaceX IPO has kept us all busy over the past few weeks. And he made many investors rich. But the real news isn’t in the stock market. It lies in what SpaceX has now become: no longer a rocket company, but a piece of infrastructure. Launches, connectivity, computing power, artificial intelligence and defense are merging into one platform. With SpaceX, America has built a giant that controls almost the entire value chain. Europe does not have to draw the conclusion from this that it wants to build a comparable giant. The more important question is: Which parts of this infrastructure should we not give up?
An answer to this is already emerging. It just looks different than in the USA. Europe is not building a single champion, but rather a network of specialized companies. Founders are working on very low orbits, on mobility in orbit, on situation reports from space and on services that turn this into usable data. A European alternative is emerging level by level. Not every building block has to be national. But the crucial layers must not be permanently on third-party platforms.
Europe has recently stood out primarily as a customer. In 2024, the EU transferred around 180 million euros to launch four of its own Galileo satellites on a Falcon 9 from American soil. There was no operational rocket of our own. Only who owns the lines determines the price and conditions. Strategic autonomy cannot be rented.
The economy is changing in Europe’s favor. In shuttle times, a kilogram into low orbit cost around $54,500. With the reusable Falcon 9 there are still around 2,700. The price has fallen by 95 percent. Falling start-up costs are opening up new services, just as GPS once made navigation apps possible. Today no one knows exactly which one. Everyone knows that they are coming.
They are also emerging in lanes that previously remained empty. The very low orbit lies between 200 and 300 kilometers, despised for sixty years as too hostile to life. Air resistance slows down, atomic oxygen eats away at the shell, and without constant thrust a satellite sinks back to Earth within months.
That’s exactly where construction is taking place now. NewOrbit wants to fly permanently in this orbit and deliver images twenty times cheaper. The Swiss PAVE uses its own tugs to shorten the raising of an orbit from months to less than a day. The Munich-based Vyoma launched Europe’s first situational awareness satellite into space in January; it tracks debris and alien maneuvers in real time. All three are part of Atlantic’s portfolio. All three have a business model. All three negotiate with customers.
For the first time, Europe has what American companies have long had: an anchor customer and capital. In Bremen, the ESA states pledged 22.3 billion euros in December, almost a third more than three years earlier. For the first time, more than a billion will go to security and defense in orbit alone. A reliable government buyer reduces the risk for private investors. It is this lever, not ingenuity alone, that has made American space travel great.
Why build when renting is cheaper? The objection is obvious. But the IPO shows where renting leads. Anyone who doesn’t have their own infrastructure pays the other person’s price and bends to their rules. The greater risk lies elsewhere anyway. It doesn’t mean “too expensive”, but rather “too fragmented”. Two dozen national mediocre projects are not helping Europe. It takes a few winners.
Europe should therefore think in layers, not in flags. A handful of European companies can occupy the crucial levels: orbit, mobility in space, situational awareness. Together they would form their own stack. Anyone who owns it no longer has to fly in someone else’s rocket. Europe will no longer catch up with the start this Friday. But the next layer can be ours. We’re building on it.
About the author
Daniel Niemi is a partner at Atlantic.
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