A Plan B for space? On the risks of concentrating national space power in private hands
Private companies are no longer just peripheral players in the US space sector. They are now key providers of essential services, from launching and deploying satellites to transporting cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station. They are even sending landers to the Moon. Commercial integration is now an official policy, shaping national space strategy and driving innovation. But as someone who studies space and international security, I've watched the rise of commercial space with both awe and growing concerns about the structural vulnerabilities it creates.
While the US has begun developing alternatives, the current reality is that access to space, particularly for crewed missions, remains heavily concentrated in one company: SpaceX. This concentration gives SpaceX disproportionate leverage. If private power and public strategy were to diverge, would Washington have a credible Plan B?
Commercial Integration is Official Policy
On February 4, the House Science Committee approved the NASA Reauthorization Act of 2026, directing the agency to partner with American commercial providers for operations in low-Earth orbit, lunar landings, and the transition beyond the International Space Station. In critical areas like lunar landers, the bill requires NASA to work with at least two commercial providers, a deliberate effort to avoid dependence on a single company.
President Donald Trump's December 2025 executive order expressed a similar preference for prioritizing commercial solutions in federal space activities and set a goal of attracting at least $50 billion in additional private investment in space by 2028. The U.S. Space Force's 2024 Commercial Space Strategy also emphasizes speed and innovation through private partnerships.
From Cost Savings to Structural Dominance
The origins of this shift trace back to a moment of vulnerability. After the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011, the US temporarily lost independent human spaceflight capability. For nearly a decade, NASA relied on Russian Soyuz spacecraft, paying up to $80 million per astronaut seat, roughly $4 billion in total.
NASA responded by deliberately turning to commercial providers through the Commercial Crew and Commercial Resupply programs. The goal was pragmatic: to reduce costs, restore domestic launch capability, and accelerate innovation. Under these programs, NASA provided funding and oversight while companies built and operated their own systems.
It worked. Launch costs fell by almost 70% in some cases, and the pace of launches increased. SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, became central to this new architecture. Its Falcon 9 rocket now carries the majority of U.S. launches to orbit, and its Crew Dragon spacecraft has routinely transported NASA astronauts since 2020, restoring the U.S.'s ability to launch people to orbit after a 10-year gap.
In high-risk and capital-intensive space sectors like launch and crewed transport, the development costs are enormous. Few companies can afford to compete. The company that makes reliable rockets first, and at a large scale, like SpaceX, wins contracts and consolidates its market share. Efficiency and consolidation have given SpaceX dominance, which in turn creates leverage – not because the company acts in bad faith but because alternatives are limited.
The Musk Episode as a Warning
In 2025, during a public dispute over government contracts and regulatory matters, Elon Musk briefly threatened to decommission the Dragon spacecraft – the vehicle NASA relies on to transport astronauts to orbit. Musk quickly backed off his threat, and missions continued. No astronauts were stranded, but the moment was revealing. At the time, Boeing's Starliner capsule still faced technical delays, and there was no fully operational alternative ready to assume the mission immediately. Even a short-lived threat exposed how tightly U.S. access to space had become linked to the stability of a single firm – and arguably a single individual.
Is There a Plan B?
A credible Plan B for space does not mean abandoning commercial partnerships. It means ensuring that alternatives exist. Historically, assured access to space has meant having more than one way to reach orbit. Today, that principle extends to crew transport, lunar logistics, satellite services, and data infrastructure. Congress appears aware of this, as the current NASA reauthorization bill requires the agency to diversify providers in key programs, particularly lunar landers.
But redundancy is expensive. Maintaining parallel systems, supporting multiple providers, and preserving internal government expertise require long-term funding and political commitment. Markets alone likely will not guarantee diversification in these expensive sectors. In February 2026, Congress moved to legislate greater diversification into U.S. space strategy, but the timeline is uncertain.
For now, U.S. access to space, particularly for crewed missions, remains heavily reliant on SpaceX. Plan B exists on paper, but in reality, it is still under construction. Strategic permanence in space requires options.
The stakes will only grow as the US expands into cislunar space and looks to establish a sustained presence on the Moon. Commercial dynamism has revitalized American leadership in space, but it has also revealed structural vulnerabilities. Durable systems rarely depend on a single center of power. The US has chosen a commercial path in space, and that choice has delivered extraordinary gains. But permanence beyond Earth will require a deliberate balance: multiple providers for critical services, overlapping capabilities, and alternatives robust enough to absorb shocks.
Commercial space can underpin American leadership in the new space age, but only if access to orbit, and beyond, never rests on a single, indispensable company.
