To understand Elon Musk's moves and his political influence, one must start with the overwhelming success of his project.

The company founded by Musk in 2002 dominates the so-called "space economy". This term, in vogue among international institutions and investment banks, refers to the growth of space as a market, beyond its traditional functions as a service for governments. A space economy is made possible by the realization of Musk's theses. Which are? First, Musk recognized that the opportunities of space are tied to the reduction of launch costs and thus to the reusability of launch vehicles. Once SpaceX achieved reusability, it was able to achieve economies of scale that no other player in the history of space exploration has come close to achieving, an overwhelming advantage over competitors. Second, SpaceX is an integrated manufacturing company, where production responds to efficiency needs, not political balances where one component has to come from a company in one area and one component from another to please another area. In this sense, SpaceX is a less "political" company than others in the United States and Europe. Space funding has historically come from public money, but SpaceX has been awarded lavish contracts to do things that others cannot do, in timeframes that others cannot guarantee, and thus using proportionately less public money.

SpaceX's success has combined Musk's insights with the execution skills of President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell, who has been with the company since 2002 and is one of the most capable managers in the world. According to the latest valuations, SpaceX is worth about $350 billion and more than any other defense company in the world, despite the growth of the entire war-fighting industry in recent years. Some numbers. According to Shotwell, in 2024, about 90 percent of the mass put into orbit by humanity went through SpaceX. The company made more than 130 orbital launches in 2024 and aims to grow to 180 in 2025. China launched 68 times in 2024, while Europe stopped at 3: the operation of Ariane 6 and Vega C will lead to growth in the latter, painful, number, but with no chance to compete with the Chinese and SpaceX.

The enormous capacity of Musk's company leads to three processes: 1) the expansion of its manufacturing base, with increasing investment in Texas; 2) the commercial development of Starlink: space economy as a service for customers to make more money and have a growing role in global communications; and 3) national security, an essential issue: Starlink's evolution into Starshield, a connectivity service aimed at meeting the needs of governments, primarily that of the United States, and the very consideration of SpaceX's development as a national security issue because it carries on its ever-widening shoulders Washington's primacy over Beijing in the space arena.

The bet Musk won with his support for Trump reinforces these three points: easier construction and launch, with control of the approval system; giving Starlink and Starshield a kind of US "political stamp" and not just as a private company. Technology companies close to Trumpism, such as Palantir and Anduril, say they serve the West. Therefore, SpaceX itself will increasingly offer itself to various configurations (first and foremost the Five Eyes espionage alliance and NATO) in which the U.S. is already the undisputed security anchor.

Any reflection on the role of SpaceX in various countries must be based on this context, otherwise it risks becoming idle chatter. From Europe's point of view, the gap with the US system is enormous.

Consider two events in 2024: the European Galileo system was launched with SpaceX rockets because the European launchers were not available; the U.S. KKR fund bought just under 30 percent of Ohb, the leading German space company (the majority shareholder is the Fuchs family). Episodes that hardly anyone considered because Trump had not yet been elected. But if the Europeans do not have the launch capabilities and the finances to sustain their companies, they cannot be "sovereign", except in talk. Given the overlapping jurisdictions and differing interests between states (such as the disputes between Paris and Berlin in recent years), it is almost certain that the timeline for the European Iris2 constellation will be longer than the optimistic end of the decade. SpaceX is in a different position: its products do not exist only in theory.

Musk's company is not afraid of unlikely European competition, but it sees Europe as a market where it can aggressively grow revenues, and sooner rather than later, given the expectations of those who invested in SpaceX at a huge valuation. The company's path to a sharper monopoly will depend on the home front: on Bezos, on Boeing's difficult relaunch, on any new players, on its own mistakes. Moreover, as the Astrospace website notes, Musk's very political influence in the Trump era will prevent SpaceX from using approval delays as an excuse for project delays in the future.

Of course, the situation for Europeans could improve with a revolution in European space governance, which is full of redundancies and overlaps, with the reduction of geographical imbalances, with the entry of real European private financial capacity.