Private companies are no longer peripheral participants in U.S. space activities. They provide key services, including launching and deploying satellites, transporting cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station, and even sending landers to the Moon.
Commercial integration is now embedded in U.S. space policy and shapes national space strategy. As someone who studies space and international security, I have watched the extraordinary rise of commercial space with awe – and with growing concerns about the structural vulnerabilities it creates.
Access to space, particularly for crewed missions, remains heavily concentrated in one company, SpaceX. While the United States has begun developing alternatives, in operational reality that concentration gives the company disproportionate leverage. If private power and public strategy were to diverge, would Washington have a credible Plan B?
Commercial integration is now official policy
On Feb. 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 such as 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 similar preference for prioritizing commercial solutions in federal space activities and set a goal of attracting at least US$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.
Congress, the White House and the military are aligned: The government sets objectives, then private industry builds – and increasingly operates – the space systems. This shift has been bipartisan and explicit, and it has delivered results.
From cost savings to structural dominance
Its origins trace back to a moment of vulnerability.
After the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011, the United States 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 turning deliberately 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. The pace of launches increased.
SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, became central to this new architecture. Its Falcon 9 rocket now carries the majority – five of every six – of U.S. launches to orbit….
