Italian launch services provider Avio has seen an influx of customers who were unable to secure launch opportunities with SpaceX, according to CEO Giulio Ranzo.
“I can tell you SpaceX has already gone captive because we have a whole bunch of customers coming to us and saying, oh my God, can you fly us?” Ranzo said during the company’s 10 September earnings call.
Reports in June and July suggested the company was no longer accepting some future Falcon 9 rideshare reservations and had begun turning away customers seeking dedicated launches beyond 2028. SpaceX itself also acknowledged the possibility in a June securities filing, warning that it “may prioritize our own launch payloads over additional U.S. government contracts or third-party customers.” That shift now appears to be taking effect, with Space Intel Report’s Peter de Selding reporting this week that SpaceX had told multiple prospective customers that it was no longer accepting new orders for commercial Falcon 9 launches.
Ranzo was notably pointed in his assessment of the market SpaceX had created through its Transporter missions, almost relishing the sudden reversal in fortunes as customers began looking elsewhere for launch options.
“SpaceX has practiced a lot of price damping for a number of years by launching satellites at very cheap rates, all together with the so-called transported mission. Guess what? The party is finished, and they don’t do that anymore,” Ranzo said. “Now all these smaller customers are turning back to us and asking to launch. Thank you very much. Now, we will try to do what we can for them. We are certainly happy to entertain, again, discussions with customers that seem to be only looking at SpaceX.”
According to Ranzo, some customers who had been turned away by SpaceX used the International Space Summit in Paris last week to lobby European institutions for financial support that would help offset the higher cost of launching with a European provider.
“Actually, all these customers, I was here at the conference, they went to European institutions and asked if they can have a fund or something, some money, to sweeten a little bit, the price for them to launch with European rockets because [now] they no longer have a SpaceX option. We’ll see how Europe will react.”
Avio’s Vega C launch system is currently configured to support up to four flights per year. Ranzo explained that Avio may need to move more quickly towards a flight rate of six Vega missions per year, an increase he said would require additional investment and support from the European Space Agency. He added that the ramp-up could also require Avio to bring more work in-house, arguing that production “can only go as fast as the slowest of your suppliers.”
