Tuesday's success was the first essential step to demonstrate the Falcon 9's reliability to place big satellites into much higher orbits, allowing them to hover at roughly the same spot above the earth while approximately 22,000 miles high. Such geosynchronous orbits, as they are known, are essential for various communication systems.
SpaceX's strategy is to entice customers with lower prices—and simultaneously faster launch tempos—than the incumbents. "All of the commercial [satellite] operators have been waiting for something like SpaceX to come along," according to industry consultant Roger Rusch of TelAstra Inc.
Martin Halliwell, chief technical officer of SES, the world's second-largest commercial-satellite operator, earlier said SpaceX's drive for market share "is really a game changer" that is bound to "shake the industry to its roots."
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Since 2010, SpaceX has averaged about two launches a year. Over the next two years, though, the company's website shows a manifest built on a launch rate of roughly one a month.
Before the mission, SpaceX said by 2015 it planned to double rocket production to about 24 annually.
If SpaceX achieves its goals, it will vindicate a host of satellite manufacturers, operators and space agencies that have revised business plans based on the availability of the Falcon 9. In some cases, SpaceX foresees competing head-to-head with Europe's Arianespace, which often launches dual satellites aboard its heavy-lift Ariane 5 ECA rocket.
SpaceX emphasizes that it developed the original Falcon 9 for under $300 million—or roughly half of the Pentagon's overall cost to launch a single spy satellite on the heavy-lift version of the Delta IV rocket initially developed by Boeing.
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