SpaceX exists because the US government was so bad at building rockets and launching stuff into orbit. In the year 2002, the USA was completely out of the commercial launch market. The market for launching commercial satellites into orbit was dominated by the Europeans (Ariane 4 and Ariane 5 rocket) and the Russia built rockets (Proton and Soyuz). The American rockets to orbit were the Space Shuttle, Delta rockets (Boeing) Atlas rockets and Titan IV rockets (Lockheed). All of the American rockets were too expensive to compete for the commercial satellite market. Boeing and Lockheed were satisfied to make huge profits doing US govt launches and nothing else. So Elon came along in 2002 and started SpaceX. He reached orbit in 2008 for the first time. Now SpaceX has basically eliminated all of the competition. SpaceX is launching 90% of all mass to orbit for all rockets combined, any country, any category. Boeing and Lockheed (merged their rockets into ULA) and now barely launch anything, even for the US government. Their new Vulcan rocket has had issues with 2 of its first 4 launches. It is currently grounded while they figure out what is wrong. The Europeans have their new Ariane 6 rocket. It is way more expensive than SpaceX. Most of their business is from European govt satellites and Amazon, because Jeff Bezos was trying to avoid hiring SpaceX for a few years. Amazon gave up and eventually also hired SpaceX to launch their satellites because the other rockets couldn't launch often enough. Russia is no longer active in the commercial launch market. It basically only launches for Russia now.(Wall Street Mav)