Cory Doctorow coined a term that perfectly captured the internet's collective frustration. Enshittification. You know the cycle. First, a platform is good to its users. Then, it squeezes those users to lock in business customers. Finally, it screws over those businesses to claw back every cent for its shareholders. It happened to Amazon. It happened to Google. It happened to Uber.
But a funny thing happens when people try to apply this framework to aerospace. They look at Starlink price hikes or the military contracts won by SpaceX and scream that Elon Musk is running the classic platform decay playbook.
They are wrong. They completely misunderstand how launch monopolies work.
SpaceX is not enshittifying its market because SpaceX is not a platform. It is an infrastructure provider operating in a brutally high-capitall investment environment. The company is actively driving costs down, not artificially inflating them after trapping you. Understanding why this distinction matters is vital if you want to know where the commercial space economy is actually going.
The Real Definition of Platform Decay
To understand why the aerospace giant breaks the mold, we have to look at what Doctorow actually meant. Real enshittification relies on two things. Low switching costs initially, followed by high switching costs later, coupled with two-sided network effects.
Take a platform like Facebook. You joined because your friends were there. Advertisers showed up because you were there. Publishers posted articles because everyone was there. Once Facebook locked down the entire ecosystem, it altered the algorithm. It made users see less of what they wanted, forced publishers to pay for reach, and crammed feeds with ads. You did not leave because leaving meant abandoning your digital social circle. That is a trap.
SpaceX does not have network effects in that way. A satellite operator does not buy a ride on a Falcon 9 rocket because their friends are doing it. They do it because it costs around $67 million, while the nearest competitor might charge double for a launch that is three years away.
Traditional Platform Decay:
Users -> Businesses -> Shareholders (Value is systematically extracted)
Aerospace Infrastructure:
High Capital Investment -> Scale -> Price Reduction -> Market Dominance
If a cheaper, more reliable heavy-lift rocket appears tomorrow, launch customers will switch. There are no social ties binding them to Cape Canaveral. The lock-in is not psychological or behavioral. It is purely industrial.
Squeezing Customers vs Dropping the Floor on Price
Critics point to Starlink as proof of decay. They highlight how terminal prices fluctuated, or how data caps were threatened then walked back, or how maritime and aviation rates are sky-high.
But look at the macro data. The cost to launch a kilogram of payload into low Earth orbit has plummeted. Historically, the Space Shuttle cost about $54,500 per kilogram. The Falcon 9 brought that down to roughly $2,700 per kilogram. Starship aims to drag that number below $200.
An enshittified company lowers value while increasing price. SpaceX does the opposite. It increases the cadence of launches while holding prices relatively flat or lowering them when accounting for inflation. In 2023, they managed 96 successful missions. In 2024, they blew past 100. That is not the behavior of a lazy monopolist sucking cash out of a dying system. It is the behavior of a hyper-optimized manufacturing company building an economic moat out of pure operational efficiency.
The price adjustments we see in Starlink are standard supply and demand mechanics. When a satellite constellation has limited bandwidth over a specific geographic area, like rural Ohio, you have two choices. You can let the network grind to a halt for everyone, or you can use pricing tiers to manage congestion. That is regular resource management, not platform rot.
The Real Danger of an Aerospace Monopoly
The actual threat here isn't that SpaceX will suddenly turn into a terrible, bloated version of itself. The danger is structural stagnation in the rest of the industry.
When one company dominates launch so completely, it dictates the hardware standards for the entire world. Satellites are now designed specifically to fit inside a Falcon 9 or Starship fairing. The deployment mechanisms, the structural loads, the vibrational tolerances—everything adapts to Musk's specifications.
This creates an accidental monopoly. It means competitors like United Launch Alliance with their Vulcan Centaur, or Europe with Ariane 6, are not just fighting to build cheaper rockets. They are fighting an entire global supply chain that has optimized itself around SpaceX architecture.
We saw this play out when Russia invaded Ukraine. Suddenly, Western companies couldn't use Soyuz rockets. Europe’s Ariane 6 was delayed. The industry faced a massive launch crunch. Who stepped up? SpaceX. They even launched satellites for their direct competitors, like OneWeb. They didn't extort them with astronomical prices either. They charged standard commercial rates.
That is not how an enshittified monopoly acts. A true predatory monopolist would have crushed OneWeb right then and there by refusing the launch or charging five times the market rate. SpaceX took the money and flew the missions. Why? Because their business model relies on filling manifests and proving reliability, not playing petty gatekeeper games.
Why Legacy Defense Contractors Hate This Model
To see what real market decay looks like in aerospace, look at the traditional defense procurement model. For decades, companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin operated on cost-plus contracts.
Under that system, the government pays a contractor for all its development costs, plus a guaranteed percentage of profit. Think about the incentives there. If you get paid more when you spend more, you are incentivized to delay projects, over-engineer solutions, and let costs balloon. The Space Launch System (SLS) is a prime example. It is billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule, using recycled Space Shuttle technology.
SpaceX pioneered fixed-price contracts with NASA for the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program. NASA said: "Here is a set amount of money. Deliver the cargo, or you don't get paid."
SpaceX absorbed the risk. They failed, blew up rockets, iterated quickly, and eventually succeeded. This shifted the risk from the taxpayer to the private company. The legacy contractors hated it because it forced them to compete on efficiency rather than political lobbying power.
Calling SpaceX enshittified ignores the fact that they single-handedly broke the most bloated, genuinely decayed market in modern industrial history. They replaced a stagnant duopoly with a hyper-aggressive, vertically integrated manufacturing machine.
How to Tell if the Decay is Actually Starting
While the current narrative is wrong, things can change. You should watch for specific warning signs that would signal SpaceX is entering its platform decay era.
First, watch the engineering pipeline. True innovation stops when financial engineering takes over. If we see Starship development stall for years while executives focus purely on maximizing dividends from Falcon 9, start worrying. Right now, they are burning cash on Starship test flights, indicating they are still in the investment and expansion phase.
Second, look at how they treat internal hardware vs external hardware on Starlink. If SpaceX begins charging exorbitant compatibility fees for third-party satellite manufacturers who want to use their laser cross-links, that is a red flag. That would be true gatekeeping.
Third, keep tabs on talent acquisition. Silicon Valley companies rot from the inside when the best engineers leave because the culture shifts from building cool stuff to optimizing ad clicks. If the brightest minds out of MIT and Stanford stop applying to SpaceX because the work environment becomes bureaucratic and risk-averse, the product will eventually degrade.
Step by Step Assessment for Commercial Space Buyers
If you are a satellite operator, a research institution, or a startup looking to leverage space infrastructure without getting trapped by a single giant provider, you need a clear strategy.
Design for Agility: Do not build payloads that can only fly on a Falcon 9. Maintain compatibility with standard configurations used by Rocket Lab’s Neutron or Blue Origin’s New Glenn. It costs more upfront in engineering, but it prevents absolute vendor lock-in.
Hedge Your Constellations: If you are deploying a constellation, split your launch contracts. Even if SpaceX is cheaper, give 20% of your manifest to an emerging launcher. You are paying a premium to ensure an alternative ecosystem exists. Consider it an insurance policy against single-point failure.
Focus on Edge and Ground Segment IP: The launch is just the delivery truck. The real value is the data generated and how you process it. Keep your proprietary value in your sensors, your analytics software, and your ground station efficiency. Don't worry about who owns the truck, as long as the road stays open.
SpaceX is a tough, aggressive monopolist, but it earned that spot by out-building everyone else on the planet. Mixing that up with the slow, parasitic decline of consumer software apps misses the point entirely. Watch the launch cadences, track the cost per kilogram, and ignore the platform buzzwords.
