I mean to be fair I think they are probably the first (and maybe still the only?) company that tries to build rockets that can land back and be reused.
There’s others that are trying, Blue Origin has their New Shepherd rocket that is able to land, but it’s a suborbital tourism vehicle that’s basically just a toy. They’re working on a partly-reusable orbital launcher that’s like a souped up Falcon 9 but it’s still in development. Several other smaller startups are working on smaller Falcon-9-like launchers with expendable second stages, and China is building a straight up carbon-copy of the Falcon 9 and Starship. But SpaceX is the leader in this field and currently the only one who’s actually successful. Everyone is following in their wake at the moment.
I mean to be fair I think they are probably the first (and maybe still the only?) company that tries to build rockets that can land back and be reused.
There’s others that are trying, Blue Origin has their New Shepherd rocket that is able to land, but it’s a suborbital tourism vehicle that’s basically just a toy. They’re working on a partly-reusable orbital launcher that’s like a souped up Falcon 9 but it’s still in development. Several other smaller startups are working on smaller Falcon-9-like launchers with expendable second stages, and China is building a straight up carbon-copy of the Falcon 9 and Starship. But SpaceX is the leader in this field and currently the only one who’s actually successful. Everyone is following in their wake at the moment.