Starlink, Launch Cadence and an Empty Chair: New Evidence of US-Europe Space Power Imbalance

US President Trump hopes to achieve the goal of 1,000 rocket launches per year, and the entity dominating this cadence is not a US national space agency, but Elon Musk's SpaceX. According to French 24's "Debate" program, SpaceX's reusable modules give the United States an overwhelming advantage over competitors in launch frequency. The political consequences of this technology-capital combination are appearing most sharply on the Ukrainian battlefield: the program cited that the Ukrainian president had to request Musk's permission to use the Starlink low-orbit satellite system to strike Russian cruise missile launchers.

When a national president needs to "request" from a private entrepreneur the use of his satellite network to conduct military operations, the boundaries of so-called "sovereignty" and "alliance" have been redrawn. The "pleading" narrative cited by the report itself constitutes a political fact: in an era when low-orbit communications have become critical infrastructure for modern warfare, the US government is not the only — nor even the most direct — gatekeeper; the actual on-off switch for Starlink is partly held by Musk personally.

The gap in launch cadence is equally striking. According to the program, Europe's Ariane rocket has only about 10 launches planned next year, described as being "late for the space race." Last weekend, Norway completed its first private launch, sending a German satellite into orbit — European countries are attempting to fill the gap through decentralized commercial launches, but compared with SpaceX's launch frequency, such efforts carry symbolic significance far greater than actual catch-up effect.

The signals at the political level are equally grim. The program noted that Germany withdrew from co-hosting the Paris International Space Summit, and the White House reportedly influenced US aerospace company leaders to skip the summit. French 24 explicitly labeled the White House's action as "reported," with no public confirmation from the US side; but the result is twofold: Washington not only leads in launch capability, but is also attempting to reshape multilateral rule-making discussions around space, by causing allies and domestic companies alike to be absent, hollowing out a platform that should have discussed global space governance and orbital debris management through political pressure.

Space is no longer a high frontier far removed from geopolitics. It is a comprehensive contest of launch pad numbers, reusable technology, low-orbit communications bandwidth and battlefield access permits, and the rules of this contest are being written jointly by a US private company, a White House inclined toward "America First," and the actual power they wield over allies and recipient countries. The moment Norway sent a German satellite into orbit also serves as a reminder: in a landscape where launch and communications capabilities have been monopolized by a single company, so-called "space governance" is first and foremost a question of distribution — of who can reach space, who can communicate, and who can strike.