For a few glorious minutes on Nov. 18, SpaceX’s gargantuan Starship rocket blasted toward the heavens with apparent perfection. Then, roughly eight minutes into the flight, it inexplicably exploded high above the Gulf of Mexico.

Yet for Elon Musk’s SpaceX, it wasn’t a true setback—just another hiccup in development. At some point, Starship seems likely to safely reach orbital speeds and be deemed ready for launching payloads and satellite swarms into low-Earth orbit. That means the rest of the launch industry—already scrambling to compete with SpaceX’s current workhorse rocket, the Falcon 9—could find itself permanently playing second fiddle to the boisterous billionaire’s rocket maker.