One thing a lot of people don't think about is that the price of the payload isn't going down yet. The satellites that launch to GEO tend to be 300-500 millio

One thing a lot of people don't think about is that the price of the payload isn't going down yet. The satellites that launch to GEO tend to be 300-500 million dollars. I've heard figures all around there. There is a VERY low risk factor that companies which launch these will accept. These satellites drive business for companies for years their life cycle is 20 years or so. They are a massive investment, and any risk on getting the satellite to space is seen as something to avoid at all costs. Different rocket companies are considered to be the gold standard because they introduce VERY low risk to your payload. Even though these payloads are insured it's still not worth loosing one because you loose out on a ton of revenue. I'm speaking strictly of GEO satellites right now, but the whole economy around satellites will have to be rethought if we can cheaply get devices out there. I suspect that using "tried and true" hardware would become much less important and the cost of the massive satellites would go down because we can launch 5 a year every year instead of 1 or 2 a year. If one of them fails that's fine, we can replace it with something new and margins of safety that are applied in the industry can be reduced.