4 ms·

All the more reason to cooperate and pool resources instead of duplicating effort.

• kelnos 5y ago
  I'm not so sure, though. I think there's still an argument to be made for multiple approaches and different technology, which you're not likely to get if everyone works together. I'm not sure that "avoiding a monoculture" is important for this sort of thing, but maybe it can't hurt? Another problem when multiple independent orgs pool resources and work together is you either end up with design-by-committee (which leads to overengineering and extra expense, both of which are anti-goals for SpaceX and BO), or deadlock when the parties can't agree. And you'd better believe personalities like Musk and Bezos would clash a lot if they ever did a joint venture on something.
  • pmoriarty 5y ago
    "you'd better believe personalities like Musk and Bezos would clash a lot if they ever did a joint venture on something" If they clash a lot it's proof they're not good at cooperating. So maybe the answer is that Musk and Bezos are good at competing, but not good at cooperating. That doesn't mean that cooperation is a losing strategy, but just that one has to be good at cooperating in order to succeed at it.
    • Meandering 5y ago
      People like to romanticize market competition as a epic battle of great minds and ideas that we all benefit from... but, in all honestly, it allows for comparative testing of diverse ideas while keeping pricing honest. Cooperation might lower the "cost" of producing similar products but, then we are producing similar products. A major goal of competition is to prevent us from putting all our eggs in one basket. I mean what if all the space companies decided to use one company's rocket engine and they failed to delivery...
• kiba 5y ago
  One company works slow, the other company works fast.
• avereveard 5y ago
  "Let's pool 9 woman and birth a 14 foot tall baby"