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That sucks. The more players in this industry, the better.

• bryanlarsen 4y ago
  There are over 100 companies in the small launch business. There is only one that is currently doing regular operations (RocketLab). Rocket Lab concluded that 1 company is too many for the market to sustain and are transitioning into the medium launch business. The problem is that they have to compete against SpaceX rideshare, which has a starting price of $275K. Virgin Galactic was charging $12M. https://spacefund.com/launch-database/ https://spacefund.com/launch-database/
• abudabi123 4y ago
  As SpX Starship technology matures the unit weight to orbit should dialdown to going postal freight rate. Perhaps industry players need to specialize their division of labor away from competing against SpX if they can't seeing getting to capability parity within five or ten years. Deep space astroid belt mining operation using autonomous vehicles?
  • cubefox 4y ago
    That seems unlikely. It is not even clear whether reusing the Starship upper stage a few times will be cheaper than using several Falcon 9 upper stages once. After all, the engines are a lot more expensive and they need a heat shield. Anyway, SpaceX is only lower the price as much as the competition forces them to, they won't sell flights cheaper than necessary.