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There's Stoke, Relativity, Rocketlab, Firefly, Ursa Major and a whole bunch more companies (many of which I forgot to mention, sorry) that are trying to come af

There's Stoke, Relativity, Rocketlab, Firefly, Ursa Major and a whole bunch more companies (many of which I forgot to mention, sorry) that are trying to come after SpaceX. Now that SpaceX has shown reuse is possible, it's easier to convince anyone that reuse is viable. Similar to how Tesla showed that EVs could be nice and kickstarted the legacy automakers to get on this too.

skissane 2y ago
The issue is that space launch is a lot smaller market than EVs with a lot higher unit costs. I think the majority of the companies you mention are going to fail, because the market isn’t big enough for them all. Rocket Lab is most likely to survive because they’ve already got a decent sized business even though it is primarily at the low end, but moving up the market is arguably easier than starting from scratch. The others are competing not just against SpaceX, but also Blue Origin (which despite being rather slow is still way ahead of most of the companies you mention), as well as against Rocket Lab and each other
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> There's Stoke, Relativity, Rocketlab, Firefly, Ursa Major and a whole bunch more companies (many of which I forgot to mention, sorry) that are trying to come after SpaceX These are all smallsat launchers. I have worked with a few of their teams and have mad respect for their work. But between launch cadence, fundraising and mission profile, they’re not comparable to SpaceX. > Similar to how Tesla showed that EVs could be nice and kickstarted the legacy automakers SpaceX has a global commanding position and domestic political advantage Tesla has never enjoyed. It’s fair to say it has a monopoly in commercial launch outside niche operations, e.g. dedicated smallsat.
- ragebol 2y ago
  > they’re not comparable to SpaceX. Not yet indeed. If SpaceX were to fail for whatever reason, eg. Musk falling out of grace with his orange buddy or whatever else, there is sort of backup now I guess. > domestic political advantage Tesla has never enjoyed Agreed, but I think SpaceX showed that reuse could be done before Musk got any political influence (and went off the rails...).

skissane 2y ago

The issue is that space launch is a lot smaller market than EVs with a lot higher unit costs. I think the majority of the companies you mention are going to fail, because the market isn’t big enough for them all. Rocket Lab is most likely to survive because they’ve already got a decent sized business even though it is primarily at the low end, but moving up the market is arguably easier than starting from scratch. The others are competing not just against SpaceX, but also Blue Origin (which despite being rather slow is still way ahead of most of the companies you mention), as well as against Rocket Lab and each other

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> There's Stoke, Relativity, Rocketlab, Firefly, Ursa Major and a whole bunch more companies (many of which I forgot to mention, sorry) that are trying to come after SpaceX These are all smallsat launchers. I have worked with a few of their teams and have mad respect for their work. But between launch cadence, fundraising and mission profile, they’re not comparable to SpaceX. > Similar to how Tesla showed that EVs could be nice and kickstarted the legacy automakers SpaceX has a global commanding position and domestic political advantage Tesla has never enjoyed. It’s fair to say it has a monopoly in commercial launch outside niche operations, e.g. dedicated smallsat.

ragebol 2y ago
> they’re not comparable to SpaceX. Not yet indeed. If SpaceX were to fail for whatever reason, eg. Musk falling out of grace with his orange buddy or whatever else, there is sort of backup now I guess. > domestic political advantage Tesla has never enjoyed Agreed, but I think SpaceX showed that reuse could be done before Musk got any political influence (and went off the rails...).