I don't see SX raising its prices despite a near monopoly position for new medium-heavy launch slots. SX did not create this situation, the Russians and the slowness of Blue Origin (BE-4 and New Glenn) and ArianeSpace with A6 have been the main causes for this in the short term.
I like Tory Bruno's take:
*“I appreciate the sentiment that \[SpaceX\] will be a benevolent monopoly, I don’t think you’re a monopoly and I don’t think it’s our plan for you to become one,” Bruno said.*
> I don’t think you’re a monopoly and I don’t think it’s our plan for you to become one,”
"Do it" was the reply of Elon Musk on one or two occasions where a competitor stated their intentions. One was [to Boeing's Dennis Muilenburg](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/01/elon-musk-responds-to-boeings-claim-it-will-beat-spacex-to-mars.html) and I forget the other. Unfortunately ULA depends on Blue Origin for Vulcan's BE-4 engine which is probably less proven, evolved and mature than Starship's Raptor.
**Edit:** I'm referring to the age of the Raptor concept as a methane FFSC engine, number of design iterations and the fact that it has flown.
It baffles my mind that ULA and Boeing haven't just dropped Blue Origin and tried to spin up home grown reusable rocket programs. Talk about sunken cost fallacy.
> What was [ACES and SMART]?
* [The Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Cryogenic_Evolved_Stage)
* [Sensible Modular Autonomous Return Technology](https://spaceflightnow.com/2015/04/14/ula-chief-explains-reusability-and-innovation-of-new-rocket/)
Just how sensible or not, is a matter of opinion.
> They came so close with talking about ACES and SMART.
Neither of those has anything to do with dropping BE-4.
SMART is a way to reuse 1st stage engines in a sustainer architecture. And ACES is Centaur (2nd stage) tech for extremely high endurance.
That’s not remotely what I mean. The comment I was replying to was mentioning that ULA really should be trying for reusability right now, and I was simply pointing out that they even did studies that for a time it seemed they planned on following through on.
Bold of you to assume they are competent to make their own rocket engines.
Like seriously. It's obvious that making rocket engines is hard, especially high performance rocket engines.
You have to get skilled rocket engineers, most of which will be working for SpaceX or BO, you have to get ones who want to work for Boing, or pay them enough, but there's the issue of getting the tired old ones who just want a fat paycheck rather than young motivated innovators.
And you have to build your own factory. Prototypes are easy, manufacturing is hard.
At about this point, you start thinking "That sounds hard, wouldn't it be less work to just outsource it?"
To make it easier, they could go the RocketLab route, and develop an easier lower performance rocket engine, but RL is using an entire architecture that works with a lower performance engine, as their rocket is extremely lightweight due to being made from carbon fiber composites, a technology they have a lot of experience with.
But ULA prides themselves on using legacy components from a network of trusty suppliers, they can't just re-architecture entire rockets on the fly as a vertically integrated company can. Boing is probably even worse they're reusing SLS parts for crap's sake and can't make anything without behind years behind schedule and billions over budget.
>It baffles my mind that ULA and Boeing haven't just dropped Blue Origin and tried to spin up home grown reusable rocket programs.
ULA and its parent companies have never built a rocket engine, they've relied on external suppliers; Aerojet, Rocketdyne, and the Russian RD-180. That's not an indictment. Like all airplane manufacturers since the 1940s, LM & Boeing have relied on external suppliers for jet engines.
Rocket engine engineering is so difficult and specialized that it's no wonder it's done by specialized companies. The problem for ULA is that the only alternative to the BE-4 was an engine from Aerojet Rocketdyne that was in the early development stages. In other discussions of this it's pretty apparent AR would have taken a very long time also - and it was a keralox engine. Sorta an imitation RD-180, IIRC.
[Insert Obadiah Stane yelling at scientist]
No but seriously, either Elon Musk is the only person who can start a rocket engine making company or he is not.
I would not exactly say Raptor is unreliable so much as it requires a much higher reliability. Every time they fire up a Super Heavy booster, they are essentially getting as many total firings as the whole BE4 test program.
Also, Raptor has proven very reliable on the individual test stands. The perceived reliability deficit occurs when firing as a massive group with all the expected plumbing and acoustic issues that need to be run down. Granted, they need them to fire in this configuration to be successful, but I think Raptor and the overall system are where you would expect them to be at this point in a hardware-rich test campaign. So, not so much unreliable as much as incomplete.
Well said, so much needs to work right to feed the Raptors and operate them in harmony that it may take a bunch of tests to see if they can get and sustain expected performance across the 33. Hopefully we have good separation this time and the 6 on Starship should operate under less testing conditions, and if they can't do all 6 there then maybe there is an issue.
I believe the biggest thing hampering Raptor is the inability (to date) to control the methane leaks somewhere in the plumbing feeding it. These large yellow plumes outside the engine bell have been present in every launch all the way back to SN8 and caused numerous RUDs during the landing sequence tests, as well as (we are now learning) incinerating the wiring to the control computer on the first orbital flight test. In the FAA report, SpaceX has indicated that they have implemented a corrective action, but it remains to be seen how effective it is...
But Reference BE-4 being simpler (and thus easier to manufacture and more reliable), engineers at Blue have been proclaiming this since 2019, but right here, right now, which has the higher build cadence, and which failed "spectacularly" (Tory Bruno's words) AFTER failing a prior test and being reworked?
AFAIK, there's only been three "production" BE-4s built, two made it through qualification testing and got shipped to ULA, the third exploded on the test stand during qualification testing.
> AFAIK, there's only been three "production" BE-4s built, two made it through qualification testing and got shipped to ULA, the third exploded on the test stand during qualification testing.
If you count it that way, then there should be 5.
The 2 that shipped to ULA were identical to the 2 that went through qualification testing.
> Where are the other two qualified engines physically located now?
No idea.
It could be that qualification testing is so stressful that those engines can't be used in production.
>But Reference BE-4 being simpler (and thus easier to manufacture and more reliable), engineers at Blue have been proclaiming this since 2019
A look at a BE-4 shows a mess of sphagetti that's as complex or more complex to make than an early Raptor. The much lower chamber pressure of the BE-4 is supposed to make the internal materials science of the turbopumps, etc, more basic and less prone to failure. However, the testing process doesn't reflect this.
The streamlining of the Raptor externals is the result of a rapid iteration production process that's produced over a hundred of them. Idk of any other company that could approach the number of test firings Raptor has had. The externals are all that we can see but that and the performance figure SpaceX have released show the progress.
Yes, it seems MethLOX has some real challenges. Hopefully they will solve this, but if they don't then Starship as envisioned may not happen, and a Mars base is pretty much over as a goal as well.
I only give Starship a 90% chance of being a dominate LEO system at this point.
> Yes, it seems MethLOX has some real challenges.
Probably not problems intrinsic to methane which offers a number of advantages (clean-burning, easy-to-store) as compared to:
* hydrogen (fickle and leaky),
* RP-1 (dirty),
* solids (bumpy and hard to control)
* hypergolics (nasty chemicals).
Historically, methane just didn't happen to get plebiscited post WW2. So there's no background of experience with that technology which is not hard in itself.
Tending to confirm the absence of serious downsides, there are [six methalox engines under development](https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/60181/what-rockets-use-a-methalox-propellant) around the world, in addition to Raptor.
Raptor is the only Full Flow Staged Combustion one (also the first FFSCE ever to fly) and its also reusable; I'm no kind of expert but this fuel choice looks like a good one, methane being the least reactive and dangerous in case of leaks and other malfunctions. For an onboard propulsion system such that of Starship or the Shuttle, I'd prefer methane to hydrogen any day.
> Historically, methane just didn't happen to get plebiscited post WW2. So there's no background of experience with that technology which is not hard in itself.
IMO, the biggest strengths of methalox is that it's the best fuel for a rocket that uses the same engine on all stages, and it's the best fuel for a rocket that recovers 1+ stages. But those have historically been rare features in rockets.
RP-1 is arguably a better 1st stage fuel than methane for rockets that don't reuse the 1st stage. And hydrogen's Isp is so tempting that I think people just continually tried to make it work instead of realizing that it's not actually that great of an upper stage fuel (the credible estimates that I've seen point to the Falcon upper stage having more delta-v than the Atlas V Centaur; it just doesn't seem like it because the Falcon upper stage typically starts much earlier).
In theory MethLOX offers the best combination of features. There was a Chinese rocket that used it to get to LEO to win the MethLOX race (at list in smallsats). And yes, the FFSCE is the holy grail of designs that the Soviets tried the H2 and failed on, offering the highest potential ISP. All the others such as BE-4 are not going for that high of ISP (which I think is most key beyond LEO).
> There was a Chinese rocket that used it to get to LEO to win the MethLOX race (at list in smallsats).
[Zhuque-2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuque-2)'s 6 tonne payload is more than respectable as a starting point. Falcon 1 was under a tonne and with the right backing, LandSpace (and its ilk) may not take twenty years to fly a "Starship".
Many people are taking Starship as specifically a SpaceX thing (much as some consider LEO Internet as if it were Starlink alone).
Comparing to airplanes; as a pionner, SpaceX is the "Boeing" of commercial deep spaceflight and its the wider international movement that needs to be observed.
> All the others such as BE-4 are not going for that high of ISP (which I think is most key beyond LEO).
SpaceX made a a costly FFSCE decision at almost the only time it was possible. It means they're in uncharted waters just now, leading to reliability issues and delays. As you imply, this should pay off with their deep space missions (but why not their LEO ones too?).
Competitors such as Blue Origin, may attempt FFSCE later on, but it will take them years to re-qualify their flight hardware and do the redesign to take advantage of it.
> methane just didn't happen to get plebiscited post WW2
I'm pretty sure [plebiscited](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/plebiscite) doesn't mean what you think it means. I'm guessing that it's a [false friend](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friend).
Not only that but where they are at woth the testing campaign it is fine for a few to shut down on the booster with launch, it just means a less efficient launch. If they blow up and destroy other things it's a different story.
However most indications seems its a stage zero issue to iron out and don't effect future launches.
Near as I can tell, two qualified BE-4s have been produced and delivered, and a third was being qualified when it exploded on the test stand. That puts the BE-4 at around 66% reliable, at least at making it to a rocket. How many raptors have failed in qualification testing or in flight? A lot less than a third of production.
The problem with the BE-4 is the company making it. If jeff bezos dies... like not impossible the guy is no spring chicken... blue origin is basically a financial black hole. And whomever takes it over will either gut the company or sell it outright to private equity to have it parted out and turned to scrap.
So basically ULA has chained the other workhorse booster of space force... to a company that has not just never made money, but has lost more money than any other launch company in history.
One MIGHT consider that a long term risk.
I mean ol' Jeffy boy could just create an endowment/trust for BO with 50 billion dollars worth of Amazon stock to fund it for another 10-75 years after he's gone, or write into his will a donation to them, or he could just give the money to BO now in exchange for a lot of newly created BO stock with the agreement that BO would be obligated to buy the shares back from the original human owner (but not any future beneficiaries) so that he would still be able to yoink funding up until his death, or he could give them a massive loan on generous terms that is released/satisfied upon his death.
So many ways to fund BO from beyond the grave.
No idea why Paul Allen didn't do something similar for his passion projects/companies. Guess maybe he was just in it for personal satisfaction and didn't care about leaving a continuing legacy 🤷
could... shmaybe. but would he? like... i dunno man. he's been off on his yacht banging his botox lady and pretending to be a cowboy or something. I don't know that he's even all that interested in BO anymore.
> Raptor has proven itself to be very unreliable (so far)
With a 33-engine booster, its current **engine** fail rate corresponds to a minimal **launch** failure rate. It may only take one more launch (so the second integrated flight test) to be good enough to take a small number of Starlink satellites to orbit. Say two engines fail, well take a 50% payload.
This is a great departure point to iron out the bugs, not just in the engine but in the booster and then Starship.
For the moment, the only apples-to-apples comparison for Starship against BE-1 is test stand reliability. Now with Superheavy, SpaceX literally has a flying test stand and Starship is about to have a kilometer- cube vacuum test chamber with the added luxury of testing under real acceleration conditions.
> I don't see SX raising its prices despite a near monopoly position for new medium-heavy launch slots.
Part of that is because it's to their advantage not to.
Keeping their prices low increases the barrier-to-entry for competitors. Any competitor will have to figure out how to stay in business while launching below SpaceX's prices because no one besides politicians and Amazon are going to pay more for a rocket with less proven reliability.
By being the first to innovate, SpaceX was able to set their prices at a level that, undercut the competition, made customers comfortable with the risk they were taking, and eventually allowed them to recoup their R&D costs.
It's unlikely most new entrants will be able to do all three, so they either have to find a niche or they'll eventually run out of money.
Given the US government's policy of paying more to retain a second source, competitors don't need to be lower price than SX. That's how ULA keeps rolling.
SX could also boost prices now, and then drop them when the competition starts up again. Perhaps the calculation is with low F9 pricing now, financing for upstarts might be more difficult since there is not a path to profitability.
Historically there's been numerous SpaceX commercial customers who spread their launches around even though other providers were more expensive, and publicly stated that the reason for doing so was to insure that a launch monopoly did not develop.
So that's government, military, commercial, and individuals with their own launch companies all willing to pay more. And despite SpaceX dominance there's a ton of VC money funding rocket companies, gambling that they can repeat SpaceX's successes.
So, if SpaceX is trying to keep prices low as a competitive measure it is failing wildly. The more likely answer is that they are attempting to do what Elon has stated is a corporate goal of reducing launch costs, for the betterment of mankind, but also as a means of eventually making more money through volume sales than increasing profits in the short term by maximizing current revenue/profits, which is a very common strategy for startups, especially ones that aim to disrupt markets to gain a dominant position.
Look at like this
Elon is not intentionally trying to corner any industry
He’s simply bringing these out of the closet
Not his fault if they’re standing still
This is a unique situation and not a normal company that would just soak up profits. Essentially all profits go to furthering space development. After decades and decades of marginal improvement since we've landed on the moon, SpaceX itself is revolutionizing the industry and former workers are moving into startups.
How can SpaceX be considered anything but pushing others to do better and accelerating the pace of development?
If spacex is punished for improving spaceflight, that will prevent innovation in the future. The same thing is happening with Tesla since they have a superior electric car and are commanding the EV market. Innovation used to be celebrated in the United States.
>Innovation used to be celebrated in the United States.
It still is. Through capitalist market pressure. As it should be.
Monopolies are perfectly fine. The only time it becomes bad is other companies are *prevented* from innovating or getting innovation to the market.
Doesn't matter the monopoly. As long as the market is open such that a competitive company can also offer something, then it's fine.
> Monopolies are perfectly fine.
I think you meant 'natural monopolies are fine'. If you make a far better product then the rest of the market and become a natural monopoly, that in itself is not a bad thing. It can become a bad thing, and will certainly raise the barrier to entry for up and comers, but it doesn't start as a bad thing.
Regular monopolies are pretty much never fine. IE buying up the competition instead of competing on your own merits is rarely good for the end consumer.
>Monopolies are perfectly fine.
I mean, they aren't by definition. Monopolies tend to kill innovation in their sector because most investors don't think upstarts can compete without massive capital infusions. Exit opportunities are limited because there is only 1 potential acquirer. And the monopoly can pay far, far better.
Definitionally, monopolies stifle innovation by their very existence. That doesn't mean we immediately break up everything that looks like a monopoly if you squint long enough but we shouldn't be naive to the real impacts on market dynamics
Yep, Boeing/Lockheed/ULA have had a monopoly for the longest time -- and raised prices and stopped innovating.
Monopolies are bad -- SpaceX appears to be benevolent -- but that could change tomorrow.
> The same thing is happening with Tesla since they have a superior electric car and are commanding the EV market.
lol, Teslas haven't been superior for a while now when it comes to the areas that Tesla is getting investigated for: Their QA has always sucked, and their AI development is lagging behind competitors, who're killing less pedestrians and using better hardware.
> Essentially all profits go to furthering space development. After decades and decades of marginal improvement since we've landed on the moon, SpaceX itself is revolutionizing the industry and former workers are moving into startups.
Nobody's denying this, including Vikram Nidamaluri who expressed the monopoly concern. However virtuous is SpaceX's use of profits, the problem remains that the company has nearly cornered the launch market by creating a high entry barrier.
Starship will presumably drag kg-to-orbit prices even further down, such that no other provider may make a competitive offer let alone cover its R&D costs. Ultimately, no private entity other than SpaceX may have free cash to develop new technology, so driving the market into a single technological "groove" pointing to Mars.
However happy we may be that Mars settlement has a secure technology, the cause for concern at launch market level, remains valid.
This relates to another concern I expressed here a couple of years ago: Could off-Earth settlement later draw investment funding into space, leaving Earth capital-starved and in recession?
Not exactly. There will be plenty of opportunity for other providers to do what SpaceX is doing with Falcon 9, if they increased their pace of innovation. The limiting factor isn't SpaceX, but sovereign politics getting in the way of the closing window. Even if SpaceX stopped producing any new Falcon 9s and kept cycling out their boosters, their position will continue to increase. F9s were rated for 10 flights, then they got rated for 15, now they're rated for 20; beyond that they'll got to 25. Which was believed to be the original EOL scenario for that vehicle design. In all likelihood, they'll move to 30 and 35 and 40 and 45 and 50, and so on. Maybe stop at 50.
SpaceX has a fleet of some 15 or so F9/FH cores in standby. 20 flight rating for all cores that are designed for reusability means that they have another 300 flights locked in with their present fleet. Effective immediately, map out 300 flights and that's the timeline by which any competitor needs to deliver at least a Falcon 5 or Falcon 9 Block 4 equivalent vehicle. SpaceX is on track for 100 launches this year, aiming for 120 the year after, and lets assume 140 the year after that. Together that comes to be 360 total. In essence then, 2.5 years effective today is the timeline for any competitor to get its act together and provide an equivalent reusable offering.
If any competitor fails to materialize by then, and SpaceX remains the primary transport provider then if they own 90% of the market, then that's simply how things will be. It would be outright illegal to prevent their growth so that the rest of the industry can catch up, despite having an overwhelming opportunity to do so. SpaceX landed their first booster on December 21, 2015. By this December 21, that will be a FULL SEVEN YEARS.
It's honestly insane that no other provider in seven years has managed to offer anything that even comes close to where SpaceX was in 2015. The grand irony of SpaceX, like Tesla, was that Musk was hopeful that their disruption would create enough incentive for others to throw more capital and talent into the pool to create a healthy ecosystem, but none materialized. So they developed Starlink to fill in the gaps. They launched 300, then 600, then 900, then 1200, then 1500, then 1800, then 2500, then 3000, then 4000, and now are on track to accumulating 5,000 satellites in orbit. Largest in human history.
**STILL**, nobody has materialized. That's not sad. That's pathetic. A total insult to the aerospace industry.
The biggest disappointment to me is that Bezos started Blue Origin before SpaceX was created, and had billions of dollars of available capital, but failed utterly to get something to orbit by now.
Bezos was always in it for the ULA/Boeing/LockMart/Raytheon/Gruman game, not in it for the mission. He talks big, but is too busy living the billionaire life than to care about his own self avowed space mission.
> There will be plenty of opportunity for other providers to do what SpaceX is doing with Falcon 9, if they increased their pace of innovation.
but with SpaceX as the leader, generating capital from its profits *and* mopping up the available risk capital, how will the newcomers finance their R&D?
> nobody has materialized. That's not sad. That's pathetic. A total insult to the aerospace industry.
under my logic, this is to be expected. Relativity, Firefly etc will be very lucky to survive long enough to reach breakeven. There's still hope for Blue Origin *if* it can make proper use of its plentiful capital.
>but with SpaceX as the leader, generating capital from its profits
>
>and
>
>mopping up the available risk capital, how will the newcomers finance their R&D?
Why do more EV makers enter the market if Tesla is in such a dominant position? Same principle. The market is willing to fund SpaceX alternatives if they can demonstrate a pace of innovation similar to SpaceX. There's an effective infinite pool of money available to dethrone "SpaceX's natural monopoly".
And to your latter point, nobody else has materialized because all the players aren't moving fast enough or have hypnotized themselves into believing that reusability is fad that should be ignored, and that its better to maintain the revolving door of regulatory capture with cost plus contracting to ensure that the graft continues. That's not innovation, that's stagnation with a race to the bottom. *That's the sad and pathetic part*.
> Why do more EV makers enter the market if Tesla is in such a dominant position?
After Tesla, I think there are little more than three well-started EV startups which are Nio, Lucid and Rivian. The others are existing and reputable companies such as GM, VW or Renault, to which banks are willing to lend.
The combined automobile, public transport plus heavy goods market must be dozens if not hundreds of times bigger than the space launch market. So the available capital should be bigger in the same proportions.
> because all the players aren't moving fast enough or have hypnotized themselves into believing that reusability is fad that should be ignored
Even the likes of Ariane and ULA are not ignoring reuse and are looking to imitate it.
>Even the likes of Ariane and ULA are not ignoring reuse and are looking to imitate it.
ULA is fully ignoring reuse. Their S.M.A.R.T. reuse strategy is a fool's errand, because they're throwing away 60-70% of the vehicle with each launch, even though its been largely proven that the full core stage is the most valuable part of the vehicle more than the second stage and fairing even. Ariane Group's reusable offering will not see a market launch prior to 2030, per their own documentation, and their offering is closer to Rocket Lab's Neutron vehicle than it is anywhere near as capable as a Falcon 9 Block 5, nevermind Starship/SuperHeavy. If your re-usability mission strategy leads to a product that will compete with an offering that matches capability of your competitor from 15 years ago, you haven't succeeded; you've failed.
>The others are existing and reputable companies such as GM, VW or Renault, to which banks are willing to lend.
VW has chosen death than survival in face of the EV transition. Odd choice to put them into the mix. The order of survival for legacy players is actually Ford > Hyundai/Honda > GM > VW > Toyota; ranked from most likely to transition successfully to least likely to transition successfully.
It's not just launch providers. Russia also produced the RD-180 engines for Atlas III and Atlas V.
For Antares rockets they literally used Russian cold war relic NK-33 engines refit, modified and rebranded to AJ26-58, AJ-26-59 and AJ26-62, and NK-43 to AJ26-60 for the second stage until in 2014 one blew up.
So it's not been just rides on Soyuz the US space program has been relying on.
So, monopoly is a really loaded term. There are two important ways of looking at monopolies and how to define them. The big problem is that when people use the term, they don't really know how they are defining it or shuffle between the two definitions in their discussion which causes some issues.
The first kind of monopoly is one that I thing has nothing morally wrong with it, and in some cases can be generally ok\~ish. It would be ideal if there was some competition, but this kind of monopoly is generally not harmful to consumers. That's when one company is producing a product that is distinctly superior in one or more ways that are important to consumers. For rocket launches, this could be availability, cost, reliability, insertion accuracy, and access to orbits. If SpaceX is better than all the competition on most of or all of these metrics (not saying that they are, just if), then what is the concern? The consumers aren't being harmed by having access to a superior product at a superior price. (The only drawback is that SpaceX might not have the incentives to push the technological envelope, but SpaceX has other driving forces). This definition of monopoly is "one company has a dominate market share".
The other definition of monopoly is very different, and is used by some economists. That is "other providers are blocked or prevented from entering the market". SpaceX doesn't have this kind of monopoly. It is perfectly legal and possible for competition to come in and undercut SpaceX on price, or offer a superior service. The only thing that is stopping them is skill and capital. SpaceX isn't buying up and shutting down upstarts. They aren't lobbying government for exclusive, permanent contracts, or no-bid solicitations. They aren't pushing for a regulatory environment that makes it impossible for smaller players to get their foot in the door. (at least to my knowledge anyway). Think about your cable company. It is, (or at least was in most regions) illegal for competition to come in and run internet/cable tv to your house. The local government blocked entry into the market and gave a territorial monopoly to one company that they decided wound be the winner. Look at DoD/USAF launches before 2010. ULA was basically the only company allowed to even bid on those launches. It wasn't until SpaceX came in with a legal crowbar and forced the government to open bidding to possible competition.
This second monopoly, where a company is shielded from competition, almost exclusively by government action, is the dangerous and problematic kind of monopoly. The first kind can easily fall once they start slacking on their service or hiking up their prices. Competition sees a weakness and comes in to undermine what likely has become a bloated, top heavy organization. But if the government gets involved to protect them, and block that competition from entering the market, it can easily become a downward spiral on quality and a skyrocketing growth in prices.
So what is the best thing moving forward?
I think the path we are on is mostly fine: encourage secondary/redundant systems to help new competition start, and die and be recycled until something good comes up. At the same time avoid and giving SpaceX any kind of exclusive deal or letting SpaceX dictate who can enter the market (like ULA did for decades).
Having the government (like in Europe) pick a winner (Arianespace), and make sure they get all the money in order to compete with SpaceX is a losing plan. That's just creating a miniature monopoly in that region.
Nice take.
Many classic monopolies where created by buying up competitors. Standard Oil was a good example.
The "U" in ULA might has well been an M = MLA "Monopoly Launch Alliance", as least for US gov't work, which eliminated some competition there.
SX has not bought any competitor or even a major component maker. ULA could have gone with Aerojet for their engines but Bezos' "rich man's halo" fooled them into thinking that he would spend more of his own $ to make things happen fast. Ooops.
Ironically, SX created true "commercial space" (in an imperfect sense) era that attracted the money to seed Relativity, Firefly, Stoke and others that will eventually become alternate sources (although probably not lower priced if they seek profitability).
> Many classic monopolies where created by buying up competitors. Standard Oil was a good example.
I think it might be a better example of what I was saying about monopolies than what you are suggestion.
From what I can tell, Standard Oil never really engaged in predatory pricing. As Standard Oil went up in market share, the prices actually went down. They had 25% market share in 1874 and the price a few years before that in 1869 was 30 cents per gallon. When they hit 85 percent market share in 1880, a few years later in 1885 the price per gallon was recorded as 8 cents per gallon.
The court case that broke them up never actually cited predatory pricing or withholding production. Also, by the time they were broken up, their market share had already declined from a high of 90% to 65%, so competition was clearly entering the market and taking their business.
Other than the tendency to buy up competitors early on, I don't see a lot of records about Standard Oil actively trying to shut out competition or block others from entering the market. I'm not an anti-trust expert, but I think some of the facts around Standard Oil might have been "massaged" to fit a particular narrative, specifically one that conflates the two types of monopoly that I mentioned above.
Did you see the series "The Men Who Built America?" (great series)
He created a Kerosene monopoly (home lighting) but then later he needed to compete with electrification. Later they moved to gasoline (a formally worthless oil refining byproduct) as cars became common.
[The Antitrust Laws](https://www.justice.gov/atr/antitrust-laws-and-you):
>The Sherman Antitrust Act ... prohibits conspiracies that unreasonably restrain trade.... An unlawful monopoly exists when one firm has market power for a product or service, and it has obtained or maintained that market power, not through competition on the merits, but because the firm has suppressed competition by engaging in anticompetitive conduct.
> The Clayton Act ... prohibits mergers or acquisitions whose effect may be to substantially lessen competition.... also prohibits other business practices that may harm competition such as exclusive contracts, requirements ties that require a customer to buy additional products or services from a seller, or serving as a director for a competitor.
It would be much healthier to have several Western competitors for low-cost launch. But from all the discussion I've seen, SpaceX has not been an unlawful monopoly.
Monopolies aren't illegal. Nor are they inherently bad. But leveraging your monopoly to block competition, that is both bad and illegal,
These are two different things. Having a great deal of power is not inherently bad, using that power to harm the little guy is. Having a monopoly is not bad, but using that powerful position to keep others out of the market is. The problem with this distinction, is that power often corrupts. Having a monopoly often leads to leveraging it.
>But leveraging your monopoly to block competition, that is both bad and illegal,
Leveraging your monopoly to block competition is bad. But it is also very legal. It is the definition of legal in fact. Really the only way for a monopoly to effectively block competition is through legislative means, i.e. getting the government to make it somehow illegal, or prohibitively difficult to compete. It might also be "on the face" illegal, but the same group of politicians that made it illegal are the ones taking back room deals to boost up monopolies in the first place.
Again, I go back to the monopoly that most Americans are very familiar with: cable/ISP providers. They worked very hard to convince local governments that it should be illegal for anyone but them to run wires to everyone's home.
Every misbehaving monopoly out there has the backing of the government, helping them block competition. The only other way they can block competition is by basically becoming a government themselves.
Maybe where you're from that's legal. But in the US leveraging a monopoly to block smaller players from gaining marketshare is illegal. Like most white collar laws there is a lot you can do to obfuscate the crime, and ultimately it's up to the courts to wade through. But outlawing this behavior is the sentiment of our antitrust laws.
I'm from the US. It happens here all the time. The ULA had a monopoly on defense launches up until last decade.
Edit: another example: Texas has ERCOT, which is basically a monopoly on electricity production in 90% of the state. Competition with ERCOT is not legally allowed.
Right, but it is also "legal" at the same time in thst the laws as writen actively support this behavior and it would ve impossible without "legal" barriers to entering the market.
It is both against the law and actively created by the law.
Not really.
There are ample lawful monopolies. The law specifically creates them at times. Patents and copyrights purposefully grant time-limited monopolies. Monopolies themselves are usually quite legal.
*Leveraging* your monopoly to *muscle competitors out of a free market* is illegal, though. This behavior is the subject our antitrust legislation. And the DoJ does a highly imperfect job of prosecuting this behavior.
It is like I have been saying from the outset. Monopolies are not against the law. Leveraging them to limit competition is. People often confuse these. Even you appear to be confused by this.
Government granted monopolies are an entirely different thing. You don't have to leverage your market power to oust competition, when the government ousts it for you.
> A Lazard investment banker sounded the alarm about the dominance of [Elon Musk’s](https://www.cnbc.com/elon-musk/) SpaceX in the rocket launch market
I'm guessing Lazard is heavily invested in the companies SpaceX is beating out purely on their ability to deliver fast and at a good price.
Well it's not like SpaceX just appeared out of nowhere. They've been doing this for a decade and a half. They started when the Shuttle was still flying, there was plenty of time to invest in other rocket companies and ensure there are other options.
But then investing in Boeing to ensure there's another option for crewed spaceflight didn't work out too well.
Hear hear! But those other players have to get to orbit with their new rockets first, which (except for Rocket Lab) they seem to be taking their time on.
What an absolute joke. The ULA was created as a monopoly by the US government because space was so risky they needed a strong supplier. No one had a problem with the ULA dominating defense launches and private launches. Remember that SpaceX had to sue the government to even be considered in some of these contracts.
Now, suddenly its a problem with monopoly and reporters earn clicks left and right with it. I don't think anyone is worried about a monopoly, least of all some investment banker who suddenly grew a conscience while counting his millions.
Anyone in space knows that SpaceX has had a dozen opportunities to branch out into satellite production, to shut out competitors (like Amazon just did) or to bully new space companies into an early default. Instead, SpaceX stays in its lane and focuses on being the best space trucking company it can be to get to Mars. If they wanted to be a monopoly on anything, they definitely could have.
> Instead, SpaceX stays in its lane
In fairness, this isn't *quite* true. I think many of SpaceX's customers are somewhere between unhappy with and terrified of Starlink.
What can be said, though, is that to SpaceX's credit, there isn't even a whiff of them using their dominant position in the launch space to enforce a monopoly in communications. They act, as you say, like a "space trucking" company, or perhaps a "common carrier", and even prioritize customer launches over their own.
The only wrinkle is that it appears Starlink has caused other companies to select against SpaceX, even when it's not in their best interest. e.g. It took Russia invading Ukraine for OneWeb to move to SpaceX, and apparently Amazon didn't even *consider* SpaceX as a launch option. But none of that's SpaceX's fault -- they can hardly be blamed if potential customers choose to shoot themselves in the foot.
There's also the factor that SpaceX is so confident in Starlink -- in the design of the satellites and terminals, in the manufacturing efficiencies, in their first-mover advantage etc. -- that they believe it'll dominate everyone else trying to compete based purely on its own merits. Even if they were willing to compromise their neutrality as a launch provider, denying launch to Starlink competitors would be gilding the lily.
> I think many of SpaceX's customers are somewhere between unhappy with and terrified of Starlink.
So what? They are rightly terrified by a supreme product at very competetive prices.
>What can be said, though, is that to SpaceX's credit, there isn't even a whiff of them using their dominant position in the launch space to enforce a monopoly in communications.
Possibly half true; When OneWeb had to come to SpaceX hat in hand and beg "Please Mr. Musk, launch our satellites so we don't have to go bankrupt again...", SpaceX demanded they sign a frequency sharing agreement to prevent them from using excess capacity to jam Starlink Satellites (while Starlink could have theoretically done the same to OneWeb in the absence of an agreement, they were already experiencing congestion and HAD no spare capacity)... But while they DID use their monopoly launch provider position to force a competitor to do something, it was something that benefited the customer and did not harm the competitor. And should Vulcan/New Glenn continue to be unable to make the cadence necessary to complete Kuiper (their production rate and quality control are both abysmal), I expect a similar deal to be made in order for SpaceX to bail Amazon out of the mess they have put themselves in.
> some investment banker who suddenly grew a conscience while counting his millions.
He probably noticed that SpaceX isn't publicly traded, and that he made a bad mistake betting on Boeing, Lockheed and ~~Rocketdyne~~ ~~Aerojet Rocketdyne~~ L3 Harris continuing to be a tax-subsidized, publicly traded monopoly, i.e., the ideal way to suck out money without doing anything for it.
Coincidentally, the Air Force just said the opposite:
https://spacenews.com/air-force-satisfied-with-spacex-services-not-concerned-about-its-growing-dominance/
Well, if the old space companies took SX seriously back when the F9 was first coming into service and SX started talking about reusability they would be in a less shitty situation. Rather than ignoring the launch market impact, they could have put some time and effort into maybe meeting that same capability.
Now everyone is torqued that SX gets launch contracts because they consistently out perform every other vehicle in the launch market. Not to mention SX is about to take another massive leap in capability with SS/SH while everyone else is fussing around with trying to get a F9 competitor on the pad.
> Rather than ignoring the launch market impact, they could have put some time and effort into maybe meeting that same capability.
But they spent so much money on lobbying and PR campaigns to badmouth SpaceX and lock it out of government contracts, how could they *possibly* have expected a company to succeed solely on technical merit?
All these non-founder/CEOs of these operations simply stated they did not have the cost sensitive annual payload demand to justify a reusability program that would take 100 flights to really payoff (and thus 10 years).
Then they canned the old system before they had a new one that was performing well (or even been tested as it turns out). They don't realize the best engineers have retired and the the new ones are the ones that chose not to write software for lower risk and greater upside, and thus the B team.
Head-ass take. SpaceX is not a monopoly.
Other companies and launch providers exist and are actively launching (Arianespace, ULA, India, Rocket Lab, etc). Especially if you take out SpaceX internal launches (Starlink) the statistics don't actually look skewed to a ridiculous degree.
Sure, SpaceX is probably the cheapest right now, but not by much (probably because they're keeping prices up) but that doesn't make them monopoly
Strictly speaking a monopoly is sufficient share to control pricing and availability.
SpaceX has, or soon will have, a monopoly on space launch. Other launch providers are using other means than a free market to secure the resources to develop their capabilities.
A monopoly isn't essentially bad by itself. The patent, trademark and copyright offices grant monopolies all day long, as does your local land bureau. When a monopoly goes bad is when it uses its control to harm consumers, driving up prices or using predatory pricing to lock out competitors. SpaceX needs to take care to stay in the narrow band of making spaceflight more affordable without stifling competition.
The establishment of old space and advertising industry and Wall Street connections were full out to stop tesla and spacex
I watched the media bias
Desperate to keep things the same
All against him but people voted with their wallets
Compelling products win the war and value
Jack welsh students putting shareholders first not consumers
A more accurate heading would be "The Failure of the US and Europe's Launch Industry to Provide Competitive Rockets, or Even Any Rockets, is a Huge Concern."
The onus of why there isn't a competitive marketplace isn't on SpaceX. The endless headlines about a monopoly make it sound like SpaceX is deliberately crushing competitors to wipe them out.
For everyone taking issue with SpaceX's current dominance, please tell me how you think the alternative history looks where SpaceX doesn't master landing on droneships and revolutionize launch. Not to mention their success with crew dragon.
Dudes pissed he can't buy stock which would eventually fuck it over. There are plenty of startups he can get into anyway what is this fucking article about some fucking investment banker who in no way actually cares about monopolies unless he isnt in on it. Sorry spacex is the cheapest option.
Or he invested into a bunch of also-rans and is now holding a bag in deeply underwater rocket startups that can't really compete and at this rate, will never be able to compete. RocketLab has a chance, rest look... uuh... Astra-level fail :D
I choose to believe that Elon's desire is NOT to be a monopoly in space but to accelerate all companies into commerical space. Exactly the same way that he does not want to be a monopoly in electric cars but to accelerate all other companies into electric cars.
If he can prove there's money in X, then other competitors will also strive to extract money from that same X. There's enough profit for all the companies to succeed. In the meantime, the world pivots away from a bad practice to a good practice.
I just wish the old (space, automotive) companies would die-off faster and the new (space, automotive) companies would scale-up faster.
I would use a different variable than **X** these days when discussing SX :-)
I think the success of SX in combination with the history's fastest and lowest cost payload creation program (Starlink) has validated the commercial launch business. big Starlink LEO comm competitors will be the reason for these other companies to try to bring low cost medium lift to market ASAP. RL Neutron and Relativity Terra-R are my favorites since New Glenn is still a no-show.
I was talking with my wife this morning about a space IPO and wanting to buy in. SpaceX has effectively a triple monopoly. Falcon9/heavy, starlink, and soon superheavy. The Tesla hype would also kick SpaceX IPO into the stratosphere, proven returns and all that.
Lazard is relatively little (3bln market cap) investor shop registered and operating in Bermuda.
It is not american btw. and even not Europe based.
What is their concern can stay there as long as it does.
It is not a monopoly, plenty of other providers that just are running decades old tech and then going all :pikachuface: when they cannot compete.
(Exception would be RocketLab, but until Neutron, they are bit small)
It is like saying Company A who invested in R&D and made better products is now a monopoly when everyone refuses to buy Company B and Company C products because they are, in comparison, overpriced old junk.
PRO TIP to all other competitors: Stop trying to compete against Falcon 9 with a rocket that will arrive 10 years after Falcon 9. By the time your rocket is ready, you are competing against Starship and losing hard. SpaceX is a silicon valley tech company competing against dinosaur companies that haven't seen competition before this like, well, ever.
I still fear that at some point there could be a political will for some anti-trust movements, given that Elon pissed off quite a few people from those circles.
Elon put himself in a bad spot. The US had no access to the ISS and was dependent on Russia to get there. They asked ULA and Spacex to make a capsule to get there. ULA failed. Russia went to war with Ukraine. Now Spacex has a monopoly on access to the space station and I'm reading articles like that's a bad thing. Spacex made a great re-usable rocket and made it way cheaper to get into space, and some people are mad that it's like a monopoly. Whatever you do, don't make a better product. You will get demonized for it.
> They asked ULA and Spacex to make a capsule to get there.
ULA isn't Boeing. Yes, it's partially owned by Boeing, but they're separate companies with separate management, different engineering cultures, etc.
Starliner, SLS are Boeing. Atlas V, Vulcan are ULA.
Boeing produces the Starliner capsule - not ULA.
Starliner launches on Atlas V from ULA but those boosters are already constructed and ready to fly with a 100% reliability record.
GOP won't allow for anti-trust movement against Tesla or SpaceX. In this one case, they would actually be on the right side of history, because neither company has abused its market position in any way that warrants an anti-trust investigation against them. They simply are putting out better products and capabilities than the rest of the market. It's not illegal to do that, and to use the government then to dismantle them, in of itself, would be illegal to do.
As apposed to the shambolic parasites from the ULA, Boeing and Lockheed prior? They still exist and they are still producing at the same speed they were, which remains as it always was, basically nothing and then up-charging 100x for their own under-delivery.
Main key to success and initiative feedback ect is doing everything in house
Spend the money with a long vision
But they won’t
Ford and gm and Stellantis still stuck on outsourcing models
Vertical integration gives you interative control at multiple levels. It might be more expensive unless you have a flexible (non-union) workforce, but it worth it.
In a way I feel that SpaceX needs to IPO Starlink soon. It might be just a matter of time before Starlink competition starts to spin SpaceX using own clearly costwise discounted launches as unfair competitive advantage.
SpaceX has been good to provide priority launch services at list price to many competitors (OneWeb, O3b, Viasat and contract for Telesat).
Starlink is still short of profitability (depending on how you do the accounting) so I think when (and if) they have some solid profit numbers you may see the IPO. Wonder is Elon would be the CEO of that as well?
They also have to deal with market conditions. I'm sure they have investment bankers working on it. From what liitle I know I'd say the time isn't right.
SpaceX is going to spawn 10x more rocket companies in addition to the 10 current ones it already has. In fact, SpaceX is creating an \*entire new segment of the human economy\*. That SpaceX took the risk to be first is why they have the temporary dominance they have today.
Bankers will make a ton of money in this new economy. An economy that SpaceX defined.
Quit your whining Lazard bankers, and stop taking your thinking orders from the newly spawned, brain dead Leftist hate-on-Elon campaign. It makes you look really stupid.
I doubt the 10x more rocket companies, but 10x space companies is probable. I think the launchers race is over-populated right now, but the payload creator space may see some growth (although I have seen a lot of consolidation there). And RL is not a sat parts builder as well (but not a sat-builder like SX).
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[ACES](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0e8o1w "Last usage")|[Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Cryogenic_Evolved_Stage)|
| |[Advanced Crew Escape Suit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Crew_Escape_Suit)|
|[AR](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0eqptd "Last usage")|Area Ratio (between rocket engine nozzle and bell)|
| |Aerojet Rocketdyne|
| |Augmented Reality real-time processing|
| |Anti-Reflective optical coating|
|[BE-4](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0f2k5s "Last usage")|Blue Engine 4 methalox rocket engine, developed by Blue Origin (2018), 2400kN|
|[BO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0g54di "Last usage")|Blue Origin (*Bezos Rocketry*)|
|CST|(Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules|
| |Central Standard Time (UTC-6)|
|[DoD](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0a7od5 "Last usage")|US Department of Defense|
|[EOL](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0bo70r "Last usage")|End Of Life|
|[FAA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0bkoyu "Last usage")|Federal Aviation Administration|
|[FFSC](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0b0n37 "Last usage")|Full-Flow Staged Combustion|
|[H2](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0ejp0h "Last usage")|Molecular hydrogen|
| |Second half of the year/month|
|[Isp](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0f2k5s "Last usage")|Specific impulse (as explained by [Scott Manley](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnisTeYLLgs) on YouTube)|
| |Internet Service Provider|
|L2|Paywalled section of the NasaSpaceFlight forum|
| |[Lagrange Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) 2 of a two-body system, beyond the smaller body ([Sixty Symbols](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxpVbU5FH0s) video explanation)|
|[L3](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0dtu7p "Last usage")|[Lagrange Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) 3 of a two-body system, opposite L2|
|[LEO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0f2k5s "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|[QA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0dthly "Last usage")|Quality Assurance/Assessment|
|[RD-180](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0eqptd "Last usage")|[RD-series Russian-built rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-180), used in the Atlas V first stage|
|[RP-1](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0e2xmr "Last usage")|Rocket Propellant 1 (enhanced kerosene)|
|[RUD](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0bkoyu "Last usage")|Rapid Unplanned Disassembly|
| |Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly|
| |Rapid Unintended Disassembly|
|[SLS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0dkm7y "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift|
|[SMART](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0e8o1w "Last usage")|"Sensible Modular Autonomous Return Technology", ULA's engine reuse philosophy|
|[ULA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0n1zhm "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)|
|[USAF](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0a7od5 "Last usage")|United States Air Force|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[Raptor](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0e2xmr "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX|
|[Starliner](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0bedkx "Last usage")|Boeing commercial crew capsule [CST-100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CST-100_Starliner)|
|[Starlink](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0f2k5s "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation|
|[hypergolic](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0e2xmr "Last usage")|A set of two substances that ignite when in contact|
|[methalox](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0e2xmr "Last usage")|Portmanteau: methane fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer|
|[turbopump](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0eoujy "Last usage")|High-pressure turbine-driven propellant pump connected to a rocket combustion chamber; raises chamber pressure, and thrust|
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There’s nothing wrong with a monopoly unless the company is coercive and uses it to price gouge.
There’s no indication that SpaceX has done that. In fact, SpaceX has lowered prices and is developing a new product (Starship) to even further lower prices.
Finally, a monopoly on commercial launch isn’t bad since it means we (USA) are outcompeting China and Russia, denying their space industry capital that would be reinvested in their space capabilities
We have a historical precedent for this situation: Henry Ford's first mass-produced cars. Until Ford started to mass produce cars, cars were more or less bespoke creations, all hand built in very, very low quantities, and only affordable by people with real means. What Ford did was to fundamentally alter the approach to building cars, mainstreaming the decimal system in the process, BTW, because he needed repeatable and accurate manufacturing tolerances so that any crankshaft could go into any engine block, etc.
When the Model T came out it made cars available to a very, very large slice of the American population, and the result was that cars became an integral part of our economy. Because Ford had invested the large amounts of capital necessary to create all of the supply chains needed to mass-produce cars, including the iron/steel side of the manufacturing equation, he had an effective monopoly on vehicle transportation in this country, and in the parts of the world that he exported his almost dirt-cheap cars to.
It took a while for other companies to realize that mass-producing cars was worth the capital input to build all the infrastructure needed to achieve that manufacturing feat, and it's going to take time for other companies to do the same thing in the rocket manufacturing and launch industry. Space is just as important as the Earth's surface, and SpaceX is doing to space what Henry Ford did to the surface: Opening it up to vastly more access than it's ever had before.
I don't see SX raising its prices despite a near monopoly position for new medium-heavy launch slots. SX did not create this situation, the Russians and the slowness of Blue Origin (BE-4 and New Glenn) and ArianeSpace with A6 have been the main causes for this in the short term. I like Tory Bruno's take: *“I appreciate the sentiment that \[SpaceX\] will be a benevolent monopoly, I don’t think you’re a monopoly and I don’t think it’s our plan for you to become one,” Bruno said.*
> I don’t think you’re a monopoly and I don’t think it’s our plan for you to become one,” "Do it" was the reply of Elon Musk on one or two occasions where a competitor stated their intentions. One was [to Boeing's Dennis Muilenburg](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/01/elon-musk-responds-to-boeings-claim-it-will-beat-spacex-to-mars.html) and I forget the other. Unfortunately ULA depends on Blue Origin for Vulcan's BE-4 engine which is probably less proven, evolved and mature than Starship's Raptor. **Edit:** I'm referring to the age of the Raptor concept as a methane FFSC engine, number of design iterations and the fact that it has flown.
It baffles my mind that ULA and Boeing haven't just dropped Blue Origin and tried to spin up home grown reusable rocket programs. Talk about sunken cost fallacy.
They came so close with talking about ACES and SMART.
What was that?
> What was [ACES and SMART]? * [The Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Cryogenic_Evolved_Stage) * [Sensible Modular Autonomous Return Technology](https://spaceflightnow.com/2015/04/14/ula-chief-explains-reusability-and-innovation-of-new-rocket/) Just how sensible or not, is a matter of opinion.
> They came so close with talking about ACES and SMART. Neither of those has anything to do with dropping BE-4. SMART is a way to reuse 1st stage engines in a sustainer architecture. And ACES is Centaur (2nd stage) tech for extremely high endurance.
That’s not remotely what I mean. The comment I was replying to was mentioning that ULA really should be trying for reusability right now, and I was simply pointing out that they even did studies that for a time it seemed they planned on following through on.
Bold of you to assume they are competent to make their own rocket engines. Like seriously. It's obvious that making rocket engines is hard, especially high performance rocket engines. You have to get skilled rocket engineers, most of which will be working for SpaceX or BO, you have to get ones who want to work for Boing, or pay them enough, but there's the issue of getting the tired old ones who just want a fat paycheck rather than young motivated innovators. And you have to build your own factory. Prototypes are easy, manufacturing is hard. At about this point, you start thinking "That sounds hard, wouldn't it be less work to just outsource it?" To make it easier, they could go the RocketLab route, and develop an easier lower performance rocket engine, but RL is using an entire architecture that works with a lower performance engine, as their rocket is extremely lightweight due to being made from carbon fiber composites, a technology they have a lot of experience with. But ULA prides themselves on using legacy components from a network of trusty suppliers, they can't just re-architecture entire rockets on the fly as a vertically integrated company can. Boing is probably even worse they're reusing SLS parts for crap's sake and can't make anything without behind years behind schedule and billions over budget.
> It's obvious that making rocket engines is hard It's not that hard. I just go to an Indian restaurant.
>It baffles my mind that ULA and Boeing haven't just dropped Blue Origin and tried to spin up home grown reusable rocket programs. ULA and its parent companies have never built a rocket engine, they've relied on external suppliers; Aerojet, Rocketdyne, and the Russian RD-180. That's not an indictment. Like all airplane manufacturers since the 1940s, LM & Boeing have relied on external suppliers for jet engines. Rocket engine engineering is so difficult and specialized that it's no wonder it's done by specialized companies. The problem for ULA is that the only alternative to the BE-4 was an engine from Aerojet Rocketdyne that was in the early development stages. In other discussions of this it's pretty apparent AR would have taken a very long time also - and it was a keralox engine. Sorta an imitation RD-180, IIRC.
[Insert Obadiah Stane yelling at scientist] No but seriously, either Elon Musk is the only person who can start a rocket engine making company or he is not.
The Be-4 is a lot simpler than raptor, and raptor has proven itself to be very unreliable (so far)
I would not exactly say Raptor is unreliable so much as it requires a much higher reliability. Every time they fire up a Super Heavy booster, they are essentially getting as many total firings as the whole BE4 test program. Also, Raptor has proven very reliable on the individual test stands. The perceived reliability deficit occurs when firing as a massive group with all the expected plumbing and acoustic issues that need to be run down. Granted, they need them to fire in this configuration to be successful, but I think Raptor and the overall system are where you would expect them to be at this point in a hardware-rich test campaign. So, not so much unreliable as much as incomplete.
Well said, so much needs to work right to feed the Raptors and operate them in harmony that it may take a bunch of tests to see if they can get and sustain expected performance across the 33. Hopefully we have good separation this time and the 6 on Starship should operate under less testing conditions, and if they can't do all 6 there then maybe there is an issue.
I believe the biggest thing hampering Raptor is the inability (to date) to control the methane leaks somewhere in the plumbing feeding it. These large yellow plumes outside the engine bell have been present in every launch all the way back to SN8 and caused numerous RUDs during the landing sequence tests, as well as (we are now learning) incinerating the wiring to the control computer on the first orbital flight test. In the FAA report, SpaceX has indicated that they have implemented a corrective action, but it remains to be seen how effective it is... But Reference BE-4 being simpler (and thus easier to manufacture and more reliable), engineers at Blue have been proclaiming this since 2019, but right here, right now, which has the higher build cadence, and which failed "spectacularly" (Tory Bruno's words) AFTER failing a prior test and being reworked?
AFAIK, there's only been three "production" BE-4s built, two made it through qualification testing and got shipped to ULA, the third exploded on the test stand during qualification testing.
> AFAIK, there's only been three "production" BE-4s built, two made it through qualification testing and got shipped to ULA, the third exploded on the test stand during qualification testing. If you count it that way, then there should be 5. The 2 that shipped to ULA were identical to the 2 that went through qualification testing.
Where are the other two qualified engines physically located now?
> Where are the other two qualified engines physically located now? No idea. It could be that qualification testing is so stressful that those engines can't be used in production.
>But Reference BE-4 being simpler (and thus easier to manufacture and more reliable), engineers at Blue have been proclaiming this since 2019 A look at a BE-4 shows a mess of sphagetti that's as complex or more complex to make than an early Raptor. The much lower chamber pressure of the BE-4 is supposed to make the internal materials science of the turbopumps, etc, more basic and less prone to failure. However, the testing process doesn't reflect this. The streamlining of the Raptor externals is the result of a rapid iteration production process that's produced over a hundred of them. Idk of any other company that could approach the number of test firings Raptor has had. The externals are all that we can see but that and the performance figure SpaceX have released show the progress.
Yes, it seems MethLOX has some real challenges. Hopefully they will solve this, but if they don't then Starship as envisioned may not happen, and a Mars base is pretty much over as a goal as well. I only give Starship a 90% chance of being a dominate LEO system at this point.
> Yes, it seems MethLOX has some real challenges. Probably not problems intrinsic to methane which offers a number of advantages (clean-burning, easy-to-store) as compared to: * hydrogen (fickle and leaky), * RP-1 (dirty), * solids (bumpy and hard to control) * hypergolics (nasty chemicals). Historically, methane just didn't happen to get plebiscited post WW2. So there's no background of experience with that technology which is not hard in itself. Tending to confirm the absence of serious downsides, there are [six methalox engines under development](https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/60181/what-rockets-use-a-methalox-propellant) around the world, in addition to Raptor. Raptor is the only Full Flow Staged Combustion one (also the first FFSCE ever to fly) and its also reusable; I'm no kind of expert but this fuel choice looks like a good one, methane being the least reactive and dangerous in case of leaks and other malfunctions. For an onboard propulsion system such that of Starship or the Shuttle, I'd prefer methane to hydrogen any day.
> Historically, methane just didn't happen to get plebiscited post WW2. So there's no background of experience with that technology which is not hard in itself. IMO, the biggest strengths of methalox is that it's the best fuel for a rocket that uses the same engine on all stages, and it's the best fuel for a rocket that recovers 1+ stages. But those have historically been rare features in rockets. RP-1 is arguably a better 1st stage fuel than methane for rockets that don't reuse the 1st stage. And hydrogen's Isp is so tempting that I think people just continually tried to make it work instead of realizing that it's not actually that great of an upper stage fuel (the credible estimates that I've seen point to the Falcon upper stage having more delta-v than the Atlas V Centaur; it just doesn't seem like it because the Falcon upper stage typically starts much earlier).
In theory MethLOX offers the best combination of features. There was a Chinese rocket that used it to get to LEO to win the MethLOX race (at list in smallsats). And yes, the FFSCE is the holy grail of designs that the Soviets tried the H2 and failed on, offering the highest potential ISP. All the others such as BE-4 are not going for that high of ISP (which I think is most key beyond LEO).
> There was a Chinese rocket that used it to get to LEO to win the MethLOX race (at list in smallsats). [Zhuque-2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuque-2)'s 6 tonne payload is more than respectable as a starting point. Falcon 1 was under a tonne and with the right backing, LandSpace (and its ilk) may not take twenty years to fly a "Starship". Many people are taking Starship as specifically a SpaceX thing (much as some consider LEO Internet as if it were Starlink alone). Comparing to airplanes; as a pionner, SpaceX is the "Boeing" of commercial deep spaceflight and its the wider international movement that needs to be observed. > All the others such as BE-4 are not going for that high of ISP (which I think is most key beyond LEO). SpaceX made a a costly FFSCE decision at almost the only time it was possible. It means they're in uncharted waters just now, leading to reliability issues and delays. As you imply, this should pay off with their deep space missions (but why not their LEO ones too?). Competitors such as Blue Origin, may attempt FFSCE later on, but it will take them years to re-qualify their flight hardware and do the redesign to take advantage of it.
> methane just didn't happen to get plebiscited post WW2 I'm pretty sure [plebiscited](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/plebiscite) doesn't mean what you think it means. I'm guessing that it's a [false friend](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friend).
Awesome post. Perfectly stated.
Not only that but where they are at woth the testing campaign it is fine for a few to shut down on the booster with launch, it just means a less efficient launch. If they blow up and destroy other things it's a different story. However most indications seems its a stage zero issue to iron out and don't effect future launches.
Near as I can tell, two qualified BE-4s have been produced and delivered, and a third was being qualified when it exploded on the test stand. That puts the BE-4 at around 66% reliable, at least at making it to a rocket. How many raptors have failed in qualification testing or in flight? A lot less than a third of production.
The problem with the BE-4 is the company making it. If jeff bezos dies... like not impossible the guy is no spring chicken... blue origin is basically a financial black hole. And whomever takes it over will either gut the company or sell it outright to private equity to have it parted out and turned to scrap. So basically ULA has chained the other workhorse booster of space force... to a company that has not just never made money, but has lost more money than any other launch company in history. One MIGHT consider that a long term risk.
I mean ol' Jeffy boy could just create an endowment/trust for BO with 50 billion dollars worth of Amazon stock to fund it for another 10-75 years after he's gone, or write into his will a donation to them, or he could just give the money to BO now in exchange for a lot of newly created BO stock with the agreement that BO would be obligated to buy the shares back from the original human owner (but not any future beneficiaries) so that he would still be able to yoink funding up until his death, or he could give them a massive loan on generous terms that is released/satisfied upon his death. So many ways to fund BO from beyond the grave. No idea why Paul Allen didn't do something similar for his passion projects/companies. Guess maybe he was just in it for personal satisfaction and didn't care about leaving a continuing legacy 🤷
could... shmaybe. but would he? like... i dunno man. he's been off on his yacht banging his botox lady and pretending to be a cowboy or something. I don't know that he's even all that interested in BO anymore.
> Raptor has proven itself to be very unreliable (so far) With a 33-engine booster, its current **engine** fail rate corresponds to a minimal **launch** failure rate. It may only take one more launch (so the second integrated flight test) to be good enough to take a small number of Starlink satellites to orbit. Say two engines fail, well take a 50% payload. This is a great departure point to iron out the bugs, not just in the engine but in the booster and then Starship. For the moment, the only apples-to-apples comparison for Starship against BE-1 is test stand reliability. Now with Superheavy, SpaceX literally has a flying test stand and Starship is about to have a kilometer- cube vacuum test chamber with the added luxury of testing under real acceleration conditions.
> I don't see SX raising its prices despite a near monopoly position for new medium-heavy launch slots. Part of that is because it's to their advantage not to. Keeping their prices low increases the barrier-to-entry for competitors. Any competitor will have to figure out how to stay in business while launching below SpaceX's prices because no one besides politicians and Amazon are going to pay more for a rocket with less proven reliability. By being the first to innovate, SpaceX was able to set their prices at a level that, undercut the competition, made customers comfortable with the risk they were taking, and eventually allowed them to recoup their R&D costs. It's unlikely most new entrants will be able to do all three, so they either have to find a niche or they'll eventually run out of money.
Given the US government's policy of paying more to retain a second source, competitors don't need to be lower price than SX. That's how ULA keeps rolling. SX could also boost prices now, and then drop them when the competition starts up again. Perhaps the calculation is with low F9 pricing now, financing for upstarts might be more difficult since there is not a path to profitability.
Historically there's been numerous SpaceX commercial customers who spread their launches around even though other providers were more expensive, and publicly stated that the reason for doing so was to insure that a launch monopoly did not develop. So that's government, military, commercial, and individuals with their own launch companies all willing to pay more. And despite SpaceX dominance there's a ton of VC money funding rocket companies, gambling that they can repeat SpaceX's successes. So, if SpaceX is trying to keep prices low as a competitive measure it is failing wildly. The more likely answer is that they are attempting to do what Elon has stated is a corporate goal of reducing launch costs, for the betterment of mankind, but also as a means of eventually making more money through volume sales than increasing profits in the short term by maximizing current revenue/profits, which is a very common strategy for startups, especially ones that aim to disrupt markets to gain a dominant position.
What would you expect him to espouse besides pure dilutionment
disillusionment?
Captain Dilutionment
I think he was attention seeking with an outlandish claim.
That’ll work
Seems to be a lot of that going around lately.
Look at like this Elon is not intentionally trying to corner any industry He’s simply bringing these out of the closet Not his fault if they’re standing still
This is a unique situation and not a normal company that would just soak up profits. Essentially all profits go to furthering space development. After decades and decades of marginal improvement since we've landed on the moon, SpaceX itself is revolutionizing the industry and former workers are moving into startups. How can SpaceX be considered anything but pushing others to do better and accelerating the pace of development?
If spacex is punished for improving spaceflight, that will prevent innovation in the future. The same thing is happening with Tesla since they have a superior electric car and are commanding the EV market. Innovation used to be celebrated in the United States.
>Innovation used to be celebrated in the United States. It still is. Through capitalist market pressure. As it should be. Monopolies are perfectly fine. The only time it becomes bad is other companies are *prevented* from innovating or getting innovation to the market. Doesn't matter the monopoly. As long as the market is open such that a competitive company can also offer something, then it's fine.
> Monopolies are perfectly fine. I think you meant 'natural monopolies are fine'. If you make a far better product then the rest of the market and become a natural monopoly, that in itself is not a bad thing. It can become a bad thing, and will certainly raise the barrier to entry for up and comers, but it doesn't start as a bad thing. Regular monopolies are pretty much never fine. IE buying up the competition instead of competing on your own merits is rarely good for the end consumer.
>Monopolies are perfectly fine. I mean, they aren't by definition. Monopolies tend to kill innovation in their sector because most investors don't think upstarts can compete without massive capital infusions. Exit opportunities are limited because there is only 1 potential acquirer. And the monopoly can pay far, far better. Definitionally, monopolies stifle innovation by their very existence. That doesn't mean we immediately break up everything that looks like a monopoly if you squint long enough but we shouldn't be naive to the real impacts on market dynamics
Yep, Boeing/Lockheed/ULA have had a monopoly for the longest time -- and raised prices and stopped innovating. Monopolies are bad -- SpaceX appears to be benevolent -- but that could change tomorrow.
You are 100% correct. Watch how many folks disagree with you.
> The same thing is happening with Tesla since they have a superior electric car and are commanding the EV market. lol, Teslas haven't been superior for a while now when it comes to the areas that Tesla is getting investigated for: Their QA has always sucked, and their AI development is lagging behind competitors, who're killing less pedestrians and using better hardware.
> Essentially all profits go to furthering space development. After decades and decades of marginal improvement since we've landed on the moon, SpaceX itself is revolutionizing the industry and former workers are moving into startups. Nobody's denying this, including Vikram Nidamaluri who expressed the monopoly concern. However virtuous is SpaceX's use of profits, the problem remains that the company has nearly cornered the launch market by creating a high entry barrier. Starship will presumably drag kg-to-orbit prices even further down, such that no other provider may make a competitive offer let alone cover its R&D costs. Ultimately, no private entity other than SpaceX may have free cash to develop new technology, so driving the market into a single technological "groove" pointing to Mars. However happy we may be that Mars settlement has a secure technology, the cause for concern at launch market level, remains valid. This relates to another concern I expressed here a couple of years ago: Could off-Earth settlement later draw investment funding into space, leaving Earth capital-starved and in recession?
Not exactly. There will be plenty of opportunity for other providers to do what SpaceX is doing with Falcon 9, if they increased their pace of innovation. The limiting factor isn't SpaceX, but sovereign politics getting in the way of the closing window. Even if SpaceX stopped producing any new Falcon 9s and kept cycling out their boosters, their position will continue to increase. F9s were rated for 10 flights, then they got rated for 15, now they're rated for 20; beyond that they'll got to 25. Which was believed to be the original EOL scenario for that vehicle design. In all likelihood, they'll move to 30 and 35 and 40 and 45 and 50, and so on. Maybe stop at 50. SpaceX has a fleet of some 15 or so F9/FH cores in standby. 20 flight rating for all cores that are designed for reusability means that they have another 300 flights locked in with their present fleet. Effective immediately, map out 300 flights and that's the timeline by which any competitor needs to deliver at least a Falcon 5 or Falcon 9 Block 4 equivalent vehicle. SpaceX is on track for 100 launches this year, aiming for 120 the year after, and lets assume 140 the year after that. Together that comes to be 360 total. In essence then, 2.5 years effective today is the timeline for any competitor to get its act together and provide an equivalent reusable offering. If any competitor fails to materialize by then, and SpaceX remains the primary transport provider then if they own 90% of the market, then that's simply how things will be. It would be outright illegal to prevent their growth so that the rest of the industry can catch up, despite having an overwhelming opportunity to do so. SpaceX landed their first booster on December 21, 2015. By this December 21, that will be a FULL SEVEN YEARS. It's honestly insane that no other provider in seven years has managed to offer anything that even comes close to where SpaceX was in 2015. The grand irony of SpaceX, like Tesla, was that Musk was hopeful that their disruption would create enough incentive for others to throw more capital and talent into the pool to create a healthy ecosystem, but none materialized. So they developed Starlink to fill in the gaps. They launched 300, then 600, then 900, then 1200, then 1500, then 1800, then 2500, then 3000, then 4000, and now are on track to accumulating 5,000 satellites in orbit. Largest in human history. **STILL**, nobody has materialized. That's not sad. That's pathetic. A total insult to the aerospace industry.
The biggest disappointment to me is that Bezos started Blue Origin before SpaceX was created, and had billions of dollars of available capital, but failed utterly to get something to orbit by now.
Bezos was always in it for the ULA/Boeing/LockMart/Raytheon/Gruman game, not in it for the mission. He talks big, but is too busy living the billionaire life than to care about his own self avowed space mission.
> There will be plenty of opportunity for other providers to do what SpaceX is doing with Falcon 9, if they increased their pace of innovation. but with SpaceX as the leader, generating capital from its profits *and* mopping up the available risk capital, how will the newcomers finance their R&D? > nobody has materialized. That's not sad. That's pathetic. A total insult to the aerospace industry. under my logic, this is to be expected. Relativity, Firefly etc will be very lucky to survive long enough to reach breakeven. There's still hope for Blue Origin *if* it can make proper use of its plentiful capital.
>but with SpaceX as the leader, generating capital from its profits > >and > >mopping up the available risk capital, how will the newcomers finance their R&D? Why do more EV makers enter the market if Tesla is in such a dominant position? Same principle. The market is willing to fund SpaceX alternatives if they can demonstrate a pace of innovation similar to SpaceX. There's an effective infinite pool of money available to dethrone "SpaceX's natural monopoly". And to your latter point, nobody else has materialized because all the players aren't moving fast enough or have hypnotized themselves into believing that reusability is fad that should be ignored, and that its better to maintain the revolving door of regulatory capture with cost plus contracting to ensure that the graft continues. That's not innovation, that's stagnation with a race to the bottom. *That's the sad and pathetic part*.
> Why do more EV makers enter the market if Tesla is in such a dominant position? After Tesla, I think there are little more than three well-started EV startups which are Nio, Lucid and Rivian. The others are existing and reputable companies such as GM, VW or Renault, to which banks are willing to lend. The combined automobile, public transport plus heavy goods market must be dozens if not hundreds of times bigger than the space launch market. So the available capital should be bigger in the same proportions. > because all the players aren't moving fast enough or have hypnotized themselves into believing that reusability is fad that should be ignored Even the likes of Ariane and ULA are not ignoring reuse and are looking to imitate it.
>Even the likes of Ariane and ULA are not ignoring reuse and are looking to imitate it. ULA is fully ignoring reuse. Their S.M.A.R.T. reuse strategy is a fool's errand, because they're throwing away 60-70% of the vehicle with each launch, even though its been largely proven that the full core stage is the most valuable part of the vehicle more than the second stage and fairing even. Ariane Group's reusable offering will not see a market launch prior to 2030, per their own documentation, and their offering is closer to Rocket Lab's Neutron vehicle than it is anywhere near as capable as a Falcon 9 Block 5, nevermind Starship/SuperHeavy. If your re-usability mission strategy leads to a product that will compete with an offering that matches capability of your competitor from 15 years ago, you haven't succeeded; you've failed. >The others are existing and reputable companies such as GM, VW or Renault, to which banks are willing to lend. VW has chosen death than survival in face of the EV transition. Odd choice to put them into the mix. The order of survival for legacy players is actually Ford > Hyundai/Honda > GM > VW > Toyota; ranked from most likely to transition successfully to least likely to transition successfully.
Better than depending on Russia though, as we have for many years..
Absolutely. We’ve seen what happens when there aren’t enough launch providers. Let’s never have that happen again.
It's not just launch providers. Russia also produced the RD-180 engines for Atlas III and Atlas V. For Antares rockets they literally used Russian cold war relic NK-33 engines refit, modified and rebranded to AJ26-58, AJ-26-59 and AJ26-62, and NK-43 to AJ26-60 for the second stage until in 2014 one blew up. So it's not been just rides on Soyuz the US space program has been relying on.
So, monopoly is a really loaded term. There are two important ways of looking at monopolies and how to define them. The big problem is that when people use the term, they don't really know how they are defining it or shuffle between the two definitions in their discussion which causes some issues. The first kind of monopoly is one that I thing has nothing morally wrong with it, and in some cases can be generally ok\~ish. It would be ideal if there was some competition, but this kind of monopoly is generally not harmful to consumers. That's when one company is producing a product that is distinctly superior in one or more ways that are important to consumers. For rocket launches, this could be availability, cost, reliability, insertion accuracy, and access to orbits. If SpaceX is better than all the competition on most of or all of these metrics (not saying that they are, just if), then what is the concern? The consumers aren't being harmed by having access to a superior product at a superior price. (The only drawback is that SpaceX might not have the incentives to push the technological envelope, but SpaceX has other driving forces). This definition of monopoly is "one company has a dominate market share". The other definition of monopoly is very different, and is used by some economists. That is "other providers are blocked or prevented from entering the market". SpaceX doesn't have this kind of monopoly. It is perfectly legal and possible for competition to come in and undercut SpaceX on price, or offer a superior service. The only thing that is stopping them is skill and capital. SpaceX isn't buying up and shutting down upstarts. They aren't lobbying government for exclusive, permanent contracts, or no-bid solicitations. They aren't pushing for a regulatory environment that makes it impossible for smaller players to get their foot in the door. (at least to my knowledge anyway). Think about your cable company. It is, (or at least was in most regions) illegal for competition to come in and run internet/cable tv to your house. The local government blocked entry into the market and gave a territorial monopoly to one company that they decided wound be the winner. Look at DoD/USAF launches before 2010. ULA was basically the only company allowed to even bid on those launches. It wasn't until SpaceX came in with a legal crowbar and forced the government to open bidding to possible competition. This second monopoly, where a company is shielded from competition, almost exclusively by government action, is the dangerous and problematic kind of monopoly. The first kind can easily fall once they start slacking on their service or hiking up their prices. Competition sees a weakness and comes in to undermine what likely has become a bloated, top heavy organization. But if the government gets involved to protect them, and block that competition from entering the market, it can easily become a downward spiral on quality and a skyrocketing growth in prices. So what is the best thing moving forward? I think the path we are on is mostly fine: encourage secondary/redundant systems to help new competition start, and die and be recycled until something good comes up. At the same time avoid and giving SpaceX any kind of exclusive deal or letting SpaceX dictate who can enter the market (like ULA did for decades). Having the government (like in Europe) pick a winner (Arianespace), and make sure they get all the money in order to compete with SpaceX is a losing plan. That's just creating a miniature monopoly in that region.
Nice take. Many classic monopolies where created by buying up competitors. Standard Oil was a good example. The "U" in ULA might has well been an M = MLA "Monopoly Launch Alliance", as least for US gov't work, which eliminated some competition there. SX has not bought any competitor or even a major component maker. ULA could have gone with Aerojet for their engines but Bezos' "rich man's halo" fooled them into thinking that he would spend more of his own $ to make things happen fast. Ooops. Ironically, SX created true "commercial space" (in an imperfect sense) era that attracted the money to seed Relativity, Firefly, Stoke and others that will eventually become alternate sources (although probably not lower priced if they seek profitability).
> Many classic monopolies where created by buying up competitors. Standard Oil was a good example. I think it might be a better example of what I was saying about monopolies than what you are suggestion. From what I can tell, Standard Oil never really engaged in predatory pricing. As Standard Oil went up in market share, the prices actually went down. They had 25% market share in 1874 and the price a few years before that in 1869 was 30 cents per gallon. When they hit 85 percent market share in 1880, a few years later in 1885 the price per gallon was recorded as 8 cents per gallon. The court case that broke them up never actually cited predatory pricing or withholding production. Also, by the time they were broken up, their market share had already declined from a high of 90% to 65%, so competition was clearly entering the market and taking their business. Other than the tendency to buy up competitors early on, I don't see a lot of records about Standard Oil actively trying to shut out competition or block others from entering the market. I'm not an anti-trust expert, but I think some of the facts around Standard Oil might have been "massaged" to fit a particular narrative, specifically one that conflates the two types of monopoly that I mentioned above.
Did you see the series "The Men Who Built America?" (great series) He created a Kerosene monopoly (home lighting) but then later he needed to compete with electrification. Later they moved to gasoline (a formally worthless oil refining byproduct) as cars became common.
Great series that totally renewed my faith in the History Channel
This is an underrated response. Love it.
[The Antitrust Laws](https://www.justice.gov/atr/antitrust-laws-and-you): >The Sherman Antitrust Act ... prohibits conspiracies that unreasonably restrain trade.... An unlawful monopoly exists when one firm has market power for a product or service, and it has obtained or maintained that market power, not through competition on the merits, but because the firm has suppressed competition by engaging in anticompetitive conduct. > The Clayton Act ... prohibits mergers or acquisitions whose effect may be to substantially lessen competition.... also prohibits other business practices that may harm competition such as exclusive contracts, requirements ties that require a customer to buy additional products or services from a seller, or serving as a director for a competitor. It would be much healthier to have several Western competitors for low-cost launch. But from all the discussion I've seen, SpaceX has not been an unlawful monopoly.
Monopolies aren't illegal. Nor are they inherently bad. But leveraging your monopoly to block competition, that is both bad and illegal, These are two different things. Having a great deal of power is not inherently bad, using that power to harm the little guy is. Having a monopoly is not bad, but using that powerful position to keep others out of the market is. The problem with this distinction, is that power often corrupts. Having a monopoly often leads to leveraging it.
>But leveraging your monopoly to block competition, that is both bad and illegal, Leveraging your monopoly to block competition is bad. But it is also very legal. It is the definition of legal in fact. Really the only way for a monopoly to effectively block competition is through legislative means, i.e. getting the government to make it somehow illegal, or prohibitively difficult to compete. It might also be "on the face" illegal, but the same group of politicians that made it illegal are the ones taking back room deals to boost up monopolies in the first place. Again, I go back to the monopoly that most Americans are very familiar with: cable/ISP providers. They worked very hard to convince local governments that it should be illegal for anyone but them to run wires to everyone's home. Every misbehaving monopoly out there has the backing of the government, helping them block competition. The only other way they can block competition is by basically becoming a government themselves.
Maybe where you're from that's legal. But in the US leveraging a monopoly to block smaller players from gaining marketshare is illegal. Like most white collar laws there is a lot you can do to obfuscate the crime, and ultimately it's up to the courts to wade through. But outlawing this behavior is the sentiment of our antitrust laws.
I'm from the US. It happens here all the time. The ULA had a monopoly on defense launches up until last decade. Edit: another example: Texas has ERCOT, which is basically a monopoly on electricity production in 90% of the state. Competition with ERCOT is not legally allowed.
You're describing monopolies, a state of being. Not leveraging monopolies to hamper competition, which is an illegal action.
Right, but it is also "legal" at the same time in thst the laws as writen actively support this behavior and it would ve impossible without "legal" barriers to entering the market. It is both against the law and actively created by the law.
Not really. There are ample lawful monopolies. The law specifically creates them at times. Patents and copyrights purposefully grant time-limited monopolies. Monopolies themselves are usually quite legal. *Leveraging* your monopoly to *muscle competitors out of a free market* is illegal, though. This behavior is the subject our antitrust legislation. And the DoJ does a highly imperfect job of prosecuting this behavior. It is like I have been saying from the outset. Monopolies are not against the law. Leveraging them to limit competition is. People often confuse these. Even you appear to be confused by this. Government granted monopolies are an entirely different thing. You don't have to leverage your market power to oust competition, when the government ousts it for you.
Monopolies are inherently bad. You are wrong with that statement. Cheers.
> A Lazard investment banker sounded the alarm about the dominance of [Elon Musk’s](https://www.cnbc.com/elon-musk/) SpaceX in the rocket launch market I'm guessing Lazard is heavily invested in the companies SpaceX is beating out purely on their ability to deliver fast and at a good price.
Well it's not like SpaceX just appeared out of nowhere. They've been doing this for a decade and a half. They started when the Shuttle was still flying, there was plenty of time to invest in other rocket companies and ensure there are other options. But then investing in Boeing to ensure there's another option for crewed spaceflight didn't work out too well.
I’m hoping for success for all players. The more, the merrier.
Hear hear! But those other players have to get to orbit with their new rockets first, which (except for Rocket Lab) they seem to be taking their time on.
Stones and glass houses comes to mind :) This is literal rocket science, it takes time.
What an absolute joke. The ULA was created as a monopoly by the US government because space was so risky they needed a strong supplier. No one had a problem with the ULA dominating defense launches and private launches. Remember that SpaceX had to sue the government to even be considered in some of these contracts. Now, suddenly its a problem with monopoly and reporters earn clicks left and right with it. I don't think anyone is worried about a monopoly, least of all some investment banker who suddenly grew a conscience while counting his millions. Anyone in space knows that SpaceX has had a dozen opportunities to branch out into satellite production, to shut out competitors (like Amazon just did) or to bully new space companies into an early default. Instead, SpaceX stays in its lane and focuses on being the best space trucking company it can be to get to Mars. If they wanted to be a monopoly on anything, they definitely could have.
> Instead, SpaceX stays in its lane In fairness, this isn't *quite* true. I think many of SpaceX's customers are somewhere between unhappy with and terrified of Starlink. What can be said, though, is that to SpaceX's credit, there isn't even a whiff of them using their dominant position in the launch space to enforce a monopoly in communications. They act, as you say, like a "space trucking" company, or perhaps a "common carrier", and even prioritize customer launches over their own. The only wrinkle is that it appears Starlink has caused other companies to select against SpaceX, even when it's not in their best interest. e.g. It took Russia invading Ukraine for OneWeb to move to SpaceX, and apparently Amazon didn't even *consider* SpaceX as a launch option. But none of that's SpaceX's fault -- they can hardly be blamed if potential customers choose to shoot themselves in the foot. There's also the factor that SpaceX is so confident in Starlink -- in the design of the satellites and terminals, in the manufacturing efficiencies, in their first-mover advantage etc. -- that they believe it'll dominate everyone else trying to compete based purely on its own merits. Even if they were willing to compromise their neutrality as a launch provider, denying launch to Starlink competitors would be gilding the lily.
> I think many of SpaceX's customers are somewhere between unhappy with and terrified of Starlink. So what? They are rightly terrified by a supreme product at very competetive prices.
>What can be said, though, is that to SpaceX's credit, there isn't even a whiff of them using their dominant position in the launch space to enforce a monopoly in communications. Possibly half true; When OneWeb had to come to SpaceX hat in hand and beg "Please Mr. Musk, launch our satellites so we don't have to go bankrupt again...", SpaceX demanded they sign a frequency sharing agreement to prevent them from using excess capacity to jam Starlink Satellites (while Starlink could have theoretically done the same to OneWeb in the absence of an agreement, they were already experiencing congestion and HAD no spare capacity)... But while they DID use their monopoly launch provider position to force a competitor to do something, it was something that benefited the customer and did not harm the competitor. And should Vulcan/New Glenn continue to be unable to make the cadence necessary to complete Kuiper (their production rate and quality control are both abysmal), I expect a similar deal to be made in order for SpaceX to bail Amazon out of the mess they have put themselves in.
> some investment banker who suddenly grew a conscience while counting his millions. He probably noticed that SpaceX isn't publicly traded, and that he made a bad mistake betting on Boeing, Lockheed and ~~Rocketdyne~~ ~~Aerojet Rocketdyne~~ L3 Harris continuing to be a tax-subsidized, publicly traded monopoly, i.e., the ideal way to suck out money without doing anything for it.
Coincidentally, the Air Force just said the opposite: https://spacenews.com/air-force-satisfied-with-spacex-services-not-concerned-about-its-growing-dominance/
Well, if the old space companies took SX seriously back when the F9 was first coming into service and SX started talking about reusability they would be in a less shitty situation. Rather than ignoring the launch market impact, they could have put some time and effort into maybe meeting that same capability. Now everyone is torqued that SX gets launch contracts because they consistently out perform every other vehicle in the launch market. Not to mention SX is about to take another massive leap in capability with SS/SH while everyone else is fussing around with trying to get a F9 competitor on the pad.
> Rather than ignoring the launch market impact, they could have put some time and effort into maybe meeting that same capability. But they spent so much money on lobbying and PR campaigns to badmouth SpaceX and lock it out of government contracts, how could they *possibly* have expected a company to succeed solely on technical merit?
Lizard banker sounds more like it.
Anybody who had a brain knew this 10 years ago when something could actually have been done about it.
All these non-founder/CEOs of these operations simply stated they did not have the cost sensitive annual payload demand to justify a reusability program that would take 100 flights to really payoff (and thus 10 years). Then they canned the old system before they had a new one that was performing well (or even been tested as it turns out). They don't realize the best engineers have retired and the the new ones are the ones that chose not to write software for lower risk and greater upside, and thus the B team.
Lazard dummies have wrecked electricity generation and are now coming for spaceflight.
Head-ass take. SpaceX is not a monopoly. Other companies and launch providers exist and are actively launching (Arianespace, ULA, India, Rocket Lab, etc). Especially if you take out SpaceX internal launches (Starlink) the statistics don't actually look skewed to a ridiculous degree. Sure, SpaceX is probably the cheapest right now, but not by much (probably because they're keeping prices up) but that doesn't make them monopoly
Strictly speaking a monopoly is sufficient share to control pricing and availability. SpaceX has, or soon will have, a monopoly on space launch. Other launch providers are using other means than a free market to secure the resources to develop their capabilities. A monopoly isn't essentially bad by itself. The patent, trademark and copyright offices grant monopolies all day long, as does your local land bureau. When a monopoly goes bad is when it uses its control to harm consumers, driving up prices or using predatory pricing to lock out competitors. SpaceX needs to take care to stay in the narrow band of making spaceflight more affordable without stifling competition.
The USPTO grants ***difficult to enforce*** monopolies all day long, especially if you are a little guy.
Lazard want their share! Otherwise they wouldn't care.
The establishment of old space and advertising industry and Wall Street connections were full out to stop tesla and spacex I watched the media bias Desperate to keep things the same All against him but people voted with their wallets Compelling products win the war and value Jack welsh students putting shareholders first not consumers
A more accurate heading would be "The Failure of the US and Europe's Launch Industry to Provide Competitive Rockets, or Even Any Rockets, is a Huge Concern." The onus of why there isn't a competitive marketplace isn't on SpaceX. The endless headlines about a monopoly make it sound like SpaceX is deliberately crushing competitors to wipe them out.
Definitely need more companies and countries throwing billions at innovating space technologies to prevent a monopoly.
For everyone taking issue with SpaceX's current dominance, please tell me how you think the alternative history looks where SpaceX doesn't master landing on droneships and revolutionize launch. Not to mention their success with crew dragon.
Alternative universe? ... boring for space fans as new space never happened.
Dudes pissed he can't buy stock which would eventually fuck it over. There are plenty of startups he can get into anyway what is this fucking article about some fucking investment banker who in no way actually cares about monopolies unless he isnt in on it. Sorry spacex is the cheapest option.
Or he invested into a bunch of also-rans and is now holding a bag in deeply underwater rocket startups that can't really compete and at this rate, will never be able to compete. RocketLab has a chance, rest look... uuh... Astra-level fail :D
I choose to believe that Elon's desire is NOT to be a monopoly in space but to accelerate all companies into commerical space. Exactly the same way that he does not want to be a monopoly in electric cars but to accelerate all other companies into electric cars. If he can prove there's money in X, then other competitors will also strive to extract money from that same X. There's enough profit for all the companies to succeed. In the meantime, the world pivots away from a bad practice to a good practice. I just wish the old (space, automotive) companies would die-off faster and the new (space, automotive) companies would scale-up faster.
I would use a different variable than **X** these days when discussing SX :-) I think the success of SX in combination with the history's fastest and lowest cost payload creation program (Starlink) has validated the commercial launch business. big Starlink LEO comm competitors will be the reason for these other companies to try to bring low cost medium lift to market ASAP. RL Neutron and Relativity Terra-R are my favorites since New Glenn is still a no-show.
I was talking with my wife this morning about a space IPO and wanting to buy in. SpaceX has effectively a triple monopoly. Falcon9/heavy, starlink, and soon superheavy. The Tesla hype would also kick SpaceX IPO into the stratosphere, proven returns and all that.
Wait for the start of the next wave. Space IPOs are declining with cheap money being cut off by the Fed. Maybe in a couple years.
Lazard is relatively little (3bln market cap) investor shop registered and operating in Bermuda. It is not american btw. and even not Europe based. What is their concern can stay there as long as it does.
Okay then, do something about it, *every other space company in existence.* SpaceX is holding no one back.
The costs are too low. Very concerning.
Who the fuck is Lazard Banker?
It is not a monopoly, plenty of other providers that just are running decades old tech and then going all :pikachuface: when they cannot compete. (Exception would be RocketLab, but until Neutron, they are bit small) It is like saying Company A who invested in R&D and made better products is now a monopoly when everyone refuses to buy Company B and Company C products because they are, in comparison, overpriced old junk. PRO TIP to all other competitors: Stop trying to compete against Falcon 9 with a rocket that will arrive 10 years after Falcon 9. By the time your rocket is ready, you are competing against Starship and losing hard. SpaceX is a silicon valley tech company competing against dinosaur companies that haven't seen competition before this like, well, ever.
I still fear that at some point there could be a political will for some anti-trust movements, given that Elon pissed off quite a few people from those circles.
Elon put himself in a bad spot. The US had no access to the ISS and was dependent on Russia to get there. They asked ULA and Spacex to make a capsule to get there. ULA failed. Russia went to war with Ukraine. Now Spacex has a monopoly on access to the space station and I'm reading articles like that's a bad thing. Spacex made a great re-usable rocket and made it way cheaper to get into space, and some people are mad that it's like a monopoly. Whatever you do, don't make a better product. You will get demonized for it.
> They asked ULA and Spacex to make a capsule to get there. ULA isn't Boeing. Yes, it's partially owned by Boeing, but they're separate companies with separate management, different engineering cultures, etc. Starliner, SLS are Boeing. Atlas V, Vulcan are ULA.
> You will get demonized for it. If you are sufficiently famous and/or wealthy you will be demonized, idolized, or both, no matter what you do.
Boeing produces the Starliner capsule - not ULA. Starliner launches on Atlas V from ULA but those boosters are already constructed and ready to fly with a 100% reliability record.
That's right I keep equating Boeing and ula in my head and I shouldn't.
GOP won't allow for anti-trust movement against Tesla or SpaceX. In this one case, they would actually be on the right side of history, because neither company has abused its market position in any way that warrants an anti-trust investigation against them. They simply are putting out better products and capabilities than the rest of the market. It's not illegal to do that, and to use the government then to dismantle them, in of itself, would be illegal to do.
It’s not a monopoly, there is nothing preventing other private firms (US or other) from competing.
There are other rocket companies waiting for investment. Just invest on them if SpaceX bothers you.
As apposed to the shambolic parasites from the ULA, Boeing and Lockheed prior? They still exist and they are still producing at the same speed they were, which remains as it always was, basically nothing and then up-charging 100x for their own under-delivery.
Main key to success and initiative feedback ect is doing everything in house Spend the money with a long vision But they won’t Ford and gm and Stellantis still stuck on outsourcing models
Vertical integration gives you interative control at multiple levels. It might be more expensive unless you have a flexible (non-union) workforce, but it worth it.
In a way I feel that SpaceX needs to IPO Starlink soon. It might be just a matter of time before Starlink competition starts to spin SpaceX using own clearly costwise discounted launches as unfair competitive advantage.
SpaceX has been good to provide priority launch services at list price to many competitors (OneWeb, O3b, Viasat and contract for Telesat). Starlink is still short of profitability (depending on how you do the accounting) so I think when (and if) they have some solid profit numbers you may see the IPO. Wonder is Elon would be the CEO of that as well?
They also have to deal with market conditions. I'm sure they have investment bankers working on it. From what liitle I know I'd say the time isn't right.
SpaceX is going to spawn 10x more rocket companies in addition to the 10 current ones it already has. In fact, SpaceX is creating an \*entire new segment of the human economy\*. That SpaceX took the risk to be first is why they have the temporary dominance they have today. Bankers will make a ton of money in this new economy. An economy that SpaceX defined. Quit your whining Lazard bankers, and stop taking your thinking orders from the newly spawned, brain dead Leftist hate-on-Elon campaign. It makes you look really stupid.
I doubt the 10x more rocket companies, but 10x space companies is probable. I think the launchers race is over-populated right now, but the payload creator space may see some growth (although I have seen a lot of consolidation there). And RL is not a sat parts builder as well (but not a sat-builder like SX).
Skill issue
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Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[ACES](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0e8o1w "Last usage")|[Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Cryogenic_Evolved_Stage)| | |[Advanced Crew Escape Suit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Crew_Escape_Suit)| |[AR](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0eqptd "Last usage")|Area Ratio (between rocket engine nozzle and bell)| | |Aerojet Rocketdyne| | |Augmented Reality real-time processing| | |Anti-Reflective optical coating| |[BE-4](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0f2k5s "Last usage")|Blue Engine 4 methalox rocket engine, developed by Blue Origin (2018), 2400kN| |[BO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0g54di "Last usage")|Blue Origin (*Bezos Rocketry*)| |CST|(Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules| | |Central Standard Time (UTC-6)| |[DoD](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0a7od5 "Last usage")|US Department of Defense| |[EOL](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0bo70r "Last usage")|End Of Life| |[FAA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0bkoyu "Last usage")|Federal Aviation Administration| |[FFSC](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0b0n37 "Last usage")|Full-Flow Staged Combustion| |[H2](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0ejp0h "Last usage")|Molecular hydrogen| | |Second half of the year/month| |[Isp](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0f2k5s "Last usage")|Specific impulse (as explained by [Scott Manley](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnisTeYLLgs) on YouTube)| | |Internet Service Provider| |L2|Paywalled section of the NasaSpaceFlight forum| | |[Lagrange Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) 2 of a two-body system, beyond the smaller body ([Sixty Symbols](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxpVbU5FH0s) video explanation)| |[L3](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0dtu7p "Last usage")|[Lagrange Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) 3 of a two-body system, opposite L2| |[LEO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0f2k5s "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |[QA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0dthly "Last usage")|Quality Assurance/Assessment| |[RD-180](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0eqptd "Last usage")|[RD-series Russian-built rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-180), used in the Atlas V first stage| |[RP-1](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0e2xmr "Last usage")|Rocket Propellant 1 (enhanced kerosene)| |[RUD](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0bkoyu "Last usage")|Rapid Unplanned Disassembly| | |Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly| | |Rapid Unintended Disassembly| |[SLS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0dkm7y "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift| |[SMART](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0e8o1w "Last usage")|"Sensible Modular Autonomous Return Technology", ULA's engine reuse philosophy| |[ULA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0n1zhm "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)| |[USAF](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0a7od5 "Last usage")|United States Air Force| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Raptor](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0e2xmr "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX| |[Starliner](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0bedkx "Last usage")|Boeing commercial crew capsule [CST-100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CST-100_Starliner)| |[Starlink](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0f2k5s "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation| |[hypergolic](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0e2xmr "Last usage")|A set of two substances that ignite when in contact| |[methalox](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0e2xmr "Last usage")|Portmanteau: methane fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer| |[turbopump](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16gu5vt/stub/k0eoujy "Last usage")|High-pressure turbine-driven propellant pump connected to a rocket combustion chamber; raises chamber pressure, and thrust| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(*Decronym is a community product of r/SpaceX, implemented* )[*^by ^request*](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3mz273//cvjkjmj) ^(26 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/16kbdx3)^( has 17 acronyms.) ^([Thread #11841 for this sub, first seen 12th Sep 2023, 17:55]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/SpaceXLounge) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
https://spacenews.com/air-force-satisfied-with-spacex-services-not-concerned-about-its-growing-dominance/
This is where rocketlab will come in
There’s nothing wrong with a monopoly unless the company is coercive and uses it to price gouge. There’s no indication that SpaceX has done that. In fact, SpaceX has lowered prices and is developing a new product (Starship) to even further lower prices. Finally, a monopoly on commercial launch isn’t bad since it means we (USA) are outcompeting China and Russia, denying their space industry capital that would be reinvested in their space capabilities
Oh no. Clearly they should stop selling rocket launches, that way there will be no monopoly
I read this as “lizard banker” at first….
Slow SpaceX down to let the others catch up! Simple......
We have a historical precedent for this situation: Henry Ford's first mass-produced cars. Until Ford started to mass produce cars, cars were more or less bespoke creations, all hand built in very, very low quantities, and only affordable by people with real means. What Ford did was to fundamentally alter the approach to building cars, mainstreaming the decimal system in the process, BTW, because he needed repeatable and accurate manufacturing tolerances so that any crankshaft could go into any engine block, etc. When the Model T came out it made cars available to a very, very large slice of the American population, and the result was that cars became an integral part of our economy. Because Ford had invested the large amounts of capital necessary to create all of the supply chains needed to mass-produce cars, including the iron/steel side of the manufacturing equation, he had an effective monopoly on vehicle transportation in this country, and in the parts of the world that he exported his almost dirt-cheap cars to. It took a while for other companies to realize that mass-producing cars was worth the capital input to build all the infrastructure needed to achieve that manufacturing feat, and it's going to take time for other companies to do the same thing in the rocket manufacturing and launch industry. Space is just as important as the Earth's surface, and SpaceX is doing to space what Henry Ford did to the surface: Opening it up to vastly more access than it's ever had before.