Even before Rocket Lab's Sept. 19 launch failure, people were tossing around the word “monopoly” when it came to SpaceX. It had become increasingly clear that companies needing to launch their satellites in the near future had few options beyond SpaceX, particularly those spacecraft too large to launch on a small vehicle like Electron, as other launch providers stumbled.
  • Sigmatics@lemmy.caEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    Everyone with a basic understanding of the industry saw this coming when they started landing rockets in 2015, honestly

    • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
      English
      3·
      1 year ago

      Not really. Everyone said “this is an unrealistic pricepoint, it can’t be done for this amount of money”, and so far, those people are still correct. There is a chance SpaceX might turn a profit in the future, but for since 2020 the majority of its launches have been self-paid (as in, StarLink launches). Starlink isn’t exactly turning record-profits itself, the launch costs for 2022 and 2023 far exceeding total revenue. So SpaceX is getting the majority of it’s income from basically their sister-company, that can’t afford to keep doing it.

      The market itself has shown there’s really only 30-something (semi-)commercial launches per year the past decade, so even at 100% marketshare, SpaceX can’t achieve the economy of scale they want without creating their own demand in the form of Starlink.

      I’m a huge fan of getting this re-usable-rocket thing working and lowering launch costs, both for science and basic economics, but so far, that’s a ways off. And in the mean time, the pricing is very anti-competitive (since they literally can’t afford this).