GIThruster wrote:There is also the thing that Rutan gets to build his Really Big Plane. That might be the biggest reason for all of this. For smaller launches, Gary Hudson's AirLaunch and the new Firefly both seem better choices. For bigger launches, I don't see how they can compete with SpaceX once they're reusing even just the first stage.
I don't know if they can compete either, but I'm glad to see them try. Back when I was at Meloy Labs, one of the businesspeople there explained something about competition: if you don't have any competition, that's a bad sign, because you're in a market nobody wants to touch, and you're probably doomed. The fact that others want to compete with SpaceX is highly encouraging. I'd argue that, in fact, SpaceX entered the market following in the footsteps of OSC and other small rocket outfits that saw private space launch as promising.
At a private space launch conference a few years back, there was some discussion about market. At the time, we had two satellite broadcast companies, Sirius and XM. The speaker was talking to someone at one of these companies, when that someone referred to satellite broadcast as a "market" for launch services. The speaker pointed out that two companies do not constitute a "market" for satellite launches. And, indeed, today if you want satellite radio in your car, you subscribe to SiriusXM.
One hopes that we do indeed wind up with a market for launch services that can support multiple launch companies. At the moment we're trying to clear up a huge backlog of container ships. Now that's
commerce! What we want is people worrying about how the heck are we going to launch all the spacecraft we need and land all the unobtainium. We want rockets painted in the colors of dozens of competing major carriers. Right now we are not carrying enough cargo to space to impress a Greek ship owner from two and a half millennia ago.
I think we'll reach that level, but let's hope it does not take another two and a half millennia.