This is... interesting but not really the answer to the more interesting question. SpaceX undoubtedly dominates launch capacity today. It's basically the sole success in an industry that seems fundamentally uneconomical and the way it's acheived that is through government subsidy and Elon Musk's unparalleled fund raising. But I don't think that there's much of a moat here, hardware companies find this time after time - by building an incredible product what you're partly doing is training a team of engineers how to build that amazing product and those engineers can and will walk out the door and find a job down the street. Will SpaceX face strong competition within the next 18 months? Nah. 5 years? Probably. 10? Definitely. It's like Tesla, Tesla pioneered electric vehicles, but today it's not alone in the market, it's not even arguably the biggest player anymore.
What I'm far more interested in is... is there an actual market here? So far SpaceX makes money out of government subsidy, and Starlink. So to a large extent it is it's own biggest customer and because it's private it's difficult to really reason about it.
Like yeah, it looks really good for your rocket company if you have a customer that has to fire 1,000 new satelittes into orbit each year, that's going to make a tonne of volume. But it does kind of raise the question: Does that look like a great business from the internet service provider viewpoint?
How much capacity can you provide with these satellites? How often do they need replacing? And whose going to pay for satellite internet service?
next 18 months? Nah. 5 years? Probably. 10? Definitely. It's like Tesla, Tesla pioneered electric vehicles, but today it's not alone in the market, it's not even arguably the biggest player anymore.
PRC has multiple private space companies with reusable vehicles on the way, a few look like they can do Falcon9 capabilities in 3-5 years. And if they decide to hit the overcapacity brrrt button, I imagine all the current wanking over SpaceX launch capacity will look very premature. There's ~40 falcon 9s doing concurrent missions, that's really not much in grand scheme of things. About "American" scale. I imagine once PRC tech is passable they'll scale to point to eclipse aggregate spaceX payloads rapidly fast with their own mega constellations, and magnitude more (like ship building) if there's ACTUAL case for sustaining that level of space launch demand. Which I hope there is... outside of militarization efforts.
Don't dismiss the flywheel effect of them moving so fast. They have a team of A+ players that will be difficult to replicate at other companies by just a handful of poached employees. I belive its the primary reason why Musk is able to work his employees so hard, pay them so little and still be one of the top desired companies to work for new engineering grads. As Steve Jobs once supposedly said, 'A' players want to only work with other 'A' players.
And speaking of Tesla, it remains to be seen whether any other automaker can match Tesla's engineering lead in EVs. There have been multiple false starts and failures. The only people I can see are the Chinese but that is a non-option for many western employees so Tesla remains on top.
The interesting thing is that they are still pushing the limits in new ways. Will there be someone else in 10 years that can do what they are doing now? Sure, but SpaceX will then also be ahead of current SpaceX by 10 years. I don't know for how long they'll be able to keep that up, but it's going to be interesting to see.
It does seem different to Tesla. Tesla's big innovation was building an electric car people actually wanted to buy. Everything afterwards looks like incremental improvement to me.
contracts = "government is a customer." the government wants a job done and you (the contractor) are paid to do it.
grants depend. grants can be "government wants someone to develop a technology/engineering capability and is paying you to do it if you can show that you're the best candidate". definitely a subsidy but not necessarily a handout.
The Commercial Resupply and Commercial Crew programs were intended to help develop unmanned and manned flight capability to the ISS, but they were contingent on a) demonstrating the technical capabilities to deliver and b) actually delivering. (Commercial Crew has become a gigantic money sink for Boeing, because unlike SpaceX the Starliner is many, many years late and the contract doesn't pay a cent more for delays/overruns.)
This take completely ignores that SpaceX launches at a fraction of their competitors costs. There are no other reusable rockets out there (or even coming soon).
Comments
This is... interesting but not really the answer to the more interesting question. SpaceX undoubtedly dominates launch capacity today. It's basically the sole success in an industry that seems fundamentally uneconomical and the way it's acheived that is through government subsidy and Elon Musk's unparalleled fund raising. But I don't think that there's much of a moat here, hardware companies find this time after time - by building an incredible product what you're partly doing is training a team of engineers how to build that amazing product and those engineers can and will walk out the door and find a job down the street. Will SpaceX face strong competition within the next 18 months? Nah. 5 years? Probably. 10? Definitely. It's like Tesla, Tesla pioneered electric vehicles, but today it's not alone in the market, it's not even arguably the biggest player anymore.
What I'm far more interested in is... is there an actual market here? So far SpaceX makes money out of government subsidy, and Starlink. So to a large extent it is it's own biggest customer and because it's private it's difficult to really reason about it.
Like yeah, it looks really good for your rocket company if you have a customer that has to fire 1,000 new satelittes into orbit each year, that's going to make a tonne of volume. But it does kind of raise the question: Does that look like a great business from the internet service provider viewpoint?
How much capacity can you provide with these satellites? How often do they need replacing? And whose going to pay for satellite internet service?
PRC has multiple private space companies with reusable vehicles on the way, a few look like they can do Falcon9 capabilities in 3-5 years. And if they decide to hit the overcapacity brrrt button, I imagine all the current wanking over SpaceX launch capacity will look very premature. There's ~40 falcon 9s doing concurrent missions, that's really not much in grand scheme of things. About "American" scale. I imagine once PRC tech is passable they'll scale to point to eclipse aggregate spaceX payloads rapidly fast with their own mega constellations, and magnitude more (like ship building) if there's ACTUAL case for sustaining that level of space launch demand. Which I hope there is... outside of militarization efforts.
Don't dismiss the flywheel effect of them moving so fast. They have a team of A+ players that will be difficult to replicate at other companies by just a handful of poached employees. I belive its the primary reason why Musk is able to work his employees so hard, pay them so little and still be one of the top desired companies to work for new engineering grads. As Steve Jobs once supposedly said, 'A' players want to only work with other 'A' players.
And speaking of Tesla, it remains to be seen whether any other automaker can match Tesla's engineering lead in EVs. There have been multiple false starts and failures. The only people I can see are the Chinese but that is a non-option for many western employees so Tesla remains on top.
The interesting thing is that they are still pushing the limits in new ways. Will there be someone else in 10 years that can do what they are doing now? Sure, but SpaceX will then also be ahead of current SpaceX by 10 years. I don't know for how long they'll be able to keep that up, but it's going to be interesting to see.
It does seem different to Tesla. Tesla's big innovation was building an electric car people actually wanted to buy. Everything afterwards looks like incremental improvement to me.
The global space launch services market size was valued at $8.07 Bn in 2022 and is projected to grow from $9.15 Bn in 2023 to $20.54 Bn by 2030.
https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/industry-reports/spa...
Government as customer != "government subsidy"
no. they get government grants and contracts.
contracts = "government is a customer." the government wants a job done and you (the contractor) are paid to do it.
grants depend. grants can be "government wants someone to develop a technology/engineering capability and is paying you to do it if you can show that you're the best candidate". definitely a subsidy but not necessarily a handout.
The Commercial Resupply and Commercial Crew programs were intended to help develop unmanned and manned flight capability to the ISS, but they were contingent on a) demonstrating the technical capabilities to deliver and b) actually delivering. (Commercial Crew has become a gigantic money sink for Boeing, because unlike SpaceX the Starliner is many, many years late and the contract doesn't pay a cent more for delays/overruns.)
There's a public subsidy tracker
This take completely ignores that SpaceX launches at a fraction of their competitors costs. There are no other reusable rockets out there (or even coming soon).