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Comment by proee | Hacker News Reader

More competition is always good in a free economy, but what is causing a "Desperate" situation? Is the trajectory of SpaceX on a course where they will certainly become a monopoly, with all other space providers being locked out due to economies of scale?

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SpaceX is already the world's cheapest launch provider by a significant margin, and transports 90% of the world's tonnage to orbit. That's with a launch platform that costs a bit over a thousand dollars per pound. Once Starship is in production, that will drop to around thirty dollars per pound, while their annual launch capacity increases enormously. Everything about the space industry will change, and we'll be able to do a lot more than we ever have before.

Without another company able to do the same thing, Elon will completely control all that. How desperate that is depends on your opinion of him, I guess.

What is the percentage if you exclude their own Starlink launches? Because it is most of what they launch.

It doesn't matter. Even if Starlink was, by far, the majority of their launches, it still drives high launch cadence, which drives their R&D far faster than everyone else's. Space industry is vulnerable to the vicious cycle of expensive launches leading to expensive, one-off, high-risk missions, leading to high reliability guarantees, leading to even more expensive launches. High launch cadence is an antidote to that, it makes costs fall all across the board.

Couldn't find an easy answer but if you're determined, wikipedia has a complete list of launches, mostly with tonnage:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He...

There's someone on Ars Technica that keeps stats.

SpaceX is No1 by far regardless of starlink

The Indians can probably do it cheaper due to lower manpower costs, SpaceX has a hard limit on how low they can go no matter how much automation they throw at it.

As long as they throw away the rocket on each launch, that seems really unlikely. Starship at scale will be down to the cost of fuel and ground services, with just a tiny amount amortized for the rocket itself.

Even Falcon, with only the first stage reused a dozen times or so, is cheaper than anyone else launching today. With cleaner-burning fuel, Starship will be good for hundreds of launches on both stages, with fast turnaround. (And Stoke Space is attempting that too.)

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