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Comment by jmward01 | Hacker News Reader

I gotta call out this comment. I never said 'stop them!' I said I worry about space x being a gatekeeper. This is a valid point since it is obvious that they are building the gate. Please don't put words into my mouth.

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It’s physically impossible for SpaceX to have a monopoly on space.

That argument doesn't hold for basically any industry on the planet. Early access often, by design, leads to lock-in in critical areas. SpaceX has a massive advantage (rightfully deserved) in an industry which takes massive effort to break into. It isn't hard for them to out compete any competitor into oblivion making it very hard for realistic alternatives to space. Do you know how much they took to orbit last year compared to everyone else? It is easily possible that it will be SpaceX and a few government providers and nobody else for a long while.

NASA and the federal government would trip all over themselves to hand a reasonable competitor huge amounts of money as a second source of launches. The fact that the second source doesn’t exist isn’t because SpaceX has some natural monopoly on space.

tell that to the east india company

A company that never went to space once?

The mechanism by which the monopoly is enforced is irrelevant. For all we know Elon Musk and Donald Trump are working closely together.

There are plenty of other space companies building launch capability, even projectile/kinetic based methods where you accelerate as much as possible on the ground, IE Spin Launch.

The only gate is 28,000 km/hr and you can thank mother nature for that.

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