Why No One Can Compete With SpaceX, and Why That's Everyone's Problem
SpaceX has made launch dramatically cheaper, and the industry assumes this is a cost curve that everyone will eventually ride down. Similar beliefs include that reusability works, market competition will follow, and access to space is being democratised.
SpaceX's price is not a market price, it is a transfer price set by a vertically integrated company whose largest customer is itself. Starlink generates more internal launch demand than the rest of the commercial market combined, amortizing fixed costs across a cadence no competitor can replicate. Hence, other providers are failing because the benchmark is set by a company playing a structurally different game.
Governments awarding contracts on price are rationally optimizing today and destroying their strategic options for tomorrow. A sustainable launch market requires deliberate intervention, or there will be one provider left, and it won't stay cheap.