The Coming SpaceX Scam(danafblankenhorn.substack.com)
4 pointsby simonebrunozzi3 hours ago1 comment
  • anovikov2 hours ago
    SpaceX has a giant moat in the launch business. They launch well... almost everything that goes up there, and can do it at truly unbeatable costs - and in a market that is protected from competition by ITAR. Within US, their advantage is so big, no one will even bother to try. It will only get bigger once they have Starship.

    That advantage isn't so important on its own - launch business is small and will probably not get much bigger - but it gives them an effective monopoly on deciding which space system get created and which don't - because they can always beat any possible competition just by launching their version much cheaper.

    That is a truly enviable position one can only compare to Standard Oil in its best days - because of that private deal with railways they had - except in this case this is literally the same business.

    • ben_w2 hours ago
      I don't see how ITAR is critical today. Before SpaceX demonstrated any successes, sure, but simply by following SpaceX's example about the existence of low-hanging fruit there's now a lot of other companies around the world who hire equally smart people to solve the same problems. Not only has China demonstrated they're quite capable of putting out clones, Rocket Labs exists and launches stuff and that was originally a New Zealand company. Even here in Europe, last trade fare I went to had a 3D printed rocket engine on even one of the smaller stands.

      The other problems of course is Musk himself, both because he's directly aggravating his own employees[0], and the Democrats (who, in the absence of a dictatorship, can be expected to regain government control in the not too distant future), and also a lot of non-US politicians (the list of nations he's aggravated includes all of his 3 citizenships but also far more besides) and phrases like "security risk" are getting thrown around.

      [0] https://www.lawcommentary.com/articles/nine-spacex-workers-p...