> And of course there's Blue Origin (even though they seem to be taking forever)
Ever since Bezos installed David Limp as CEO, it seems like they've been able to ship stuff. It's hard to know if he was set up for success by his predecessor, but their older no press policy prevented anyone from knowing it, or if he changed the company culture for the better.
Regardless, it appears like Blue Origin is likely to launch New Glenn this year. Or, at least the DoD thinks it's likely enough that they agreed to onramp Blue Origin to NSSLv3 (pending a successful launch).
> it'll be a long time before these younger companies produce anything capable of rivaling Falcon 9
I don't think it'll be that long.
* Blue Origin's New Glenn should launch in 2024-2025.
* RocketLab's Neutron should launch in 2025-2027.
* Relativity's Terran R should launch in 2026-2028.
That's remarkably soon.
Of course, as you point out, Starship should be operational quite soon. It'll be exciting to see how things shake out.
My personal opinion is that SpaceX will move to payload based pricing, somewhat akin to their current rideshare pricing. I'm just pulling numbers out of the air, but something like $10m + $3m/tonne. That way they can compete for smaller payloads while also being paid appropriately for launching really heavy stuff. However it ends up, I'm sure pricing will be heavily influenced by the competition when it comes out.
Ever since Bezos installed David Limp as CEO, it seems like they've been able to ship stuff. It's hard to know if he was set up for success by his predecessor, but their older no press policy prevented anyone from knowing it, or if he changed the company culture for the better.
Regardless, it appears like Blue Origin is likely to launch New Glenn this year. Or, at least the DoD thinks it's likely enough that they agreed to onramp Blue Origin to NSSLv3 (pending a successful launch).
> it'll be a long time before these younger companies produce anything capable of rivaling Falcon 9
I don't think it'll be that long.
* Blue Origin's New Glenn should launch in 2024-2025.
* RocketLab's Neutron should launch in 2025-2027.
* Relativity's Terran R should launch in 2026-2028.
That's remarkably soon.
Of course, as you point out, Starship should be operational quite soon. It'll be exciting to see how things shake out.
My personal opinion is that SpaceX will move to payload based pricing, somewhat akin to their current rideshare pricing. I'm just pulling numbers out of the air, but something like $10m + $3m/tonne. That way they can compete for smaller payloads while also being paid appropriately for launching really heavy stuff. However it ends up, I'm sure pricing will be heavily influenced by the competition when it comes out.