[lukeify]

Those "unless"'s are _kind_ of the point of the article.

[zamadatix]

But the "unless"'s apply to everyone else 10x more, they just don't make for as good of a headline since "it's hard" has already been talked to death.

[breakyerself]

SpaceX has a huge price advantage on launches so a competitor would have to be able to significantly undercut them on the cost of the hardware just to become competetive.

[new_realist]

Satellite costs, not launch costs, dominate. And then there is Vulcan and other cheap launch competitors coming online.

[Dylan16807]

> Satellite costs, not launch costs, dominate.

Starlink is promising well under a million per satellite, and OneWeb is reportedly already at a million. Satellite costs might end up lower than launch costs, and even if they're higher that doesn't seem like they'll dominate.

[mrep]

That may be true for heavy ones that are only ever built once but these are light and mass produced. I cannot find the source but I'm pretty sure elon musk said that the rocket costs more to build than all of the satellites on a launch.

[SEJeff]

Which are paper rockets until they actually launch, land, and refly successfully.

[woodandsteel]

Right. The article really should have included that.