[physcab]

With all their partnerships and contracts, SpaceX is now a viable alternative in the industry. Clearly they can compete on price. What remains to be determined however is if they can compete on mission success and reliability. You can bet their competitors are playing the fear card to their customers.

[pavel_lishin]

How much does a satellite cost to build? Even with a lower success rate, with a cheaper launch cost, it might end up being a better bargain launching twice as many satellites and losing half of them.

Of course, that wouldn't be acceptable for human cargo.

[physcab]

I think it depends on the customer. Probably somewhere between $50 and $300 million [1,2]. My guess is that the more successful programs will retain their current (probably defense) customers, but SpaceX will effectively serve a new generation of private companies who can take the risk. You also have to keep in mind that a lot of this is political and regulated. Depending on how a government contract swings, it might favor SpaceX or their competitors.

[1] http://www.aiaa.org/aerospace/images/articleimages/pdf/AA_Ja... [2] http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/archive/2010/July/Pag...

[Jabbles]

I think such an attitude would seriously harm SpaceX's future space tourism strategy. Also the environmental damage caused by failed launches could be disastrous, and outweigh the cost of the payload.