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I will concede all those points except for the last one. > Starlink, the NASA Moon program, commercial sat buissness, SpaceX Mars Plans, SpaceX Space tourism and so on. A cheaper vehicle always has more usage. Go back to basic college Econ. There is a supply curve and a demand curve. Reusable rockets allows providing the same commodity (orbital transportation) at a lower price. The problem that everyone seems to subtly know but doesn't like to say aloud is that the demand curve is highly inelastic. It is completely possible that cheaper rockets result in more usage, but less total revenue. This happens with lots of things. Think about food production, weather is bad, rice harvest is very low during a year in a nation that mostly eats rice. We have historical examples that total value of the crop goes up, despite less being available. That's highly inelastic demand for you. If supply of orbital launch goes up, then total revenue can easy decrease. In this case, the only way for total revenue to increase a great deal is for genuine innovation to happen. Yes, space tourism, Mars plans, etc. would fit the bill. However, all of these are bets, and I don't think they're particularly good ones. The best bet would be for US government itself to realize what is happening and double-down on the military and scientific windfall they can get from it. I don't feel like this will happen on its own, and the general public isn't engaged enough. I worry that SpaceX's success could usher in its own demise, and we lose out on the opportunity of a generation. |