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>Still, I do not understand this thirst at seeing a private company monopolising space travel. Probably because it's a dumb strawman you've created to knock down. Strawmen do indeed tend to be hard to understand since they aren't actually real. There is no "thirst" to see a private company monopolizing space travel per se. What people are thirsty for is serious, cheap, effective, ambitious space travel in turn leading to serious space development and humanity (and life in general) moving beyond the cradle permanently. The irritation with government agencies is a matter of brutal raw fact: they have failed miserably at this, and they're getting WORSE, not better. Debacles like the SLS or Shuttle. Zero effort to drive down cost, rather the reverse with space being treated as a very shitty bit of pork. I don't even want to say "jobs program" because SpaceX and co will generate WAY more jobs via space development in the long term, but long term thinking isn't very fashionable in much of government anymore. Or at least not in this sphere. Everyone interested in space would be delighted at more competitive players. And there are indeed a number that might manage it alongside SpaceX, eventually. Smaller players like Rocket Lab are in fact launching for real cargo to orbit, and have reasonable plans to scale up. There is certainly room for another provider or two. But NASA, ESA, Russian, and other government efforts aren't even trying to go there yet and show no potential to do so. They are stupendously wasteful cash blackholes, which is coming directly out of money that could be doing awesome stuff. Awesome good government stuff even, the kind of blue sky research and infrastructure work that governments can do to really blaze the way and help industry. The billions being sunk worthlessly into SLS could be funding a true space station/shipyard/depot [0] designed around the capabilities of Starship, helping to further accelerate smaller hungry players with the capital they need to get into the medium-lift aspect, not to mention a lot of great science. You're confusing dislike for the gross waste and failures of old fat players and excitement with the incredible efforts and progress of young ambitious new players with some sort of silly "monopoly" thing. Try to research and think about things you don't actually know much about or follow yourself a bit more before forming an opinion perhaps? ---- 0: Including helping to figure out standards so that fuel depots can be used by multiple players fairly. |