[yellowapple]

I mentioned this in a different HN thread today, but I'm gonna say it again anyway: if I can get a publicly-available "standard" price for launching something into outer fucking space¹, it's absolutely ridiculous that I can't get the same for something multiple orders of magnitude cheaper. Will that "standard" price be negotiated? Sure. Whatever. Just throw out some number instead of forcing the buyer and seller to mutually waste each other's time on basic information gathering.

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¹: https://www.spacex.com/media/Capabilities&Services.pdf

[vitiral]

I'm a big SpaceX fan, but I know the prices are published for the fans (they make good PR). For those looking to launch things into space calling the three existing providers is not a serious barrier to entry.

[site-packages1]

I think the comment you’re responding to answers your response. Pricing isn’t opaque because they cannot determine a standard price, but because they don’t want to scare people away.

I’m expecting spacex is different because we already know intuitively that launching something is expensive and we know there are only a small number of vendors with which to do so. So space launch companies probably don’t have the same issue…

[yellowapple]

> they don’t want to scare people away

If that price tag is big enough to "scare away" a customer, then that'll be true with or without the extra contact info collection and sales call(s) and email spam. Like I said: might as well not have the vendor and customer mutually waste each others' time with a bunch of sales ceremony that has no hope of actually producing a sale.