[bumby]

This isn’t new. It’s exactly how the airplane was invented over 100+ years ago.

The Army didn’t tell Orville and Wilbur how to build. They dangled the carrot of a lucrative military contract to incentivize their innovation. It’s what transitioned the effort from hobbyists to an actual industry. There was no “industry” until the govt put up money because the govt was really the only entity that could bear that kind of risk. It’s the same with the initial days of SpaceX.

[s1artibartfast]

I think that is where we differ, but maybe I didnt explain my stance well.

I agaree that the government contracts are a carrot, and broadly speaking supports the entire space industry. Im not debating that at all.

However, I do think there is a narrative difference between companies that that humm along doing the same thing eating eating their carrots, and a new one that beats them at their own game and steals all the carrots. The carrots have been there for decades, and then someone came along and radically shakes up the industry and it makes it jump forward. Thats exciting!

It is like when a chef tells the customer "I wont make what you ordered, But I will make something so much better you can't resist.

It is as if Lockeed were to tell the military I won't build the F-35 to your specs, but when you see it, you will want it more than what you designed.

This is exciting because it marks a transition of industry dynamics. Something changed, and it wasn't the carrots. SpaceX brought something new to the table in a 60 industry, and they deserve credit for that change. The government deserves credit too, but the dynamic is different than if it were year 1 of the space industry.

[bumby]

The carrot did change, though. What’s fundamentally different about this carrot is that it is the first time large service contracts for space have been leveraged. Previously it was product contracts. In the latter, the govt provides specs on the hardware and drive the design. The entire mechanism of the CCP carrot is designed around a relatively hands-off approach to the hardware design to instead just specified the purchase of a ride. It doesn’t matter if it’s sci-fi tech or a donkey, as long as it gets the job done.

I still give SpaceX credit that they did a much better job of raising the bar in response to that incentive. I have some reservations about the way they’ve gone about some of it, but at the end of the day I think they have done a much better job than the legacy aerospace companies.