[somenameforme]

Starship's a red herring. The SLS is already so far behind the game (before even being finished) that it lacks any rational argument even against the Falcon Heavy, which has been in service for years. And nobody's being handed monopolies. Government space contracts have a competitive bidding process. If Boeing/Lockheed, Blue Origin, or any of the other less known aerospace startups can come up with something that can reasonably compete against half a decade old SpaceX tech then I'd love to see it as much as anybody else. But for now that's simply not happening, and just corruptly tossing tens of billions of dollars towards Boeing/Lockheed isn't bringing us any closer to that happening.

[kylecordes]

Assuming Starship succeeds, hopefully at that point other players will adopt the basic design, iterate and improve, then forcefully compete. I'm still surprised that, all these years after Falcon 9 obviously works, there isn't a "clone" on the market. (I am aware there are couple of small "new space" companies working on something similar.)

[somenameforme]

Agreed. I think you can even take it further than other new small space companies. Boeing and China would both absolutely love to replicate SpaceX's tech, and both have (relative to SpaceX) practically unlimited resources to do so, yet both are still nowhere near them yet, and not for lack of trying.

From an outsider's perspective it's quite difficult to understand what the big barrier is.