[adastra22]

The rest of the industry is about 10 years beyond SpaceX. But note that they are where SpaceX was a decade ago, which is not the same thing as “in 10 years they will catch up.” The gap is getting larger year by year, not smaller.

[tavavex]

> The gap is getting larger year by year, not smaller.

Why? Logically it would seem that learning how to do something that's already been done would be easier than discovering it. SpaceX has already done a lot of the work and has shown the others that it's possible and how they do it. Why won't the others catch up? I can't think of any industry that has a market leader that only gets further away from their competition forever.

[xoa]

>I can't think of any industry that has a market leader that only gets further away from their competition forever.

You're on Hacker News and you can't think of silicon fabrication? What brand new players do you think are about to catch up to TSMC or Samsung? Or what about advanced jet turbine engines, why is China still having such trouble matching the performance of existing leaders after decades of work? Or operating systems, it's been Apple, BSD, Google, Linux, and Microsoft (or derivatives of these) for a long time. Or web browser engined. Or...

Some things are just really hard and involve enormous amounts of specifics, sunk costs and so on. Even if you know it's possible the implementation is everything, the idea that everything is trivially RE'd/cloned seems to have its limits in the real world.

[close04]

> You're on Hacker News and you can't think of silicon fabrication?

Ugh... past performance doesn't predict future performance. Why do you think that SpaceX's or ASML's advantages cannot be overcome by competitors? Some are very motivated and will not hold back from any method to get any industrial secrets from the current leaders. If one person can think of it, so can another, eventually.

A decade ago Tesla was the king of EVs.

[tavavex]

But I wasn't talking about things that are just hard to replicate. I was talking about companies that keep getting further away from anyone matching them, forever. No one can match ASML's prowess, but do you think that China today is further from catching up to them than they were 10 years ago? Going from nothing to modern silicon fabrication is a lot harder than going from existing knowledge but no expertise/technology to implement it, to actually making it happen. That's my point.

You have a valid point about ecosystems though - that is a rare exception where first movers can keep holding onto their advantage that I hadn't thought of. However, it's not really applicable when talking about a commodity like space launches.

[adastra22]

Because SpaceX moves faster. I’m telling you an empirical fact: three years ago the rest of the industry was 8 years behind SpaceX. This year they are ten years beyond. The gap is widening not shrinking.

[close04]

> which is not the same thing as “in 10 years they will catch up."

This is reasonable, unless SpaceX is stagnating for a decade there will still be some gap in 10 years too.

> The gap is getting larger year by year, not smaller

This is where the reasoning fails me. Unless you're making an unstated assumption about SpaceX or the competitors, why would the gap grow? As soon as there's a decent competitor, SpaceX's margins will get slashed. Their advancement will have to be supported by margins that can only shrink.

Followers can even have an easier time catching up because they have a working model in front of them. The leader has not only to execute but constantly innovate just to maintain a constant lead. The challengers "just" have to execute well because they can copy the leader's innovation until they catch up. And some of the competitors are more than willing and capable of extreme measures to copy.

Is there any field where over several decades the gap between the leader and the challengers just grew? It's not my industry but I have the personal impression that your "gap growing forever" opinion will age like milk left in the sun. We'll see.

[adastra22]

Because year by year the gap is growing. I’m talking about a historical trend, and that’s just a fact about it. The gap has been growing, not shrinking.

[JKCalhoun]

"The gap is getting larger year by year, not smaller."

You keep saying this—you'll have to explain. Very little in the world has ever worked like this—the opposite has generally been the case.

[adastra22]

No it’s not on me to explain why. I’ve just been watching this company since 2008, and seen them break ahead of the competition and then stay ahead as they move faster than anyone else. I’m saying the historical trend line has that gap widening. That’s a statement of fact, no “why” involved.

If you want to know the why’s I suggest reading Eric Berger’s two books Liftoff and Reentry.