[Dig1t]

The space shuttle was laughably bad compared to SpaceX’s rockets and they were not really rapidly reusable. They required an extensive refurbishment which involved disassembling the entire craft. The process took upwards of 6 months to re-fly. It also cost close to 1 BILLION per mission to fly it (that’s more than 10x what it costs to fly a SpaceX rocket).

What exactly are you saying is a monopoly? SpaceX is not a monopoly by any stretch, they are competing with Rocket Lab, Blue Origin, ULA, Relativity, and others.

>providing services for which markets won’t be functional

We are talking about a situation (launches, satellite constellations) where the government had a monopoly for 70 years and then transitioned to a market model. Since switching to a market model mass to orbit has gone through the roof and costs have fallen off a cliff. So much so that entirely new types of missions are now possible because of the increased access to space (Starlink is one such example).

We are specifically seeing the opposite of your “markets won’t be functional” statement; the market is so much better than the state-run enterprise that the idea of returning to the old model would be unthinkable.