(MattWriter) wrote in message ...
Maybe it is not about money. Or, maybe, it is about creating
a company to sell to your undercut competition later for a
big profit. BRBR

I can't see that here. This isn't PayPal: there's no mass market. Musk says
he thinks he can sell 4-5 launches/year once the government believes he's for
real and the vehicle is flight proven. Also, $6M is without range costs, so
expect a creep to near $7M, still way lower than any other US provider.


I like what SpaceX is trying to do and I wish the company
well, but Mr. Musk has picked a tough nut to crack. His
first hurdle is the past 35 years of small-launcher history.
Scout only flew an average of about two times per year for
25 years before its 1995 finale. Pegasus has flown an average
of about 2.7 flights per year since 1990 and less than twice
per year since 2000. This includes both government and
commercial missions.

If all goes well and SpaceX doesn't trip itself up with a
series of launch failures, the company will have to all but
put Pegasus and Taurus out of business to get to the 2-3/year
rate, then will still have to compete with the likes of
low-cost Minotaur for some government business. On the
commercial side, there is Eurockot, which offers a more
powerful launch vehicle than Falcon for probably about the
same amount of money, yet still has only won about 1-2
launches per year.

- Ed Kyle