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SpaceX just caught the booster of the Starship rocket, launching a new age of man made space exploration.
Despite this getting relatively little news in the mainstream media, I am convinced this development marks the beginning of an entire paradigm of space. The cost of kg to orbit should now go down about an order of magnitude within the next decade or two.
This win has massive implications for the culture war, especially given that Elon Musk has recently flipped sides to support the right. Degrowth and environmental arguments will not be able to hold against the sheer awesomeness and vibrancy of space travel, I believe.
We'll have to see if the FAA or other government agencies move to block Elon from continuing this work. If Kamala gets elected, I worry her administration will attack him and his companies even more aggressively. This successful launch, more than anything else in this election cycle, is making me consider vote for Trump.
What are your thoughts? Do you agree with my assessment?
The cost should, but the price might not. The first orbital boosters to ever undergo a powered landing or be reused were the ones for Falcon 9, and the second orbital boosters ever to undergo a powered landing were ... the SpaceX successor to Falcon 9?! They're literally more than a decade ahead of nearly all their competition. The only thing I've seen at the same scale as Starship is a Chinese concept that's at the "powerpoint presentation" stage, and even in vaporware form they're only talking about starting testing in the early 2030s and regular use in 2040.
And just like SpaceX are still selling $70M Falcon 9 flights even while their internal marginal costs are likely to be down to ~$20M, I bet they'll feel free to sell Starship flights for something like $150M (for a full, 10x the F9 payload, granted), even if they ever actually manage to get its cost under $10M, until they get some real competition.
The biggest question among their competitors is New Glenn, I think. Blue Origin got started earlier than SpaceX without yet reaching orbit, seemingly progressing at half the pace ... but they now have a rocket nearly ready to launch, something like 4x more powerful than F9, for the same price. If everything works as planned and they can manage to ramp up the cadence then I could definitely see SpaceX prices being pushed down to that level too.
Monopolies do not always charge maximum price. If one person wants a product at $100 but 20 people want it at $10, its better to charge $10 (as long as marginal costs aren't eating that additional $100 in revenue). Of course, that means you need more customers at a lower price. And I think Elon starting up Starlink is a sign that he lacks customers. I'm not sure where that leaves us.
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