If you have enough money you can ring them up and say "I want to go into space" and they can make that happen. That is a pretty big deal.
More likely they lease launch facilities from the government to minimize regulatory interference from… the government.
there aren’t many technical issues to pouring concrete in a good lat-lon
Other than when a powerful and explosion-prone rocket destroyed its launchpad, hurling chunks of steel-reinforced concrete thousands of feet. But it's almost 18 months since that happened.
That launch was on 20th April 2023, and the next prototype test launch was only 212 days later on 18th November 2023, although I think the pad redesign/rebuild/repair work was complete by the end of July 2023.
So only 3-4 months to redesign/rebuild/repair the pad (although it's probably reasonable to assume some design work had already occurred).
SpaceX doesn't have real competition after Boeing failed.
What happens in such a monopoly?
The prices rise.
First, the competition is international, and some is from governments who need a non-US supplier.
Second, the goal in most corporations isn't maximum profit per item but maximum profit per year, and if they can indeed deliver the prices Musk is speculating about of getting a million people to pay 100-200 thousand USD each to go to Mars, that allows the overall market to be much larger than if he can only charge 150 million (or even 1.5 billion) for 4-seat rides to a low orbit space station every six months.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2023/10/18/this-aster...
One of us will be correct.
My Rolls Royce which I can't afford is a lot cheaper than the car I can afford which got more expensive than my previous one.
Tesla : Rivian/Lucid :: SpaceX : Blue Origin/ULA
Tesla : BYD :: SpaceX : LandSpace [0]/Galactic Energy [1]
0. https://x.com/AJ_FI/status/18337614353624477601. https://www.space.com/galactic-energy-ceres-1-sea-launch-vid...