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.
To whoever wants to be the first one to drop acid in space, the doors are open
Seems unlikely we'll ever definitely now, but I suspect that whomever does it next won't be the first (or second, or third).
https://www.reddit.com/r/KamalaHarris/comments/1eunob4/elon_...
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).
I'm no rocketry expert, but I'm old enough to remember the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster; I'm pretty sure if you've got falling chunks of steel-reinforced concrete hitting your space vehicle during launch, that's an issue.
But it was also a prototype being deliberately tested to destruction, so the context as compared to Columbia was quite different. (And it wasn't just the rocket itself that was a prototype, the pad and tower were at least a little as well).
And this has always been SpaceX's approach, rapidly iterating their design by building, testing, destroying, rinse/repeat - so it sometimes feels a little difficult to compare to a more NASA-style design process where a (usually) small number of items are produced with a significantly lower tolerance for failure.
(Edit: And how much better is it to learn these design lessons before the cargo is more fragile/delicate/squishy?)
Having chunks of the launchpad go flying isn't just an inconvenience - flying debris during launch can damage critical rocket systems, as the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster demonstrated.
SpaceX doesn't have real competition after Boeing failed.
What happens in such a monopoly?
The prices rise.
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.
Similarly, space operators who can't launch goldie-locks efficiency payloads are paying for multiple inefficient small loads instead.
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...
Because this literally something you couldn't buy before. Maybe if you went to Russia and gave them a lot of money.
SpaceX has made everything cheaper in Space cheaper and many things possible that literally weren't a commercial thing before.
Remember the time when cloud services made things cheaper?
Guess what happened next?
The cloud services analogy isn’t a good one because it wasn’t mainly about cost. It’s about not having to deal with the logistics of a commodity layer.