With 143 payloads last year he is certainly leading, but with such low costs, he will be putting some others out of business over the next few years.
Yup, maybe. There weren’t that many companies in the biz before, which was part of the problem, and part of the reason he’s succeeded in dropping the cost per pound to orbit by more than an order of magnitude.
The other new companies are going to be okay I think, plenty of work to go around. And they’re well aware of how they need to innovate in order to compete.
SpaceX has only been orbiting stuff for, hmm, ten years? Less than ten years? Already a sig fraction of all the orbital payloads ever launched went up aboard a Falcon 9. Profitability will have to develop, but I don’t expect an IPO from SpaceX, ever.
Why Falcon 9 is Better than Even SpaceX Thought
April 8, 2022
NASASpaceflight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iQMTrC-spc