A Picture Worth A Thousand Words

h/t Silicon Graybeard

Great space tech post at SiG's site. RTWT.

That graph is the picture.
Here's the thousand words.

Space-X, in six years, has CRUSHED everyone else, pushing China, Japan, and most of everyone else but a small Russian ability, and the ESA, completely out of the orbital launch market.

Like to nearly the "Game Over" stage, for all commercial intents.

I did not realize that until I saw the graph.
(This, folks, is why we read other people, because it makes us smarter. I mention that in case you only had a Common Core education.)

And the only reason they haven't done the same for manned launches is because NASA won't certify their vehicles for manned launches. IOW, NASA is subsidizing the Russian monopoly on manned launches in preference to home-grown absolute capabilities. This would be like the FAA telling Delta they could only fly cargo. (And whoever that sumbitch responsible is at NASA, he needs firing. If he's civil service, I'm sure he can be de-rated down to janitorial staff at that Australian space monitoring station, for life. More on Oz in a moment.)

What NASA is doing is the worst aspect of Democrat-pushed crony capitalism.
What Space-X is doing is how monopolies monopolize constrained only by the invisible hand of the free market, and why monopolies per se aren't necessarily a bad thing.
The same thing happened with railroads, and over time, they not only consolidated, but also lowered the cost of transporting goods and people from Point A to Point B, which benefitted everybody.

Not least of which, people named Vanderbilt, Carnegie, et al.

People (rightfully) give Elon Musk a lot of $#!^ for sucking off the government's teat when it comes to the Tesla, which he makes at a loss every time he sells one, and wouldn't exist at all without massive government subsidies. (Thanks Pres. Obozo: You built that!)

If Musk would leave the cars alone, and focus entirely on the rocket business, and the NASAtards would GTFO of his way, we'd be colonizing Mars and the Moon before I die, and turning a profit at it.

I noted a few days ago that we put men on the moon in less than a decade after Pres. Kennedy said we would. And we did it with transistor technology, before microchips. So in light of that, I don't think asking for a paying moon colony by 2050 is too much to ask.

Even if it's only to provide a penal colony, and a place to repatriate the Moonbats back to their native land when they reach Peak Stupid, and can't help themselves but transgress.

Don't laugh; look what the British Empire did with their reprobates.
Oz hasn't turned out too badly, now has it?

It may even turn out that by 2200 or so, when we launch NCC-1701, that Khan was actually the great-great-great-great grandson of the current mayor of London.
Wouldn't that be a hoot!

Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!!!

Odds are 2000:1 in favor that we can successfully clone Shatner by then, and the circle will be complete.