Can it get its mojo back?

I think that partially, even largely depends on whether it can get a better owner than the current ones.

[Update a while later]

I have more thoughts over at X.

[This is a good history from @SciGuySpace, but there’s a word missing in it: Starship. Tory’s problem is that he thinks that he’s competing against Falcon, but Elon is going to obsolesce Falcon ASAP. How will Vulcan or New Glenn compete against a fully reusable heavy lifter?

The thing about Elon is that he never faces the Innovator’s Dilemma. His first instinct is to obsolesce his own product line before a competitor can. Anyone who wants to seriously compete against SpaceX has to compete against his future plans, not his current business.

If space launch was just a business for Elon, he’d be as complacent as any other businessman in his position, but it’s not a business; it’s a passion, and he wants to get thousands of people to Mars. So he’s going to continue to out-innovate the competition.

Imagine a world in which SH/SS is flying daily (or more often) on regularly scheduled trips to ELEO at a cost of tens of dollars a pound. Propellant would be cheap enough to deliver a payload to anywhere in cislunar space for much less than the cost of a traditional launch. That is what ULA and BO are going to have to compete with if they want to stay in the launch business.

I know, “But there’s not enough demand for that level of launch activity!” Believe me, at those prices, we will finally see the kind of price-demand elasticity that will drive it through the roof. People will be doing things dreamt of for decades, held back only by launch costs.

So good luck to ULA (and BO) on their upcoming maiden flights this year, but I don’t predict a long future for them. Not to mention SLS… 

I feel like I should write a book about this.

[Monday-morning update]

ULA had a successful maiden flight, but there’s an anomaly with Peregrine.

[Bumped]