jivatman t1_jeemyiq wrote on March 31, 2023 at 1:41 PM

Reply to comment by ACCount82 in Virgin Orbit fails to secure funding, will cease operations and lay off nearly entire workforce by getBusyChild

Some of the Spacecraft companies are interesting, and they largely do very different things so don't directly compete. Blacksky, Maxar, Planet etc.

SpaceX bringing down the cost of putting things into orbit, even moreso with Starship, should actually be good for these companies.

I absolutely would not invest in any launch company other than SpaceX though. Not even Rocketlab, which I think will survive but not do crazy well.

ACCount82 t1_jeeyno7 wrote on March 31, 2023 at 3:01 PM

The thing with Maxar, etc, is the question: what happens if SpaceX just decides to add an extra Earth-facing sensor bay to every single new Starlink sat?

Because the next step for SpaceX would be to start putting hardware that directly undercuts Maxar and others into those bays. Anyone who's doing smallsats should be extremely concerned by the possibility.

SpaceX is already getting in on that MIC game with Starshield - a series of customizable Starlink-derived sats that SpaceX has reportedly offered to Pentagon at bargain prices. So they clearly are trying to get into new market segments, and they aren't subtle about it.