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Comment by eole666 | Hacker News Reader

An AI made to "understand the true nature of the universe"...

Not a word about physics, or mention of physicists in the team and this is led by Elon Musk, the man who think he can send persons to Mars by 2029. This looks so promising.

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also a man who built monopoly on launches to space

Well, he's a fine businessman but maybe a little bit overconfident about a lot of things

How is it a monopoly? He made it cheap but others are also trying to compete, they're just not as good as SpaceX yet.

Since SpaceX entered the market, ULA has stopped selling both its flight ready rockets with no replacement ready, Ariane has finished flying with no replacement ready, the Space Shuttle has stopped flying and its role has been replaced by SpaceX, Soyuz is no longer available for US and many other markets, China's rockets are similarly unavailable in the US, and a great many new competitors continue not to have vehicles that exist. Electron and some small number of less robust small launch players fly but compete in a market segment SpaceX abandoned in 2009. SLS exists but has zero commercial customers and will never have more. India and Japan's rockets exist but have near-zero market presence.

The strongest sense in which SpaceX is not a monopoly is that other companies let you order flights on vehicles that don't exist yet, but hopefully may soon.

None of those are the fault of SpaceX. Perhaps they simply couldn't compete with the lower prices being offered.

I think you may be reading the term ‘monopoly’ in a nonstandard way. SpaceX being a monopoly just refers to them being a single dominant supplier in active launch, which is a position they built by fairly outcompeting other companies.

He invested in an engineering company. That doesn't mean he understands engineering.

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