We see similar situation in automotive. Other companies do allow to keep Tesla in check, so there's less opportunity to force "Cybertrucks" onto the market as the only option.
No, they don’t. Starliner is a paper competitor. The money NASA sends it ensure SpaceX maintains a practical monopoly.
Boeing is the “competitor” everyone wishes for. Sucking up the oxygen in the room a real competitor might need while doing absolutely nothing to contest your market share.
> they've built the vehicle with no drama
Late to launch, billions over budget and strands its astronauts but has a CEO you can’t remember because their planes kept falling apart is a weird way to spell “no drama.”
Starliner does not even attempt to compete on the commercial market, it has a fixed number of Atlas V's stored away for the NASA contract, and then someone will have to cough up money to try to put it on another rocket.
So, they aren't even in the market, let alone doing anything to even appear to compete.
Despite Musk's… what, breakdown? Radicalisation? Temper tantrums? Whatever that is, SpaceX is still astoundingly fast at both launching stuff to orbit and also making new and better rockets than almost everyone else on the planet combined.
I'd like to see the money that was given to Boeing, instead given to another space startup that might do something interesting.
Spin-launch, perhaps.
Problem is, quite a lot of the weird stuff looks like defections in the IPD sense.
People buying into that stuff are morons, but useful to the republican party all the same.
What you describe is still a defection in the iterated prisoners' dilemma sense.
If so, she's a miracle worker given all the rest of what we're seeing.
That said, the way he talks about the rockets? Sure, he's ambitious, but he does seem to act like he recognises the laws of physics don't respond to "screw the rules I have money".
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>no drama
Come again?