I'm quite familiar with the list of private spaceflight companies. It's a long list of companies that have all failed to demonstrate a semi-reusable orbital launch system, even though some of them were trying long before Elon Musk got into that business.
And the reason they all failed, is that none of them were run by billionaires (well, except for Andy Beal but he was trying something different and he wimped out anyway). Building a reusable of semi-reusable orbital launch system requires hundreds of millions of dollars, spent over a decade or more during which you will have many spectacular failures, and during which almost every respected expert in the aerospace will tell all your potential investors or patrons that what you are doing is stupid and can't work and wouldn't have a viable market even if it did work.
Now that SpaceX has actually *done it*, the respected experts are changing their tune, and the investors are following suit.
But Northrop Grumman was never going to "fill that natural niche", because Northrop Grumman is run by a committee which will follow expert opinion and pre-SpaceX expert opinion was that the niche didn't exist. Blue Origin has been around for twenty-two years and still hasn't managed even an expendable orbital launch system. And the rest, could never have afforded it.
Building the first reusable orbital launch system, in the world created by the godawful "space race" of the 1960s, requires a person capable of writing checks for hundreds of millions of dollars without asking permission. Because the people you would have to ask for permission, will have been told by the experts that this was a stupid idea that you should never be allowed to waste the taxpayers/investors/whoever's money on.
I was there. This is how it was. The options were Elon Musk, or some other billionaire, or *maybe* a tight group of hundred-millionaire venture capitalists with a common vision. Or being stuck on Earth watching a handful of designated Space Hero Astronauts flying propaganda missions at exorbitant public expense.
I'm quite familiar with the list of private spaceflight companies. It's a long list of companies that have all failed to demonstrate a semi-reusable orbital launch system, even though some of them were trying long before Elon Musk got into that business.
And the reason they all failed, is that none of them were run by billionaires (well, except for Andy Beal but he was trying something different and he wimped out anyway). Building a reusable of semi-reusable orbital launch system requires hundreds of millions of dollars, spent over a decade or more during which you will have many spectacular failures, and during which almost every respected expert in the aerospace will tell all your potential investors or patrons that what you are doing is stupid and can't work and wouldn't have a viable market even if it did work.
Now that SpaceX has actually *done it*, the respected experts are changing their tune, and the investors are following suit.
But Northrop Grumman was never going to "fill that natural niche", because Northrop Grumman is run by a committee which will follow expert opinion and pre-SpaceX expert opinion was that the niche didn't exist. Blue Origin has been around for twenty-two years and still hasn't managed even an expendable orbital launch system. And the rest, could never have afforded it.
Building the first reusable orbital launch system, in the world created by the godawful "space race" of the 1960s, requires a person capable of writing checks for hundreds of millions of dollars without asking permission. Because the people you would have to ask for permission, will have been told by the experts that this was a stupid idea that you should never be allowed to waste the taxpayers/investors/whoever's money on.
I was there. This is how it was. The options were Elon Musk, or some other billionaire, or *maybe* a tight group of hundred-millionaire venture capitalists with a common vision. Or being stuck on Earth watching a handful of designated Space Hero Astronauts flying propaganda missions at exorbitant public expense.