SpaceX Ahead Elon Musk's SpaceX will make a crewed test flight for NASA in April next year, slightly ahead of Boeing, the other company that has a contract with the space agency for getting U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station. The Americans have been hitching a ride up to the ISS with the Russians since 2011, but have no more Soyuz seats booked after November next year. Fortune
It is NOT something that should be rushed in all out competition as mistakes are more likely to be made. Musk usually promises a lot more than he delivers.
SpaceX has been delivering, literally in some cases like delivering cargo to the ISS, for several years. As I've said before Elon is a shitshow when it comes to large scale operations, which is why SpaceX is one of his only no drama endeavors. They're absolutely killing the previously comfortable oligarchy that Lockheed Martin/Boeing, ESA, and the Russians had going where they developed insanely expensive rockets and launched at insanely expensive prices. I'm always a skeptic when it comes to Elon, but SpaceX has delivered over and over on things that no-one else has even tried (i.e. landing boosters) while delivering 60 missions on the Falcon 9 alone. No need to rush is code for "drag this sh%!t out for years so SpaceX's costs end up the same as ours" coming from LM/Boeing!
If by killing it you mean taking away business then yes. If you meant making insane profits, then no. Their claim about the reusability and profitability of the rockets hasn't been tested yet. Call me when they reused the same rocket let's say 5 times and we see the margins on their business...
Reusing twice is twice as much as anyone else in today's environment, why does SpaceX have to be literally 5X better than the existing plutocracy to meet your approval? Seems a bit of an unreasonable and arbitrary bar to insist on? They actually haven't received much funding vis-a-vis what they've accomplished and especially compared to the amount of our tax dollars that have gone to LM/Boeing et al. As long as the company makes $1 in profit a year so it stays in business it really doesn't matter if they have great margins, in fact I'd expect and hope their margins are significantly less than the defense industrial complex that's kept space so inaccessible for so long! If SpaceX even accomplishes a quarter of what they are trying to accomplish they will have done far better than any incumbent, and that benefits everyone except the incumbents. And they've already met that hurdle.
Because that is their claim? Their rockets should be reusable multiple times, thus they can be cheaper than the competition. By the way for anyone with the slightest business sense it does not mean cheaper space travel! Why? Let's say you can be much cheaper than the competition with a unique technology. Where will you price your services? Obviously just slightly below the competition (or if you want to kill them for good, you keep it low until they go bankrupt) so you can maximize profits. So no space travel won't be cheaper until other competitors copy their technology and start to offer the savings as a lower fee. But this of course depends on their so far not proven claim that the rockets are reusable WITH cost savings... TL;DR; Too early to tell...
You're right about pricing except...if you can do something cheap enough to allow you to do something else that wasn't possible before. For example, if you can launch a constellation of several thousand satellites into LEO to provide broadband at prices just below terrestrial broadband. At that point the price your coming in just below is the broadband price, not the launch price. I'd also add that if you're a new player trying to disrupt an entrenched industry, especially with a significant government customer base, you need to significantly under-price your competition for long enough that you end up shattering the old pricing structure for good because you've created new markets that depend on the lower prices. I have personal experience with this running my companies at a small scale, and it's the history of every disruptive technology introduction. The classic example are PCs, they didn't attempt to replace mainframes at a slightly lower price. They allowed for entire new markets that didn't previously exist and were priced significantly lower to accomplish that. If Elon can accomplish this with SpaceX is a legitimately open question. If it's a sound strategy or not is a pretty well answered and accepted question, at least to the startup world.
I am glad our views are getting closer. In another thread I claimed that SpaceX survives on government contracts and the other poster (Santa I think) had a hard time believing it. Well, US government orders are 38% of SpaceX all orders and it seems to me they are hugely overpaying: "The contract would be extended to “a total of 31 missions...worth $5.9 billion, or an average cost of $191.3 million per mission” (IG report, emphasis added). SpaceX has launched the 15th supply mission in June 2018, While Orbital ATK launched the ninth in May 2018; leaving 7 more supply missions under the extended 2008 contract. The cost per launch for the Falcon 9 is advertised as $62 million and yet NASA pays $191 million, does the Dragon costs $130 million or does the Cygnus mission cost several hundred millions skewing the average, or maybe SpaceX is selling cheap commercial launches because the average cost in the report includes the development money while the $61 million is the cost of manufacturing and launching only?" So if they are profitable, that is because they are still sucking on Uncle Sam's huge tits...