Every company that runs away with a market eventually needs one thing it can never admit to wanting: a real rival.
Competition is what keeps a leader sharp, keeps customers from feeling trapped, and keeps regulators from circling
A monopoly looks great on a spreadsheet and terrible in a headline. For most of the past decade, the rocket business has had exactly one runaway leader and a long line of companies promising to close the gap. Elon Musk’s SpaceX launches more often, lands more boosters, and charges less than anyone alive.
The company that looked most likely to become a genuine second source was Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, with its heavy-lift New Glenn rocket and Bezos funding much of it by selling Amazon (AMZN) stock. Then, on the night of May 28, Blue Origin’s best answer to SpaceX erupted into a fireball on its launch pad in Florida. The timing is what makes this more than a bad night.