Sidestepping the discussion about the billions in subsidies that SpaceX got or didn't get, and the technology transfers they might have, or not have benefited from, SpaceX actually has a broad market they can leverage to turn a good profit with the excellent product they designed.
That will not be the case here, at all. Aircrafts are designed for very specific payload/range configurations, and are a lot less competitive once out of that optimum.
A 100 m plane designed to carry 80 tons of blades over 2000 km is of little use to anybody else. It's not anywhere close to the loading capacity of a 747 they are comparing themselves with, and it can't even cross the Atlantic. And that is if they even hit their payload targets at all, which is easier said than done.
And no, it is not magically going to carry 130 tons over 6000 km with a bit of tweaking. That's not how planes work.
Everybody can claim that they are going to make rockets and planes, talk is cheap.
Two of the main benefits startups claim to have is that:
- They can use their small size to play loosely with the rules, move fast, break things, and run around in circles around the sclerosed, unwieldy established players.
- Said established players have left, by their inefficiencies, plenty of low-hanging fruits the new players can use to gain critical mass.
Building and certifying a new aircraft of that size is a multi-billion dollars endeavour because it is difficult, not because the market has consolidated itself to the highest level of inefficiency.
Hitting your payload and range targets is surprisingly difficult, even for companies with decades of experience. And being a few percent off in the single digit range means the difference between something that is usable, and a design that is literally good for the scrapyard.
To compound the problem, playing fast and loose with the rules in that business is when people start dying, with the 737 sagas being the perfect, very actual, illustration of this.
