this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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Spacex has long published their price lists for launching with a single payload/client.
Rideshare missions should then be more expensive than this cost divided by the number of slots/weight available as there are integration and other overhead costs to account for.
If they’re lower than SpaceX are potentially dumping prices.
However. If you have committed to flying anyway, and you want to sell the last slots, just like airlines do, it can make sense to lower the price for the remaining seats.
All that said, it seems pretty obvious that most small launch companies will struggle to compete with SpaceX on price.
Same way as it’s hard to establish boutique manufacturing that competes with mass manufacturing on price.
My bet is that RocketLab will survive and most of the others will perish or be consolidated (and then possibly perish).
I suspect that firefly might survive as well, not because of anything particularly special about their launcher (though having flown it does put them ahead of the many companies that haven't even done that yet, even if they've not had all the flights that rocketlab does), but because they have that contract to supply rocket parts for Northrop Grumman as well to provide extra revenue and experience compared to if all they sold was rides on their own rocket.
Rocketlab surviving and very few others is my guess too. But they have had some issues lately so nothing is certain