Okay y’all… private space companies are disrupting the space industry so hard right now I sometimes forget there was ever a time when space felt like this boring, government-only club.
I’m sitting here in my apartment—January 2026, middle of winter, heater making that weird clicking noise it always does when it’s mad at me—and I’ve got YouTube on the second monitor looping the latest Starship static fire test. There’s Cheeto dust on my keyboard. This is my life now.
Why Private Space Companies Feel Like They Cheated the System
Back when I was a kid NASA was basically magic. You waited years for one shuttle launch, it got delayed six times, then you cried when it finally went up because it felt holy. Now? I can literally refresh X and see four different private rockets either landing or yeeting themselves into the ocean within the same week.
Like… SpaceX just did their 200+ Falcon landing the other day and I didn’t even blink. That’s how normalized reusable rockets have become. Meanwhile my brain still thinks every landing should come with a orchestral score and a slow-motion American flag waving.
And it’s not just Elon’s circus. Rocket Lab keeps quietly yeeting Electron rockets like it’s no big deal. Blue Origin finally got New Glenn off the ground (after only… checks notes… about a decade of “any day now” tweets). Even smaller players like Astra and Firefly are still kicking despite basically living on life support half the time.
Watch fiery SpaceX Starship Flight 8 debris rain down over The …
The Part Where I Admit I Was Wrong About Reusability
Full disclosure: when SpaceX first started talking about landing boosters I thought it was marketing vaporware. I literally told my roommate in 2015, and I quote, “They’re never gonna stick that landing, bro. Physics is gonna humble them so hard.”
Cut to me in 2021 screaming at my TV when Booster 5 landed perfectly at night like it was parallel parking. I ate so much crow I grew feathers.
Reusable rockets = dramatically lower cost per launch. That simple equation is why private space companies are eating NASA’s traditional contractors for breakfast. ULA, looking expensive. Boeing Starliner, still doing… whatever it’s doing. Meanwhile Crew Dragon has been yeeting astronauts like Uber rides since 2020.
Space Tourism & Starlink – The Chaos Twins
I have a very specific memory: July 2021, sitting in a terrible sports bar in Orlando during a layover, watching the Inspiration4 launch on the bar TV. Four normal-ass civilians (well… mostly normal) orbiting Earth. No professional astronauts. Just rich people and a physician assistant having the time of their lives.
I cried into my $18 airport beer. Not even embarrassed. It hit different.
Now Virgin Galactic is doing suborbital joyrides, Blue Origin keeps sending Jeff up for 11-minute ego trips, and SpaceX is literally selling week-long stays on the ISS to whoever has $55 million lying around. The barrier between “astronaut” and “guy with enough crypto gains” is basically gone.
And don’t get me started on Starlink. I have friends in rural Montana who finally have decent internet because of a constellation of several thousand satellites that look like a train of doom moving across the night sky. Astronomers hate it. UFO Twitter loves it. I’m just happy my cousin in Wyoming can finally Zoom without looking like a pixelated potato.
SpaceX’s Reusable ‘Grasshopper’ Rocket Leaps Sideways In Amazing …
The Messy, Human, Slightly Embarrassing Reality
Here’s the unfiltered part nobody really wants to say out loud:
Private space companies are moving insanely fast… and sometimes things explode. Like, literally. I’ve watched more Starship prototypes turn into fireballs than I’ve had hot dinners this month. And every time it happens half of X screams “failure!” while the other half screams “rapid unscheduled disassembly is part of the process you normies!”
Both sides are kinda right. That’s the chaos.
I used to get anxious every time a launch window opened. Now? I just shrug and go “eh, they’ll iterate.” That shift in my own head feels weirdly dystopian and also kind of beautiful.
So What Happens Next, From My Couch Private Space Companies
If you’re still reading this rambling mess… here’s my current hot (and probably wrong) takes for 2026–2027:
- Starship catches the booster in the next 3–8 attempts (I’m leaning toward 5)
- At least two private companies land on the Moon before Artemis III gets there (sorry NASA)
- Ticket prices for suborbital tourism drop below $300k within 24 months
- Someone (probably SpaceX) announces serious Mars cargo missions before 2030
Anyway.
I’m gonna go microwave the rest of this pizza and watch the next launch replay for the third time tonight. Because that’s what private space companies disrupting the space industry has done to me: turned me into a slightly obsessive, Cheeto-dusted space nerd who gets emotional over rocket landings.
What about you? You hyped, terrified, or just here for the explosions?
Drop a comment. Or don’t. I’ll probably still be refreshing NSF forums at 4 a.m. either way. Later. 🚀
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