THE NEW SPACE RACE: Starship could fly again in May. “With a less cumbersome regulatory and hardware update period ahead, SpaceX expects an expedited turnaround time and is targeting the next Starship test flight in six weeks, according to Gwynne Shotwell, the company’s president and chief operating officer. Some improvements SpaceX will likely try to test on the fourth Starship test flight include better control of the Super Heavy booster on the descent, securing heat shield tiles, and eliminating roll issues on Starship during orbital operations and reentry.”

There’s also this:

Officials from several companies operating or developing small satellite launch vehicles are worried that SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket could have a big impact on their marketability, Space News reports. Starship’s ability to haul more than 100 metric tons of payload mass into low-Earth orbit will be attractive not just for customers with heavy satellites but also for those with smaller spacecraft. Aggregating numerous smallsats on Starship will mean lower prices than dedicated small satellite launch companies can offer and could encourage customers to build larger satellites with cheaper parts, further eroding business opportunities for small launch providers.

Well, yeah … SpaceX’s dedicated rideshare missions are already reshaping the small satellite launch market. The price per kilogram of payload on a Falcon 9 rocket launching a Transporter mission is less than the price per unit on a smaller rocket, like Rocket Lab’s Electron, Firefly’s Alpha, or Europe’s Vega. Companies operating only in the smallsat launch market tout the benefits of their services, often pointing to their ability to deliver payloads into bespoke orbits, rather than dropping off bunches of satellites into more standardized orbits. But the introduction of Orbital Transfer Vehicles for last-mile delivery services has made SpaceX’s Transporter missions, and potentially Starship rideshares, more attractive. “With Starship, OTVs can become the best option for smallsats,” said Marino Fragnito, senior vice president and head of the Vega business unit at Arianespace. If Starship is able to achieve the very low per-kilogram launch prices proposed for it, “then it will be difficult for small launch vehicles,” Fragnito said.

Let him have a second term, and Biden’s DOJ will antitrust SpaceX to death, just when it’s really bringing down launch costs.