> SpaceX is a perfect storm of a benefactor with unbelievable wealth
This is nonsense. Musk is rich BECAUSE OF SPACEX (and Tesla). When SpaceX was created Musk 'only' had 100 million $ and all of that was invested in SpaceX. After that, Musk never again put money in the company.
If you look into the history of this, you will see many other people with that much money that failed to get anywhere.
SpaceX is successful because they successfully executed on contracts and found many costumers.
> hoard the best engineers money can buy.
This is another completely made up statement. SpaceX did not go after the best established engineers. In fact SpaceX became famous for giving incredibly amount of responsibility to underpaid junior engineers.
Are you just making up stuff because you don't like SpaceX?
> And now the advancements they've made are proprietary.
And how much money does NASA save by using non-proprietary technologies? If they cost 10-100x more, what's the benefit of NASA owning things?
> Ideally Boeing and SpaceX could just collaborate and not have fight each other and waste a load of time and money.
Why would SpaceX collaborate with Boeing? SpaceX doesn't need anything from Boeing.
If NASA would have wanted to save money, they could have only given the Crew contract to SpaceX. This was unlikely, more likely would have been giving the contract to only Boeing.
Many large cooperation working together has a long history of not working. Consider the cost of SLS for example. Or the Orion. What bases of data do you take into account here that suggest NASA would have saved money if they had forced SpaceX to work with Boeing?
But NASA considered that it was actually cheaper to give two fixed price contracts rather then a single cost plus contract. And it seems to have worked for NASA.
> If the point is an open, competitive field driving space exploration forward, it seems we don't have that.
And yet the US has the most competitive most active space flight industry in the world. China and Europe would kill to have even 1/10 the amount of success.
So what are you basing your statement on?
> They caught lightning in a bottle and it may never happen again.
Sure but doing it the old way you all but guarantee that its not gone happen again.
In terms of engineering success, SpaceX didn't have some magical pill. Suggesting that these new processes could result in other successful companies. The recent successful moon lander in the CLIPS program is at least amazing as the Falcon 1 was.
> My hypothesis is there isn't room or capacity for more competition.
We have to differentiate the markets. Are you talking about human space flight only? Then you might be right in the short term. But NASA can at least guarantee flights if somebody else invests in it.
In other markets much more competition exists.