>>13560170BO have the money and backing, but they're hemorrhaging executives and high level engineers, and seem more interested in spending their vast money on lawyers rather than roggedry.
ULA also has the potential but are still invested in somewhat conservative slow-iteration on oldspace design, and have shown in the past that they would also rather play dirty legal games than accelerate their development or change their design philosophy.
ESA will never get anywhere, projects will be proposed and discussed for decades but all of their money will be consumed by gibs programs for the morbidly obese and economic migrants.
Japan probably has the technical prowess and they've done some interesting stuff at smaller scales but I haven't seen the kind of development pace or the widespread demand for accelerating and upscaling spaceflight that would indicate they particularly want to compete for space dominance.
Roscosmos is hobbling along and imploding due to no budget and extreme levels of corruption, and with the Nauka fuckup they're starting to remind me of BOING!
BOING! are doomed, they've forgotten how to design good and functional vehicles, their corporate culture revolves around pretending that their products are perfect for shareholders but cutting every imaginable corner behind the scenes. I doubt they even have the capability to create a safe and functional space vehicle anymore.
The smallsat launcher companies were too slow to seize a niche, Falcon 9 FT has already made them noncompetitive based on both $/kg and total upmass.
The only potential competitor I see is whatever state-sponsored company the Chink government ends up deciding on out of the slew of them doing projects to copy F9 right now, they will have the money and the motivation to iterate rapidly and potentially create at least a F9/Heavy competitor, if not a Starship competitor. That has yet to be seen though, they're still working to master the fundamentals.
