Irony for the state officials, but there have been free market launch advocates since late 1970s or early 1980s, at the latest.

When I was young, Robert Truax wanted to start a commercial launch company, but funding was hard to come by, not only because of competition with the Space Shuttle but because Congress decreed that all American launches would be on the Space Shuttle, launch-blocking American commercial space. That fiasco was the reason Arianespace was such a success; they got almost all of America’s communication satellite launches, until Iridium and Globalstar.

In the late 1980s, Orbital Sciences started taking smallsats to orbit, because it was thought that market was about to blossom. It was still too early.

In the 1990s, several other companies tried to get into the launch business, but none succeeded. Not only was the smallsats market not yet there, but investors were still skeptical that new American companies could compete with existing Arianespace, American, and Russian launchers.

In the 2000s, NASA finally suggested that it would be using private U.S. commercial launch services, but Kistler still found it difficult to find outside investors. SpaceX convinced just enough investors to make NASA’s first milestone, then Orbital Sciences did, too. In addition, the cubesat concept began to make smallsats in standard sizes that were much easier to find ride-shares. With cubesats doing so well, more companies started supplying miniature hardware for them, and the smallsat industry really took off, so much that the small launch market has yet to catch up.

The 2010s saw the proving of the reusable rocket as economical, a failure for NASA’s Space Shuttle. The cost of launch for SpaceX kept dropping and the availability of booster rockets put pressure on the capabilities of the rest of the launch infrastructure.

Now in the 2020s, we should see commercial space stations, requiring even more commercial manned launches, so Starliner may be coming online just in time, and Sierra Space’s manned Dream Chaser may also come online in a timely manner.

So, yeah. Irony for the state government, but not for space enthusiasts who had expected this kind of space activity back when we were kids. It’s about time!