Comment by panick21_

There were once about 300 small rocket companies. About 250 of them are dead by by now.

The Europeans were late to the game, and their companies got some late investment.

Out of those 300 companies basically 0 of them have actually made money with rockets. Companies like RocketLab pivoted to in-space stuff and that's where they actually make money.

Pretty much every single small rocket company has lost money with small rockets and pivots to larger rockets where there is more demand because of constellations. But in Europe, that will be near impossible because of the Ariane monopoly.

And closing the case on reuse for small rockets is even more difficult.

I really think calling companies that have barley done a test-launch 'spacex competitors' is a silly. At best its a luxury competitor to SpaceX ride-share launches.