Why do you guys hate Elon Musk?

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Whatever anyone thinks about him, SpaceX reduced the cost of spaceflight since reusable rockets are now routine. Enough said.

In recent years, as it became more affordable to send satellites and other objects into orbit, access to the cosmos was democratized, said Josef Koller, a systems director for the Center for Space Policy and Strategy at The Aerospace Corp.

“Twenty years ago, space launches were a very government-dominated capability,” Koller said. “Now, there’s much more room to innovate.”

The emergence of new commercial launch providers, such as SpaceX and Rocket Lab, created a competitive market that drove down the price of rides to space.

Rocket Lab, an aerospace company founded in New Zealand and headquartered in Long Beach, California, debuted its Electron rocket in 2018. The company provides launches to Earth orbit for small satellites, which range from CubeSats roughly the size of a loaf of bread to minifridge-sized spacecraft that weigh less than 1,100 pounds. Rocket Lab charges around $5 million per flight, a cost that works out to roughly $10,000 per pound of payload.

SpaceX offers even more competitive pricing for rides aboard its medium-lift Falcon 9 rocket. The company typically charges around $62 million per launch, or around $1,200 per pound of payload to reach low-Earth orbit. Last month, however, SpaceX announced that it will raise the price of its products and services due to inflation, with a Falcon 9 launch now costing $67 million, a roughly 8 percent increase.

Still, the price represents a steep decline compared to more traditional options. NASA’s space shuttles, which were retired in 2011, cost an average of $1.6 billion per flight, or nearly $30,000 per pound of payload (in 2021 dollars) to reach low-Earth orbit, according to an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Russia’s workhorse Soyuz rockets, on the other hand, can cost anywhere from $53 million to $225 million per launch, working out to more than $8,000 per pound of payload to reach Earth orbit.

Seems pretty low on the scale of priorities, tbf.

Not to me, it's not. He made a contribution to the world, that will remain with us forever. How ever much a prick he is in real life will only last as long as he's alive.