{"paper":{"title":"Prices and Competition in Vertically Integrated Launch Markets","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["q-fin.EC"],"primary_cat":"econ.GN","authors_text":"Akhil Rao","submitted_at":"2026-07-11T16:28:19Z","abstract_excerpt":"Over the last 15 years the number of U.S. orbital launches has grown by roughly an order of magnitude. About three-quarters of those launches were on SpaceX's Falcon 9 vehicle, and roughly three-fifths of those Falcon launches deployed SpaceX's own Starlink constellation. A back-of-envelope Wright's law calculation suggests this increase in experience should have driven the Falcon 9's real launch cost down by roughly 70\\% over 2012--2026. Yet over the same period the advertised price fell by less than 6\\% in real terms. Why? I develop a simple model of competition and vertical integration betw"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2607.10385","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2607.10385/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}