COMPETITIVENESS OF COMMERCIAL SPACE TRANSPORTATION SERVICES

Competition between the providers of space transportation has become i ntense with the distinct possibility of governments providing both dir ect and indirect subsidies in order to influence transportation user c hoices. This bodes well for users of transportation services but has s erious ramifications with regard to the future makeup of the internati onal space transportation industry. This paper addresses the following key issues: selecting a launch service given a decision to establish a business to provide satellite communication services; establishing t he price that should be bid by a launch provider in order to have a sp ecified chance of being awarded the launch contract; and assessing the possibility that a launch provider is utilizing unfair or predatory p ricing in order to increase the likelihood of winning launch contracts and thereby increasing market share. A method is developed and result s presented based upon establishing 'value in use' pricing that explic itly takes into account the multiple attributes of alternative launch services. This leads to an assessment of 'predatory' pricing in terms of the value in use pricing.