Calling SpaceX SpaceRyanair seems unexpectedly accurate. O'Leary and Musk have a lot in common.
NASA's shuttle would have solved reusability in the 70s/80s, but a combination of DoD interference and severe funding cuts effectively crippled the project. This was politically fatal because it killed NASA's reputation as an effective manager of innovation. Which is why every project from the 90s onwards has been supported by slightly overwrought rapturous PR - to try to restore that reputation, because funding relies on it.
SpaceX has copied this.
So yes - SpaceX is incremental. A non-incremental company would be developing blue sky alternatives to chemical engines and/or looking for new propulsion physics. I can't see that happening without a government-run academic R&D program.
NASA's shuttle would have solved reusability in the 70s/80s, but a combination of DoD interference and severe funding cuts effectively crippled the project. This was politically fatal because it killed NASA's reputation as an effective manager of innovation. Which is why every project from the 90s onwards has been supported by slightly overwrought rapturous PR - to try to restore that reputation, because funding relies on it.
SpaceX has copied this.
So yes - SpaceX is incremental. A non-incremental company would be developing blue sky alternatives to chemical engines and/or looking for new propulsion physics. I can't see that happening without a government-run academic R&D program.