Let's see how things go, thus far SpaceX has proved they can get stuff into orbit but they aren't super-cheap yet.
Private industry can do a lot of things but a Cassini probe mission for $71 million all in seems unlikely in the near future.
NASA has a contract with SpaceX for 12 supply missions at $1.6 billion while NASA says a shuttle launch was about $450 million (but that figure probably doesn't include all the costs).
So SpaceX at this stage is at about 25-33% the cost of a space shuttle mission, but that's still a long way until we get to "45 Cassini probes" for $3.2 billion.
Private industry can do a lot of things but a Cassini probe mission for $71 million all in seems unlikely in the near future.
NASA has a contract with SpaceX for 12 supply missions at $1.6 billion while NASA says a shuttle launch was about $450 million (but that figure probably doesn't include all the costs).
So SpaceX at this stage is at about 25-33% the cost of a space shuttle mission, but that's still a long way until we get to "45 Cassini probes" for $3.2 billion.