Cost is everything in spaceflight and SpaceX has cracked the cost barrier wide open. Even in Russia where they can build rockets out of the same factories they've been using for decades and where labor can be dirt cheap they can't match the costs that SpaceX is capable of, nor can China.
And this is largely because the company is entirely commercial. They build rockets and spacecraft to their own specs not based on government contracts and to government rules and specifications. They have built an entire orbital launch vehicle which is competitive in capabilities to the Ariane 5, the Delta IV, the Atlas V, and the Proton M, all of which took enormous government programs and billions of dollars to develop. SpaceX build their rocket from scratch for less than half a billion dollars all told. That is revolutionary.
More so, they are only the 4th entity in the world who has succeeded in any degree in creating and launching an orbital spacecraft that is capable of being manned and they are almost certain to be the first non-government entity in history to launch astronauts into orbit.
And that is just the prelude. They are also working on the Falcon Heavy, which will provide extra capability and far lower costs than the Falcon 9. And they are working on a fully reusable launch vehicle from the 1st stage up through the crew capsule, which would revolutionize manned spaceflight in a way that we can scarcely imagine today.
The PSLV has about 1/3 the payload of the Falcon 9. On paper it's roughly cost competitive with Soyuz and the current Falcon 9 prices (which is no coincidence, there's little advantage to undercutting the competition, yet). In practice though it's not a serious competitive threat to any existing launcher because it has such a low payload capacity and thus can't be used to launch the vast majority of satellites.
This flight on its own isn't "disruptive", but the process that it's a part of might be. The purpose of this flight is just to prove that the technology works. The process might be disruptive if it continues its cost cutting and space flight becomes cheaper and more accessible.
"we usually spend years to build something to put into orbit, even though 99% of the work is done in six months, because we have to be 1000% sure it will work, as it is too expensive to try again.
If we can send something into space for a tenth of the current cost it means we can do it much more often, do more things, and do it faster."
So, I guess it's like low cost airlines did not change the flight industry (you could go from A to B even before) but they changed the game cause now it's a smaller deal to do it.
It's a step. This is the first time that a private company has ever docked with the International Space Station, a domain previously exclusive to a small club of federal governments.
Well, if you ignore the fact that 95% of the US space industry is private contractors then sure. I mean they are only going because they are being paid to go there.
Facebook has netted us at least one middle-east revolution, so I wouldn't be so quick to write it off. I agree with your sentiment though, I wish more smart people would work on important problems like space travel, instead of devising ways to increase click-through rates.
Because if they can get the $/kg down as far as Musk thinks they can there are a lot of things you can do that were previously too expensive. Things like space-based solar power and orbital manufacturing.
But, what does this make possible that wasn't possible before? How is this truly disruptive?