> Fortunately other companies, besides just SpaceX, are building lots of spacecraft.
I wouldn't say they do too much though.
In USA we have 1) Dragon - an overall good, rather conventional, rather modest in capabilities design. We also have 2) Lockheed's Orion, a rather capable, but quite, quite expensive design. 3) We also have Starliner, and I hope Boeing will at least try to support it, or better make it reliable enough; it's also rather modest, but much better than nothing. 4) We also have Dream Chaser... not quite have yet, and it's in cargo version for now, but still there's hope it will carry humans one day and will be successful. Better than many other designs, and of course not perfect. 5) We have Starship... maybe it will carry humans earlier than Dream Chaser, but that's still at least years away. It's a rather unique design, true. But quite unproven at the moment.
So... the best overall at the moment is still Dragon, and the best candidate to replace it is years away - I'd hope that would be Dream Chaser, though won't bet on it.
Overall... not too much I'd say. Just imagine yourself in place of those several companies which are building orbital stations today. What they're going to use?.. Do you see the problem?
There are lots of spacecraft being built, they just aren't all human rated at the moment. I should mention that I'm including first stages here too because my point is that we have to build the stuff to work the organizational muscles so that we can build more similar stuff which is better performing later.
Rocket lab is launching electron a bunch, working on Neutron which will be a falcon 9 competitor, and is building spacecraft for their customers (e.g. they built some Martian orbiters that should get launched later this year).
Intuitive machines, the folks who built the most recent US lunar lander.
Blue origin is not exactly speedy, but they do fly their rockets semi-regularly now and New Glenn is supposed to fly later this year.
Northrup has a human-rated rocket that flies periodically.
And of course there's ULA.
And those are just the successful ones.
There's also:
Astra
ABL
Firefly
Relativity
Sierra Space
And probably some more that I'm not aware of.
That's a pretty long list of places that are working on these problems and paying American engineers to work on and think about these problems.
We also have X-37 the military space plane, although that’s for the military.
X-33 was a thing, Venturestar by Lockheed. It seemed tantalising in close, a few mishaps and it was cancelled, but surely that would have been worth picking and taking that bit further.
Most of the companies with actual money behind their space station proposals seem to intend to use the IDSS, so theoretically they'd be able to take either of the commercial crew spacecraft. Besides that, iirc one proposal is basically a "basic" cylinder which relies on a docked Dragon to support it. Starship is in an interesting spot because in a sense it's a station in itself. Starship deployable stations currently have the problem that the payload bay opening mechanism and volume aren't set in stone yet.
> Most of the companies with actual money behind their space station proposals seem to intend to use the IDSS, so theoretically they'd be able to take either of the commercial crew spacecraft.
Right, but to be practical, those commercial crew spacecrafts should exist in sufficient numbers to ensure the orbital stations are supplied, preferably without exorbitant price tags, which an insufficient supply could result in.
Agreed, so far, SpaceX seems to be fine with building more Dragons, I had been assuming they were just refitting the 3 they built initially for the free-flying missions, but turns out they have 5 in service at the moment. Boeing seems to have decided to stop at 2 Starliners, and of course too early to say about fleet size for Dreamchaser.
I wouldn't say they do too much though.
In USA we have 1) Dragon - an overall good, rather conventional, rather modest in capabilities design. We also have 2) Lockheed's Orion, a rather capable, but quite, quite expensive design. 3) We also have Starliner, and I hope Boeing will at least try to support it, or better make it reliable enough; it's also rather modest, but much better than nothing. 4) We also have Dream Chaser... not quite have yet, and it's in cargo version for now, but still there's hope it will carry humans one day and will be successful. Better than many other designs, and of course not perfect. 5) We have Starship... maybe it will carry humans earlier than Dream Chaser, but that's still at least years away. It's a rather unique design, true. But quite unproven at the moment.
So... the best overall at the moment is still Dragon, and the best candidate to replace it is years away - I'd hope that would be Dream Chaser, though won't bet on it.
Overall... not too much I'd say. Just imagine yourself in place of those several companies which are building orbital stations today. What they're going to use?.. Do you see the problem?