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WalterBright 2 hours ago

Once Elon showed how to do it, and how cost-efficient it was, a rocket company that doesn't do it is not viable.

testing22321 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Spacex first landed an orbital booster just over 10 years ago and have now landed 600 times.

The entire rest of the world combined has done it twice.

For a long time people would scoff when it was said they had a 10 year lead, and that others would catch up quickly. Proof meets pudding.

gamblor956 2 hours ago | parent [-]

FTA: "SpaceX suffered upper stage failures on three test flights of the massive Starship rocket last year. "

SpaceX has also had numerous failures with the larger generation of second stages and currently doesn't have a lead there. Nobody does.

decimalenough an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Nobody else has anything remotely like Starship. If they pull it off, and it's looking like they will, they will extend their dominance for another decade if not more.

Yes, Starship development has been slow and occasionally explodey, but they've successfully demonstrated all the fundamentals and it's "just" iteration from here. (They haven't gone into full orbit, but that's by choice, not lack of capability.)

boznz an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

It's a hard problem, and both SpaceX and Blue Origin will probably have failures in the future too, I am encouraged that they both see failure as a way to do better and looking forward to both of them eventually succeeding. It's a good time to be a space nerd.

WalterBright an hour ago | parent [-]

There's a saying in the racing business. If you're not walking back to the pit now and then carrying the steering wheel, you're not trying hard enough. If you're walking back to the pit too often, you're incompetent.

WalterBright 17 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

There's another aspect. If you're launching men in rockets, you cannot tolerate failures, so the development cost is way, way higher. The cost effective method is to launch unmanned ones, tolerating a lot of failures, and when the bugs are worked out then launch men.

bombcar an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

If you always fail, you aren’t trying.

If you never fail, you aren’t trying.