Comment by cruffle_duffle a day ago
They are making the impossible merely late. Which, you know, is still pretty fucking cool.
I’d love to see any other country or competitor catch a stainless steel rocket larger than the Statue of Liberty that was just cruising back to earth at sub orbital velocity. Everybody else is so far behind it’s not even funny.
Spacex is cool as shit. Screw the “skeptics” and haters. Some people have a complete lack of imagination.
> very late
when was your fully reusable full-flow staged combustion rocket engine scheduled flight, again?
Why does that matter? SpaceX is setting themselves up for failure by insisting that they need to nail re-entry first. Whenever they focused on a test flight for re-entry I'm wondering why they aren't working on more important things like the payload doors or orbital brimming. They will get the re-entry tests for free!
And even if they don't. The upper stage is cheap enough that it can be expended and still be cheaper per flight than Falcon Heavy. So that tells me that the delays are on purpose. Their test flight planning is designed to maximize ego stroking.
Starship started development in 2012. SLS started development in 2011, New Glenn in 2012.
SLS flew in 2022 around the moon. New Glenn just flew, reaching orbit with an actual payload.
Starship hasn't reached orbit, the best they did was send a banana to the Indian ocean.
Remind me again how SpaceX is the fast company?
No, they are making the possible very late.