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The author appeared surprised that 3d printing would not help. Is this a common misconception? I always figured it was common knowledge that 3d printing is a great prototyping tool. tolerable in some low-rate processes, and terrible in a high volume process.

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Author here. In short, no, I wasn't surprised, I just wanted to cover it. I worked in 3D printing, albeit on the polymer side. On the metal side, there's been a lot of progress and 3D printed thruster nozzle assemblies are one of the key advancements SpaceX has made. It would never be a high volume process, but I was curious if you could get the kind of steel you needed for "surge" demand when the price matters less than total throughput.

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