> is Olympic class
Is that why their rockets keep exploding?
Is that why their rockets keep exploding?
The cost is also not fully "turnkey" - if you overwork your employees, fail to pay your suppliers, rely on subsidies, then of course you are going to reduce your cost.
And all of that happened before Musk fully lost his mind.
Efficiency wise from pure physics, they would have been better off developing something similar to Scaled Composites. Air breathing is way more efficient to get to altitude, then you do a High Altitude Orbit insertion, and then do your vertical landing. For stuff like Starlink Satellites that are rather small, you have to do more launches but the cost of launch goes down significantly.
They built the best vehicle that would work, today. Not some distant future of a possible way to get to space. An actual working way to get to space. Built on the backs of NASA engineers of the space coast of FL, Houston TX, CA, and AR. You can armchair architect another way, but they successfully built one. One that is reusable. Over and over and over and over again.
EU then followed. Then China. Then India (ordering could be wrong but). So it’s definitely something that works.
EDIT
Ok, EU doesn’t have a reusable rocket yet.
Im not debating the fact that they were able to put together a product. Im also not debating that it was successful. Nor am I debating that any average person can work on rockets, you do need some engineering knowledge.
Im just arguing that the reason they got there wasn't because they managed to hire the best of the best engineers that are smart in one area but fail to understand how much Musk is doing politically. My claim is that Space X hired enough average intelligence, but super driven people, which is why they managed to build Falcon 9 through act of throwing money at it, and as supporting evidence of this, Starship is currently blowing up despite their supposed "learnings".
However if your stuff keeps exploding after you have had quite a large number of those test events, something is amiss.
>Like the Falcon 9, once the correct inputs are developed, it will become as routine as "Hey Siri..."
TBD. Raptor engines are the equivalent of taking 2 liter inline 4 engine and putting on massive turbos to make it generate 1000 whp. Thats pretty much how you get the high pressure ratio.