They’re also mostly doing the kind of work that government aerospace agencies have utterly nailed in the 60s. In fact in some aspects (transporting humans to an

They’re also mostly doing the kind of work that government aerospace agencies have utterly nailed in the 60s. In fact in some aspects (transporting humans to and fro) they aren’t quite there yet. Reusability just wasn’t a concern when budgets were bottomless. There are Soviet designs where boosters would land much like planes do, wings and all, but those remained on the drawing board.