Not a problem, though, give it another 5-10 years and it will be extremely clear what SpaceX has achieved. For example, here's the CNES (French space agency) D

Not a problem, though, give it another 5-10 years and it will be extremely clear what SpaceX has achieved. For example, here's the CNES (French space agency) Director of Launchers discussing SpaceX's achievements, and his desire to design Ariane NEXT to be similar to Falcon 9: https://satelliteobservation.net/2018/06/02/cnes-director-of-launchers-talks-reusable-rockets/ https://satelliteobservation.net/2018/06/02/cnes-director-of... > For Falcon 9 for instance, they use a toss-back trajectory. An engine is relit while going against the aerodynamic flow, which is actually quite complicated to achieve. We worked on that with ONERA, the French national aerospace lab, and realized it’s pretty complicated. and, right after talking about how SpaceX's design stages lower, has a common engine between stages, and allows experimentation in landings: > Prometheus can be used in a new architecture which we call Ariane Next. It will have 7 such engines on the first stage and 1 on the second stage, and can be used in expendable or reusable mode, allowing to experiment reuse easily. The objective is to learn by testing, which is not a European speciality. There's no greater endorsement than by a competitor.