This was an interesting article on an area I'd long meant to read about but never had, and there is some great history there. However, I got a very real feeling

This was an interesting article on an area I'd long meant to read about but never had, and there is some great history there. However, I got a very real feeling of "skating to where the puck is not where it is going" sense the farther I read. In particular, the article spends a certain amount of time on the under-development Ariane 6 series and Vega-C. But the comparisons were all to the existing Falcon 9. I wish Mr Berger had asked them at all about the BFR and the implications of a functional high performance methalox engine, because I think that has the potential to be a much bigger leap forward then seems to be generally discussed yet. Methane doesn't give quite the thrust of kerosene or the ISP of hydrogen, but from an economic and chemical-rockets-in-space perspective its got a lot going for it, not all of it immediately obvious. It doesn't coke at rocket temperatures, yet another bonus for more reusability. My understanding is that it's much easier to store then LH2 and the conditions are a closer match for LOX which potentially simplifies a number of steps. It can potentially be harvested or synthesized elsewhere in the solar system more easily. And even the cost factor shouldn't be ignored once the context is reusability, RP-1 isn't actually cheap (it's highly refined, I saw estimates north of $16/gallon). Fuel may be the least expensive part of an expendable rocket to the point it's not generally worried about, but for a reusable rocket a couple of million dollars extra per launch is real additional margin over time. I'm certainly no expert by any means, but organizations like ArianeGroup comparing under development rockets to existing ones feels as though really sums up some of the issues with Old Space in a nutshell. It seems like they're thinking in terms of building a rocket where that one design might then be used essentially unchanged for 30-50 years despite there being clear theoretical improvements to be had. But that's not how the fully private enterprises seem likely to operate. SpaceX put a fair amount of effort into the Falcon Heavy for example, and it was spectacular. Except now apparently they've decided that it's effectively already obsolete, that BFR is going better then expected which mean FH will serve as a limited use minor stopgap and then be scrapped as a design. Even now I don't know if that sort of aggressiveness has really gotten into the consciousness of older style organizations yet. I guess if they're comfortable with basically becoming a jobs program and massively subsidized strategic fallback for the EU that is in fact potentially sustainable a long time. Polities can have different levels of very long term priorities that are different from the faster pace of industry, there's nothing wrong with that. But it's a position that has risks too if the gap opens up too far, because it takes a very long time to make up that ground (if ever).