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These things take time, but it's not the complete story, Virgin Galactic has been around since 2004, so the same year GMail launched, without producing a single

These things take time, but it's not the complete story, Virgin Galactic has been around since 2004, so the same year GMail launched, without producing a single passenger flight. Blue Origin has been around for almost 20 years, and they have a few suborbital flights to their credit, and an engine that has yet to fly. SpaceX, on the other hand, has been around since 2002 and achieved orbit in 2008, and have completed a lot of milestones since then. I suspect the biggest difference between these companies is not talent or vision, but sens of urgency

heisenbit 7y ago
Sense of urgency lets one leverage the best current technologies and take the best compromises within the time and monetary budget. But this is incremental innovation. It fails at tackling novel concepts where the paths forward are not so clear. You can't incrementally tunnel through a wall. At one point maybe SABRE is ready and the next SpaceX comes along and will build a spaceship with it. The spoils of innovation seldom accrue with the inventors.
- growlist 7y ago
  > The spoils of innovation seldom accrue with the inventors. We are British, why change the habit of a lifetime ;) That said, critical aspects of the design are protected and the private investors (big scary defense contractors etc) would no doubt sic the lawyers on anyone that attempted to rip it off.
- walkingolof 7y ago
  Some ideas also have a tendency to be leapfrogged by a combination of lesser novel ideas used in a new way, the idea of a plane as a first stage was probably great until SpaceX showed up and landed a Falcon9 first stage to reuse.
arethuza 7y ago
"Virgin Galactic has been around since 2004" I'm 54 - Sabre/Skylon were in the news when I was in high school!
- twic 7y ago
  I think the name Skylon was first used for this project in 1993 [1], so unless you repeated quite a few years, i doubt that's true. RB454/HOTOL could have been in the news back then, though. I remember having some sort of brochure for HOTOL back in the mid-80s. [1] https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1993SpFl...35..162V/abstract https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1993SpFl...35..162V/abstra...
  - arethuza 7y ago
    Yeah - you are probably correct - basically the same thing though albeit done by a different company.
digsy 7y ago
>I suspect the biggest difference between these companies is not talent or vision, but sens of urgency Well that and the SABRE engine is a completely new design and SpaceXs engines are based on engines created in the 1960s and refined since then. Its comparing apples and oranges.
- walkingolof 7y ago
  I think that “spaceplanes” where a great idea until SpaceX landed a Falcon9 first stage, after that point they are mostly a complication.

heisenbit 7y ago

Sense of urgency lets one leverage the best current technologies and take the best compromises within the time and monetary budget. But this is incremental innovation. It fails at tackling novel concepts where the paths forward are not so clear. You can't incrementally tunnel through a wall. At one point maybe SABRE is ready and the next SpaceX comes along and will build a spaceship with it. The spoils of innovation seldom accrue with the inventors.

growlist 7y ago
> The spoils of innovation seldom accrue with the inventors. We are British, why change the habit of a lifetime ;) That said, critical aspects of the design are protected and the private investors (big scary defense contractors etc) would no doubt sic the lawyers on anyone that attempted to rip it off.
walkingolof 7y ago
Some ideas also have a tendency to be leapfrogged by a combination of lesser novel ideas used in a new way, the idea of a plane as a first stage was probably great until SpaceX showed up and landed a Falcon9 first stage to reuse.

arethuza 7y ago

"Virgin Galactic has been around since 2004" I'm 54 - Sabre/Skylon were in the news when I was in high school!

twic 7y ago
I think the name Skylon was first used for this project in 1993 [1], so unless you repeated quite a few years, i doubt that's true. RB454/HOTOL could have been in the news back then, though. I remember having some sort of brochure for HOTOL back in the mid-80s. [1] https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1993SpFl...35..162V/abstract https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1993SpFl...35..162V/abstra...
- arethuza 7y ago
  Yeah - you are probably correct - basically the same thing though albeit done by a different company.

digsy 7y ago

>I suspect the biggest difference between these companies is not talent or vision, but sens of urgency Well that and the SABRE engine is a completely new design and SpaceXs engines are based on engines created in the 1960s and refined since then. Its comparing apples and oranges.

walkingolof 7y ago
I think that “spaceplanes” where a great idea until SpaceX landed a Falcon9 first stage, after that point they are mostly a complication.