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The thing that is most interesting to me is that this is a major R&D program being done literally out in the open. These prototypes are being put together basic
by bane 6y ago
The thing that is most interesting to me is that this is a major R&D program being done literally out in the open. These prototypes are being put together basically in an open field or under a tent with SpaceX sharing loads of information on the technology, price targets, mission profiles and so on. And yet nobody is coming close to matching them.
Even if another company decides to try to replicate what SpaceX is doing, they're now at least a decade behind.
Nobody has the present institutional knowledge that they have.
- tuatoru 6y agoExpect Old Space (Boeing & co) to lobby for a law requiring SpaceX to share all their telemtry data in real time.
- TheBill 6y agoThey might try, but they'll still be focused on looting the .gov & first try success. SpaceX will still be 2-3 decades ahead of them.
- texasbigdata 6y agoWhat’s the Bezos one doing though? Aren’t they comparably close give or take a few years.
- Denvercoder9 6y agoThey haven't actually put anything in orbit yet. I'd say they're at least a decade behind.
- dmd 6y agoRemind me again how many times Blue Origin has put anything in orbit?
- wongarsu 6y agoI don't think anybody knows how far Blue Origin really is. They are much more secretive and seem to do a lot less testing. New Glenn is somewhat comparable to a Falcon 9 scaled up to the size of Starship and is supposed to happen in 2021, but I don't think there's any good indication how far they are along and whether they will be able to deliver. My gut says that if they don't test they can't deliver, and that Elon's rapid prototyping will keep SpaceX far in the lead for the foreseeable future. But only time will tell.
- Denvercoder9 6y agoPayload-wise New Glenn is better comparable to Falcon Heavy than to Starship. New Glenn actually sits more or less in the middle between Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy.
- fastball 6y agoIf you ignore payload capacity, I'd say New Glenn is much closer to Starship than it is to Falcon 9 in terms of technical development, mostly because of its novel engine, the BE-4. Like the Starship's Raptors, they are powered by a fuel that can be produced in-situ at the intended destination. Though in the case of the Raptors it's Methalox from Martian atmosphere (via Sabatier), whereas BE-4 engines are Hydrolox that they hope to get from ice on the moon.
- philwelch 6y agoBE-4 is methalox. BE-3 and BE-7 are hydrolox.
- fastball 6y agoThanks for the correction, you're right, I was thinking about their Blue Moon lander, which is slated to have BE-7 engines.
- sushibowl 6y agoIs the BE-4 design really that new? The choice of fuel is of course novel. But apart from that, it seems to be an oxygen-rich staged combustion design, which was invented by the soviets... somewhere in the 60's?
- jiofih 6y agoNot even close. SpaceX has been launching commercial payloads for nearly a decade now, is on track to a hundred reusable rocket flights, is on the 11th or so generation, and Starship is far beyond anything BO has in their roadmap - if they manage to launch commercially one day.
- someperson 6y agoFor what it's worth Blue Origin's New Armstrong rocket hasn't yet been revealed (John Sheppard -> John Glenn -> Neil Armstrong) but Jeff Bezos has mentioned it. It's widely assumed to be a Saturn V class Super Heavy Lift vehicle.
- jiofih 6y agoYeah I can draw a 77 thousand ton interstellar transporter on a napkin and “announce” it too.
- valuearb 6y agoBO has never launched anything into orbit. It has plans to someday build a competitor to the 13 year old Falcon 9. Oh and Bezos started BO before SpaceX, and has given it substantially more funding.
- sq_ 6y agoIt's tough to tell what they're doing, as they're way less open about things than SpaceX and some of the other new commercial launchers (e.g. Rocket Lab). Seems to me that they may be trying to pivot away from having orbital rockets being their main product with the sale of BE-4 engines to ULA for Vulcan and all of their work on lunar projects. But that could also be them trying to get more friendly with NASA or get development of the BE-4 paid for or any number of other things. They certainly are lacking in terms of actual hardware being seen.
- jaredmoon 6y agoNo, not even close.
- adventured 6y ago> Even if another company decides to try to replicate what SpaceX is doing, they're now at least a decade behind. There is one entity that can and will rapidly close that gap. In fact, they're the only one that can: China. Everyone else will continue on their slow path, more or less adopting everything SpaceX figures out a decade after the fact. The other competition operates permanently by hand-me-downs. China will invest huge sums of money and labor into doing the same thing and the difference between them and eg the Europeans, is the Chinese will and can move with ridiculous speed by comparison. The other competition won't adjust their speed, so they'll generally continue to lag SpaceX perpetually, whereas China can move at a far greater pace (aerospace, as with a few other big segments like semiconductors, is of course a core logical focus point for China, which means they will catch up no matter the cost; they'll borrow from SpaceX better than anyone else and faster than anyone else, right up to the point of copying everything). And to be clear, I don't fault China at all for that approach, it will work very well; they can leapfrog everyone not named SpaceX that way.
- nickik 6y agoEasy to claim. So far China human space program has been very slow. And they have not gone full power into even a Falcon 9 clone. China is in the same space as everybody else outside of the US, with a slow moving bureaucracy leading it, wanting to switch into more commercial companies. China has not yet itself produced an engine anywhere close to a Raptor and they have been trying for quite a while. China can not spend gigantic amounts of money on everything at once, and even if they do, it by far doesn't work all of the time. When you are copying SpaceX you are always cooping something that is already outdated and SpaceX will not stop innovating.
- babesh 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_in_spaceflight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_in_spaceflight In 2020, China has launched more rockets to space than any other nation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang%27e_5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang%27e_5 It has a mission to bring lunar rock back to earth for the first time since the 70s. So I would say that China has put quite a bit of energy in this area and is moving faster than other nations but not as fast as SpaceX.
- frakkingcylons 6y agoSpaceX has a huge lead, no doubt. But there's a handful of smaller companies which are very promising. Rocket Lab's Electron vehicle has had 13 successful launches (3 failures) to LEO. Firefly and Relativity (which are founded by former SpaceX/Blue Origin employees) are making a lot of progress as well.
- mabbo 6y agoWhile the Electron is cool, the comparison is pretty far off. The Electron can put 600kg into low Earth orbit. Falcon 9 can handle 15,000 kg. Starship is expected to handle 100,000 kg. The Falcon 1 is a good comparison to the Electron. If it had been fully developed it was expected to lift 600kg to leo by 2010 or 2011. 10 years ago, basically.
- frakkingcylons 6y agoI didn't compare Electron to Falcon 9 or Starship.
- temporalparts 6y agoFrom the parent post: > they're now at least a decade behind. The original claim was that competitors are a decade behind spaceX and Electron's capabilities are comparable to the technology spaceX had a decade ago. The Falcon 9 comparisons are to highlight the decade delta. edit: grammar
- Thlom 6y agoReally sad to see f.ex. Arianespace still launching with the nearly 30 year old Ariane 5. Soon EOL now, but I don't think the Ariane 6 is even close to what SpaceX is doing at the moment. And I think ESA have started muttering about both capabilities of the rocket, launch price and the slow development.