> It's not like competitors are about to make a reusable second stage, they are struggling to compete with Falcon 9. The really disappointing thing about the l

> It's not like competitors are about to make a reusable second stage, they are struggling to compete with Falcon 9. The really disappointing thing about the latest crop of rockets (Vulcan, Ariane 6) is that they are not competitive with Falcon 9 for LEO missions and don't out perform it for GTO launches. The upcoming batch of partially reusable rockets (New Glenn, Neutron, and Terran R) have a better shot, but word on the street is that New Glenn took the Shuttle strategy of being an expensive rocket and relying on reuse to get the per-launch cost down to a reasonable level; I'm unconvinced that that's a good strategy - it certainly didn't work well for the Shuttle. Especially since landing rocket boosters was pretty unreliable for SpaceX for quite a while. And Neutron and Terran R are far enough out that it's very possible for Starship to come on line before they're ready.