3 ms·

The problem for China is that they already had a large state agency doing this stuff. And they did it in a Soviet inspired way. They invest lots of money but th

The problem for China is that they already had a large state agency doing this stuff. And they did it in a Soviet inspired way. They invest lots of money but their budget is tied up in many long term programs. They can't just say 'well lets start from zero and copy SpaceX'. They have space station program that needs to continue and they can't wait until they have a next generation reusable rocket. Just like NASA they also do other things, like moon landers and so on. And despite what people think, China can't infinitely invest in everything and don't. I'm sure the battles for money within China budgeting process are not that different from US congress. Looking at ESA, getting budget for a new rocket is incredibly hard and ESA member states are richer then China. Also I think its wrong to say there is no hardware secrets. Developing a very advanced rocket engine is really fucking hard, and to build one and be able to 'mass' produce it like SpaceX does is incredibly hard. Getting there took SpaceX a decade, and government run engine programs are nowhere near as fast usually. The exact details of the heat shield and reentery of something like Starship also isn't exactly easy to replicate. Doable, but would still require quite a bit of reverse engineering. SpaceX Starship production line isn't about 'one big secret' but about iteratively improving each part to make it cheaper and better over time. And you can''t replicate that without doing the same.

DanielHB 2y ago
Supporting old architecture takes A LOT of engineering effort for complex physical devices, creating new architectures from scratch with the learnings from the old architectures often costs too much (and you still need to support the old systems for a long time anyway). I worked in a project where an architecture was very flawed initially and took almost a decade to move away from it. So often management pushes for incremental updates on an outdated architecture because the risks are too high since the new architecture might have all new problems of its own.
pfdietz 2y ago
SpaceX also benefits from vertical integration. They discovered huge costs from trying to use aerospace subcontractors (and had one launch failure because of a subcontractor.) Both traditional US aerospace and European launch curry political favor by spreading work around to subcontractors. This can't help but slow things way down and make it more expensive.

DanielHB 2y ago

Supporting old architecture takes A LOT of engineering effort for complex physical devices, creating new architectures from scratch with the learnings from the old architectures often costs too much (and you still need to support the old systems for a long time anyway). I worked in a project where an architecture was very flawed initially and took almost a decade to move away from it. So often management pushes for incremental updates on an outdated architecture because the risks are too high since the new architecture might have all new problems of its own.

pfdietz 2y ago

SpaceX also benefits from vertical integration. They discovered huge costs from trying to use aerospace subcontractors (and had one launch failure because of a subcontractor.) Both traditional US aerospace and European launch curry political favor by spreading work around to subcontractors. This can't help but slow things way down and make it more expensive.