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Absolutely. Being able to get mass to orbit at orders of magnitude less cost than competing nations (China, Russia, India, ...) is of paramount strategic import
by jupp0r 2y ago
Absolutely. Being able to get mass to orbit at orders of magnitude less cost than competing nations (China, Russia, India, ...) is of paramount strategic importance. This touches communications, intelligence, space exploration, orbital resource extraction, moon bases and all sorts of other things that have tremendous economic, military and societal impact.
- itishappy 2y agoSure, but we were on the clock against Germany. Are there similar pressures today? Put differently: what's the strategic impact of a 2 month delay?
- redox99 2y agoIt's not just a one time thing. These delays are recurring.
- seanmcdirmid 2y agoIsn't that the issue? We are not on the clock anymore, until China actually blows past us, we can just keep delaying everything.
- timschmidt 2y agoChina is second in mass to orbit after SpaceX. All others amount to a rounding error. There are currently a couple dozen Chinese startups working to build reusable orbital class rockets. Launches or test fires every week. No other country has an active program to build a reusable launch stage. It's not a hot war... yet. One might call it a cold war.