Comment by mft_
19 days ago
I suspect the previous poster's metric of innovation was more along the lines of:
* developing the first meaningful fully-reusable first stage rocket, and continuing to develop it to the extent that no other launch systems are even in the same ballpark as regards cost, cadence, or mass to orbit
* developing, and continuing to develop, the only full-flow staged combustion rocket engine
* developing, and continuing to develop, a novel, completely-reusable, next-generation very-heavy-lift platform, before any of the competition have even caught with their previous generation
* (to your snarky point about explosions) demonstrating that moving fast, evolving designs quickly, and not being afraid to (be seen to) fail (in the short term, in the court of public opinion, etc.) in the pursuit of success is much better than the traditional conservative approach (e.g. NASA, Blue Origin, etc.)
I'm well aware that giving credit to anything related to Musk is increasingly difficult for some people at the moment, but let's give credit where it's due to SpaceX and its engineers.
The snarky point of explosions wasn't mine, the poster I replied to brought it up.
The rest of your points is really one item, launch vehicles. It's where the USA clearly has the lead (above everyone else, not just ESA in particular). The question was whether the EU can successfully manage complex projects and it clearly can, suggesting otherwise is delirious.
I'm not following you.
The previous poster was basically supportive of SpaceX, talked about innovation, and didn't mention explosions at all. You wrote "If your metric of innovation is the amount of rockets exploded at debuts you shouldn't bring up SpaceX really." I interpreted this as a snarky reference to the fact the lots of SpaceX rockets have blown up - mostly due to their different approach to development.
The comment implying that SpaceX isn't innovative is what I was replying to - that looking at the work that SpaceX does (and not the whole pantheon of other space-related work it's not involved in) it's demonstrably innovative in a way that ESA just isn't (e.g. with Ariane).
The poster I replied to brought up Ariane 5 crash as the example of ESA dysfunction while being very positive about SpaceX. SpaceX had lost plenty launch vehicles both in testing and with live payloads, just ask Zuckerberg. I pointed out the contradiction there.
> developing the first meaningful fully-reusable first stage rocket, and continuing to develop it to the extent that no other launch systems are even in the same ballpark as regards cost, cadence, or mass to orbit.
The space shuttle solid boosters were reusable, the only part of the space shuttle program that wasn't, was the big orange tank.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Solid_Rocket_B...
Eh, I knew someone was going to nit-pick this point, which was why I wrote "first meaningful fully-reusable first stage rocket" but obviously this wasn't enough. :)
I too, was certain there would be a "he said meaningful" follow up. ;)