(Yes, SpaceX's Falcon reached that milestone back in 2010.)
Notably, from a US policy standpoint, if they successfully become 'lift capability #2' then it's going to be difficult to ULA to continue on.
[1] Although if Starship's lift capacity keeps getting knocked back that might change.
[1] https://spacenews.com/evolution-of-a-plan-ula-execs-spell-ou...
Starship is vaporware, so there's nothing to compete with.
There's nothing even remotely reassembling what was advertised to the public (and sold to the government) as Starship.
It's Duke Nukem Forever.
If it can get its mass into orbit, it delivers what it sold. I'd currently put my money on a successful orbital launch of Starship before New Glenn re-flies a booster for a paying customer.
Getting Starship to the orbit means that they have something called Starship in the orbit. It doesn't mean product that they sold isn't vaporware - what was sold with a name of Starship included much more things than getting stage 2 into orbit.
...what was it? Are you talking about HLS? Propellant transfer? (The latter is absolutely "getting its mass into orbit.")
Which of those has been either officially cancelled or had its delays materially impact the customer's timeline?
Vaporware is "late, never actually manufactured, or officially canceled" [1].
Starship is late, so you're pedantically correct. But so is New Glenn, and it started being developed when Falcon 9 made its first trip to the ISS. (2012.)
"a computer-related product that has been widely advertised but has not and may never become available"
It's not available and it's going to be the same as all products coming from their CEO - it maybe one day available, but only thing it'll share with original announced product is a name. Nowhere close on the cost/features/scale/etc.
Only things that were shown so far are prototypes that are many iterations away from being anywhere close to a product.
New Glenn is actual product that's just going through final validation steps.
Did you miss Falcon 9 and Heavy? (New Glenn competes with them, not Starship. Falcon Heavy can launch more mass than New Glenn, currently, for cheaper.)
> New Glenn is actual product that's just going through final validation steps
This is literally the first time they've successfully recovered New Glenn. Recovered. No reuse. It's the second time they've every flown the damn thing. It's impressive. But it's not "just going through final validation."
I have a background in aerospace engineering, specifically astronautics. It's wild to see armchair engineers shoot shit at major accomplishments like this.
Blue Origin may fail (I couldn't care less about them or SpaceX), but yes, they're in final validation steps, as that's just how they develop things.
Starship is at the stage of putting random ideas on the rocket and seeing if it explodes.
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/... ("China's 1st reusable rocket test fires engines ahead of debut flight")
...did you try to look it up?
SpaceX makes 50%+ margins on its launches, which are booked out years in advance, for a reason.
For all the engineers that say management doesn't matter, I give you David Limp.
Management doesn't matter until it does.
(1) His management in the Consumer Devices group did not lead to success, I feel we (and especially the consumer robotics group) basically floundered for 7 years :(
(2) He only left CoRo to join Blue Origin like 2 years ago. 2 years is a decent length of time, but far too short for us to credit this success to him -- there have been many other forces building Blue Origin to what it is today. Maybe he gets 30% credit?
p.s. no offense to Mr. Limp, I must emphasize that he was a kind, polite, caring person, and certainly had the capacity for great decisions. It is unfortunate that Consumer Devices and CoRo hasn't had great success, and success may yet be just around the corner.
There's a LOT of important people who worked on space programs who were not also literal Nazis.... Why are you hoping for those two, specifically?
We should be impressed they did it before their patent expired.
sbuttgereit•1h ago
I still can't stand the public relation heavy official stream... but even with all that static the rocket itself cut through.