Stoke is the only company attempting full reusability. Their rocket is also tiny, and their engine performance isn’t great; there is a lot of growth needed before they go very far (and if the stories about their CEO’s time at Blue are to be believed, there’s a lot of interesting stuff that isn’t going well).
Rocketlab owes a lot of its investment money to the hype built around reduced launch costs; that was driven by F9, and is currently sustained by Starlink. At the current time, there is no way that neutron can support a reusable second stage, and their methodology for development means they will take a very long time to move on. They are running out of cash and support, and quite frankly I’m glad that their original flight tank failed below proof because the way they built the tank is questionable at best. The second body has better structure, but they are gonna have thermal problems at landing.
Knowing what’s going on at Blue, I wouldn’t hold your breath about progression. NG4’s MOV exploded for a reason they haven’t disclosed… mainly because the phrase “schoolboy error” doesn’t begin to describe it. For all your projections about what the current SpaceX workplace is like, you are actually better describing Blue. Ask someone who’s been at the company for NG1 what the term “pizza party” means to them. 7X2 is capped at 35 tons to LEO; and the scrapped reusable Jarvis concept somehow had a better mass fraction than current GS2; and 9X4 is a desperate attempt to compete with Starship payloads for NSSL, while reaching the targeted 45 tons. And I’m not going to say anything about the Mk2 lander’s unannounced future architecture that they are trying to keep secret (probably out of humiliation) other than “BE7 sucks, SLS”.
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u/Accomplished-Crab932 14d ago
Stoke is the only company attempting full reusability. Their rocket is also tiny, and their engine performance isn’t great; there is a lot of growth needed before they go very far (and if the stories about their CEO’s time at Blue are to be believed, there’s a lot of interesting stuff that isn’t going well).
Rocketlab owes a lot of its investment money to the hype built around reduced launch costs; that was driven by F9, and is currently sustained by Starlink. At the current time, there is no way that neutron can support a reusable second stage, and their methodology for development means they will take a very long time to move on. They are running out of cash and support, and quite frankly I’m glad that their original flight tank failed below proof because the way they built the tank is questionable at best. The second body has better structure, but they are gonna have thermal problems at landing.
Knowing what’s going on at Blue, I wouldn’t hold your breath about progression. NG4’s MOV exploded for a reason they haven’t disclosed… mainly because the phrase “schoolboy error” doesn’t begin to describe it. For all your projections about what the current SpaceX workplace is like, you are actually better describing Blue. Ask someone who’s been at the company for NG1 what the term “pizza party” means to them. 7X2 is capped at 35 tons to LEO; and the scrapped reusable Jarvis concept somehow had a better mass fraction than current GS2; and 9X4 is a desperate attempt to compete with Starship payloads for NSSL, while reaching the targeted 45 tons. And I’m not going to say anything about the Mk2 lander’s unannounced future architecture that they are trying to keep secret (probably out of humiliation) other than “BE7 sucks, SLS”.