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It takes a lot of mental gymnastics to call booster reusability "incremental".


Depends on how much demand for those low orbit launches there is. A non-zero portion of those launches is Starlink, so basically in-house demand. Yes, I'd call that incremental. Which doesn't mean it is not impressive, because it is.

The main point so, IMHO, is that prices for comparable launches are not so much cheaper using SpaceX. Kind of like those Ryan Air 19.99 tickets. Sure, there are some, but on average the price difference is much smaller than people think.


Calling SpaceX SpaceRyanair seems unexpectedly accurate. O'Leary and Musk have a lot in common.

NASA's shuttle would have solved reusability in the 70s/80s, but a combination of DoD interference and severe funding cuts effectively crippled the project. This was politically fatal because it killed NASA's reputation as an effective manager of innovation. Which is why every project from the 90s onwards has been supported by slightly overwrought rapturous PR - to try to restore that reputation, because funding relies on it.

SpaceX has copied this.

So yes - SpaceX is incremental. A non-incremental company would be developing blue sky alternatives to chemical engines and/or looking for new propulsion physics. I can't see that happening without a government-run academic R&D program.


SpaceX naturally sets whatever price is just enough to grab the launches from the competition. This has nothing to do with technical achievement.


Care to elaborate?




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