Re:China's new Long March-8 rocket makes first flight
by baybal2 on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @07:30AM
(#25516871)
> in the next 10 years they'll all going to struggle to develop re-usable rockets that can keep pace with SpaceX.
National space programmes don't even need to have re-usable hardware.
Building hardware to be mission specific for 2-3 launches per year may well be cheaper than to re-engineer, and then reuse.
Saturn 5 is sixties technology, parts, and materials.
The biggest thing that contenders in national space programmes lack is really a match of talent with sane leadership. This is the thing that was exposed times, and times again by successes of Indian space programme.
I don't think that Blue Origin or Rocket Lab will be able to catchup either. Let alone United Launch Alliance. I think Rocket Lab will keep a very comfortable profitable niche for a long time though.
The Falcon 9 has really cornered the market for commercial payloads and it's not profitable to compete. And the Starship will cement that place further. Maybe Amazon's Project Kuiper and Jeff Bezos' investment in Blue Origin might make Blue Origin competitive in the long run, but given their current track record I doubt it will happen soon enough to make a difference.
I'm sure that they'll be enough military payloads to keep the Ariane/ULA/CASC/ISROs occupied for decades to come. But short of unprecedented industrial espionage, in the next 10 years they'll all going to struggle to develop re-usable rockets that can keep pace with SpaceX.