At this point, unless a nation-state gets serious (and I have to believe at least China and Russia are), SpaceX is going to win. Their lead is just too great for anyone else to surmount.

This is bad, because a sole supplier of viable orbital rocketry is almost as bad as only nation-states having the capability.

Hopefully, someone steps up to the plate. My guess is that Russia and/or China both have "black" programs to copy and replicate SpaceX's technology...

Russia's high-tech industry is dead in the water for the foreseeable future. They won't recover for decades from the tech embargoes that started in 2014 and are very extensive now.

> Russia's high-tech industry is dead in the water

Completely agree.

> They won't recover for decades from the tech embargoes that started in 2014 and are very extensive now.

I hope they'll change approaches rather soon, 180 degrees, and will start digging out. It will still take time.

I don't see them making any kind of comeback any time soon, since they can't get any high-tech equipment from abroad. Which is pretty much impossible with current leadership and current political system.

Right, but they are in the stage of rapid changes, so current leadership may not stay for too long.

I would prefer they undergo a cultural 180 before they start catching up to the west or China on dual-use technology.

More than just sanctions, Russia is the sort of a country where if you start a company and its too successful someone with connections might show up one day with documents "proving" you signed it over to them for a fraction of its worth.

Russia has straight up butchered their rocket industry. They are effectively cancelling everything new and just copying things designed in the Soviet Union with ever-decreasing budgets.

Putin never saw the space industry as anything but a profit center he can squeeze to fund other stuff, once SpaceX made it hard to compete they just gave up.

> "This is bad, because a sole supplier of viable orbital rocketry is almost as bad as only nation-states having the capability."

Well, it's still way better than none having the capability IMHO, so kudos for SpaceX to make it possible! One of those cases where being technologically brilliant gives you a big competitive advantage IMHO.

It could be bad, but it’s better to have this situation than none at all.

I think you should keep an eye out for Relativity Space, their rocket is soon to launch, and the whole thing is, and I am not exaggerating, fully 3d printed. It's a wonderful design and I hope it works, because it automates a great deal of the process.

Veritasium did a video on their rocket: https://youtu.be/kz165f1g8-E

It's more like 4 years for ONE RS-25 ...

https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceLaunchSystem/comments/pbk4am/t...

The old joke about the SLS being the Senate Launch System seems to be more accurate as time goes on.

The irony of this is that the least desirable outcome for SLS is to actually produce a launch.

That may end shortly. The Senator from Alabama pushing the SLS, Richard C. Shelby, is not running for re-election and will be gone soon.

The coalition supporting SLS in Congress is much broader than just Senator Shelby, though he's definitely one of the biggest proponents - an old school Senator purely motivated bringing home the money to his state. There are plenty of SLS advocates in both the Senate and House - SLS is not going anywhere just yet.

Well, we'll find out on November 14th if the SLS is going anywhere. That's the next scheduled try at a launch.

>> 4 RS-25s per year

> more like 4 years for ONE

That is disingenuous. The message you pointed to says "4-4.5 years from when we order material" which is comparing the manufacturing of an assembled item with the full length of the supply chain.

Another interesting thing about Raptor2 is it's considerably smaller and about half as heavy as the R2-25

Which is actually even more impressive as the raptor also produces a greater amount of thrust.

So not only are you getting ~90x as many engines/year you are also getting a similar amount of thrust but at half the weight, likely meaning considerably mission mass / vehicle when configured for like for like thrust.

i originally edited out the "greater thrust" part of my comment because the articles says they're about the same. Maybe the article mixed things up and is applying the vacuum thrust of rs-25 to the sea level thrust of raptor?

rs-25 vacuum thrust = 512,000 lbs, sea level = 418,00 lbs

raptor2 thrust = 510,000 lbs

It's not clear if that's sea level or vacuum for raptor2 but i would assume sea level since it came from a test stand and raptor2 hasn't flown in a vacuum yet

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Raptor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-25

Yeah vacuum raptor will have higher thrust (naturally), so it is substantially more powerful.

However that isn't the most important factor, it's that the thrust/weight ratio is so much better.

It is the first "production" full flow staged combustion engine for a rocket.

Here is a really good overview of what sets it apart: https://everydayastronaut.com/raptor-engine/

Let's not even talk about the BE-4.

Things tend to go a lot faster if you squeeze the absolute fuck out of your employees, and have them burn out within a year or two :)