You know you're living far into the future when you hear "traditional rocket industry" said unironically.

Well, solid-fuel rockets are a pretty old tech (medieval China) and even if we restrict ourselves to liquid-fueled rockets that crossed the Kármán line, the first German A-4 did so several years before the transistor was invented :)

Oh I agree. But now the situation is quite different: the impractical became necessary, both in cheap launch capacity and leo comms infrastructure. They must make it happen.

I think it's similar to the sub-5 minute mile in the sense that once something is shown as possible, others will achieve it as well.

It is also possible to land on the Moon, we know that. But no one else tried for more than 50 years.

The barriers to becoming an agile space company are formidable. When looking at SpaceX, we forget how many space startups from that period are now defunct and forgotten. John Carmack founded one, too; it is gone.

Carmack's was very much a part-time venture. It was interesting to read their blog and watch their videos. It was clear that they were very good at certain things (code + welding) and not very good at others (electronics, fire-proofing, planning, testing, finite element analysis, any kind of simulation that Carmack didn't write).

An interesting fact is that they did very well as long as they could conduct cheap tests very often. As their rockets got bigger, they could no longer do that and then they floundered.

> But no one else tried for more than 50 years.

Was there a good enough reason to go again?

In contrast, there is a good reason to have re-usable rockets and quick deployment now.

This is a good argument.

I think it's because the moon has no immediate benefit besides

Star-Link and reusable rockets now have tremendous military uses which are being demonstrated in Ukraine.

Monetary concerns will take a back seat to that.