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Re:Starlink's Disruption of the Space Industry by maxglute on Thursday May 30, 2024 @05:22PM (#40528871)
They're moving away from inland hypergolics, to coastal cryogenics, especially for commercial. TLDR history is PRC space program really exploded in last 15 years. Before that, budget/development poverty tier. Most of payload considerations since are urgent military (ISR), so prudent/expedient to use existing hypergolic infra (legacy/synergy of strategic missiles) to maintain launch tempo because they don't want boondoggles when it comes to getting military space infra up reliably. Cryogenic LM6/LM7 first test only in mid 2015s. They'll switch over eventually, but right now priority is still military launch. IIRC all the current reusable efforts are cryogenic fuel.

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