Conversation

It’s been illuminating watching SpaceX and Blue Origin do their distinct styles of rocket development over the last decade. You rarely get such a clear real-world A/B test of engineering philosophies. Who gets to which milestone first is less interesting than the tradeoffs.
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Right now it might seem like SpaceX is way ahead. But if you watch the videos, New Shepherd looks a lot more solidly engineered. The booster landings are way smoother. And looks like New Glenn (2022) will suddenly get to parity with Falcon Heavy if it works.
Anyhow rooting for both to be wildly successful. I’d like to see both Starship and 3-stage New Glenn putting stuff and humans on both moon and Mars in my lifetime, and it seems likely.
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Also I’m on a mission to break up meme monopolies. That little girl gets too much of the why-not-both business and there’s several other ‘both’ memes.
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Replying to
Can we extrapolate the Engg quality from landing alone? Shouldn’t we be comparing the entire flight characteristics?