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Charming_Ad_4 t1_jdonllf wrote

Reply to comment by Anthony_Pelchat in Rocket Lab targets $50 million launch price for Neutron rocket to challenge SpaceX’s Falcon 9 by cnbc_official

Rocket Lab doesn't know yet how to land and reuse rockets. It took SpaceX almost 10 landing attempts, and when they did land it another 2 years to reflight that booster. And many years after that to increase cadence. Rocket lab will have to get the same learning period and they move slower than SpaceX. And Starship will fly at minimum 2 years before Neutron 1st launch attempt. Where exactly do you see them have time to catch up?

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Anthony_Pelchat t1_jdpbt4u wrote

Also don't forget that SpaceX has very little reason to lower Starship's pricing at first. Sell more expensive flights to first for super heavy launch needs (Falcon Heavy and SLS replacement options). Once they are ready to start replacing the Falcon 9, then expect prices to come down.

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Anthony_Pelchat t1_jdpbg48 wrote

RL has something SpaceX didn't. They can see in hindsight all of the failures SpaceX made and learn from them. SpaceX only had the Shuttle's failures to really learn from. SpaceX was also trying to improve as a launch provider in general during that time. RL has already had a decent bit of experience.

With Starship, SpaceX actually has reasons to take it slow before signing up customers on it. Not positive they will of course. But they have a huge amount of flights for Starlink first. They also really need to get reusability nailed down, so waiting on customers allows them to take more risks.

When it all comes down it, Rocket Lab may move faster than expected and Starship may take longer before signing up customers even if it's flying a bunch first.

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Charming_Ad_4 t1_jdussoh wrote

Does Rocket Lab have access to internal SpaceX documentations of the software and rocket parts/materials that make F9 land and reused? No? Then watching them on YouTube doesn't really matter. They will have to learn to do it by themselves.

SpaceX has no reason to go slow with Starship. They can launch many Starlink flights before a customer if they want, but they need the experience sooner rather than later. Customers also don't care much about reuse at first, only for their payload to go to orbit, as they didn't care with F9 landing attempts.

Or Rocket Lab may move slower than expected, since even from first successful landing to reuse it took SpaceX 2 years time... And Starship can go a lot faster since its design has lessons learned from F9 landings and reuse.

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Anthony_Pelchat t1_jdvgycn wrote

>They will have to learn to do it by themselves.

True, and I didn't otherwise. But SpaceX was extremely opened about many of the issues that Falcon 9 had.

>SpaceX has no reason to go slow with Starship.

Again, SpaceX has massive reasons to delay customers. They need the first several launches themselves with Starlink. That matters more to them than getting customers on Starship. And they need to focus on reusability first, which may mean many changes. Those changes have a chance to cause a flight failure. SpaceX would absolutely want to avoid damaging a customer payload. Not putting on customer payloads allows them to make more risky changes.

>Customers also don't care much about reuse at first, only for their payload to go to orbit, as they didn't care with F9 landing attempts.

They care about reliability. Period. Starship has none at the moment. That won't be the case for long, but a single failure would push customers back for a long time.

Plus why would any customers choose Starship over F9 right now? If Starship is more expensive per flight, they are choose F9. Starship won't be cheaper until it starts rapid reusable flights. The only other reason why someone would choose Starship is payload capacity. And if they are building something that big, they wouldn't have gone with RL anyways.

>Or Rocket Lab may move slower than expected, since even from first successful landing to reuse it took SpaceX 2 years time... And Starship can go a lot faster since its design has lessons learned from F9 landings and reuse.

RL could go slower and SS faster. However, that is unlikely. It took F9 two years as SpaceX was still learning to fly altogether. RL isn't going through the same issue. And again, RL has the ability to see the failures that F9 ran into to avoid the same. SS is trying to achieve something never before done. They will hit issues and delays. That's perfectly fine. SpaceX understands and accepts that.

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Anthony_Pelchat t1_jdvhkym wrote

One final thing, SpaceX has no reason to rush faster on Starship as there is no competition. Rocket Lab is not competing with Starship and never will. They will take the scraps that fall off the table once Starship hits it's goals. Starlink alone is liking to make more profit this year than Rocket Lab. And it isn't even at 1/10th it's final goal.

Try to keep that in perspective. SpaceX won't be making a push for customers for Starship as it simply has no reason to.

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