A_Vandalay t1_j0n5fk1 wrote on December 17, 2022 at 10:56 PM

Reply to comment by frodosbitch in SpaceX, Blue Origin Executives Tapped as US Space Council Advisers by Soupjoe5

As of now nothing, but They are working on a number of high profile contracts for both launch and in space operations for the government and private industry. In essence they are the closest thing to a competitor that SpaceX has (in terms of future potentate) as such they get included as the honorary second place. And to be perfectly honest I’m not even sure that’s wrong. In terms of existing completion SpaceX has ULA but they have shown little willingness to innovate from a tried and true method. The Vulcan is barley competitive with falcon 9, let alone starship. Likewise rocketlab is currently developing a rocket that might be superior to falcon in some metrics but likely won’t be competitive against starship. Relativity space has the same problem but is in a worse position as they haven’t launched once. So if you were looking to make an inclusive panel of representatives from various space launch companies who would you pick

toodroot t1_j0ngdv6 wrote on December 18, 2022 at 12:19 AM

> ULA but they have shown little willingness to innovate from a tried and true method.

ACES and on-orbit refueling is an awesome concept, too bad NASA has shown very little interest in it.

A_Vandalay t1_j0nxed7 wrote on December 18, 2022 at 2:36 AM

They have long since abandoned ACES in favor of incremental upgrades to centaur such as improved performance and on orbit lifetime. These are primarily geared towards national security payloads and don’t really offer much in the way of revolutionary change.