>>14280787RL needs to step up their game. They don't have the time they think they have to make Neutron happen. What they should do to be effective and not get obliterated by the evolution of SpaceX with Starship & Super Heavy is extend Neutron's size by probably 15%, to extend the stored 2nd stage's tank by 5-10% and add in the margin FOR deploying the payload to target orbit and use the remainder of the fuel to slow down and dock back with the first stage. This then siphons any fuel in the 2nd stage left, back into the first stage tanks, and then does deceleration, reentry, and landing burns, to land Neutron back at the launch pad or a landing pad somewhere else.
When Starship is flying routinely for like 50% the launch cost of Neutron and is available at a cadence higher than Neutron to any specific orbit up to MEO without needing refueling, they're going to have a hard time justifying their costs to their customers when they keep throwing away their 2nd stage, expanded tank, engine, and all avionics into the trash via each launch. The only way they can survive in this new market, is if they copy the idea of full reusability of Starship at a smaller scale with 75-80% the size of a Falcon 9 for the small sat and cubesat markets. They HAVE to differentiate themselves in some way or they'll die and I don't really understand why Beck thinks that in a Starship era, copying 75% of a Falcon 9 design is going to be sustainable for the business. Even Relativity is going all in on making Terran 1 merely a test article so that they can accelerate into Terran R, which would sit between Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy but copy 100% of the Starship model of total reusability.
My bet on the next 10 years is that Relativity survives, gets big, buys Rocket Labs.
