>>12152999>Was Starship possible with 60's tech?No, but the bottleneck was computers only. The beauty of Starship is that it still works even if you use less efficient and less powerful engines, because it's just a TSTO. The problem is that no pilot at the time, human or machine, could successfully land a booster propulsively. This problem was solved by the 90's (DC-X).
That being said, some things were certainly possible back in the day, such as fuel rich staged combustion (and probably oxygen rich too if the Americans just bit the bullet and stopped being doomers about the metallurgy), densified methalox propellants, big dumb reusable upper stages, etc.
Starship is the optimal reusable rocket resign, but there are less optimal but more attainable options for 60's and 70's tech. The BIG takeaway of Starship's whole deal is to use stainless steel; Easy to weld, easy to prototype, get your manufacturing process down, don't give a fuck about eggheads who want you to change to aluminum, use more durable TPS and less of it, don't worry about your air frame fatiguing like aluminum alloys do, etc etc.
