>>13186593The F9 design is revolutionary instead of evolutionary. It's unlike any other rocket in existence, in that, every other rocket in existence is a glorified nuke carrier without the nuke. Nuke carriers don't need reuse options, they don't need extra margins for landing. They don't really need grid fins for steering. They don't need landing legs, and they don't need an octaweb of RP1 engines. They're fucking candles with a boom payload.
Now that F9 is so god damn ahead and Starship on the horizon, everyone is playing catch up as they watch Starlink launches happen on a weekly basis, that is increasing SpaceX's presence in LEO which will basically allow them to COMPLETELY and IN ABSOLUTE decouple from any government funding for any missions they do in the future.
Russia, China, ESA, India, Australia, JAXA, and NASA, all have internal rockets that are tied to the whims of lobbied politicians and grifting leadership and/or dictatorial powers that are dreaming too small. They also are massively constrained by the public and tax payer based funding. You simply can't scale that out when you have anywhere from 10 to 500 competing interests all trying to pocket a piece of the pie for themselves ABOVE AND BEYOND the money needed for the program.
SpaceX will be in the unique and enviable position where they have borderline 1/10th annual defense budget of the US solely sourced to them. $15-30Bn/yr for company oriented projects and missions is so much money, you can just exit the market and do whatever the fuck you want for the rest of time. Each Starlink satellite having a 4-5 year lifespan means they're playing with $70Bn-120Bn in cash amortized across the hardware cost of $200k.
So F9 clones is abject panic across the planet.
