I don’t know what response you were expecting in a spaceflight community, but:

Space travel and research develops new technologies that get used on Earth. One recent/ongoing example of this is Astroforge’s forge possibly getting used in terrestrial mines. Spaceflight also offers intangible benefits through inspiration and motivation. This also isn’t a zero-sum game, because investment in NASA returns multiples in economic impact.

It’s completely barren. Who cares.

Or maybe it’s partially caused by the delays?

I wish NASA could operate with a better master plan. Not making a decision further delays the mission. I’ll just point at Artemis HLS and space suit procurement delays.

At this point without much differentiation, like ABL, it’s hard to see the point. Maybe they can pivot a bit and find some customers for their large scale printers or engines.

1. SpaceX

2. ULA

3. Rocket Lab

4. Blue Origin

5. Firefly

6. Northrop Grumman

7. Stoke

8. Relativity

9. Astra

10. USC Rocket Propulsion Lab

–

Including Astra seems like a mistake. I guess I would put NASA/SLS/Boeing on instead? Firefly and Blue seem like a tossup for #4.

For 2025, most likely to drop off the list seems like Astra, then Relativity. Maybe we’ll see Phantom, Vaya, and Spinlaunch either make the list or kick the bucket.

Two landers sharing a ride is cool. Best of luck to Firefly on their first try, and hopefully ispace nails their 2nd Hakuto-R!

Firefly seems like they’re settling in as one of the winners among the startups. They’re gearing up for a big year between this lander, a slew of Alpha launches, their first Elytra launch, and hopefully an Antares 330 launch with their MLV first stage and new Miranda engines.

Nvm I’ll go back into my hole

I didn’t hear no bell

And at least 1 Starlink launch

Good thing both build sites have the same safety policies

When will NSF get a webcam on it?

It does sound like the old film cooling, but I haven’t seen any pictures of these new tiles, which is really surprising given how many cameras are stalking everything in Boca Chica.

Blue Origin switching from a think tank with a worse DC-X to a legacy prime with a big Vulcan makes the start dates hard to compare.

There are a lot of arbitrary cherry-picked stats going around, like “first orbital semi-reusable aluminum-framed Methalox rocket built in Florida by Capricorns” or whatever they’re on about. Not counting Ring Pathfinder because it doesn’t separate is in the spirit of whatever weird “um ackchyually” firsts we’re tracking now.

I could argue that Starship is already commercial because of the HLS development milestones that have been paid out for test flights.

All the heat shield tests are really interesting. They’ve done the ablative layer and missing tile tests before, but the metallic and liquid cooled tiles are new. I know some of the tile pattern changes around the edges are for weight savings, but I’ll take it as a bad sign that they’re still testing entirely different tile types. Hopefully one of these is a winner.

Hopefully all goes well! I wonder if they’ll try for a full booster reuse this year.

What are you talking about? This is a spaceflight community talking about SpaceX, not Elon. I couldn’t care less about the projects you listed.

I think this just a quote out of context. The tweet it was responding to was about setting up liquid oxygen depots on the moon to sell to SpaceX missions to Mars.

https://twitter-thread.com/t/1875023335891026324

New Glenn was racing Falcon Heavy, so now we’re waiting for Starship to lap them

New dick measuring contest ideas:

• First to deploy an orbital payload

• First to launch a paying customer

• First to launch a lunar lander

• First to pull off orbital refueling

New Glenn might win a few of those that aren’t priorities for SpaceX, because they’re already launching hundreds of Falcons.

They’d better have a higher chance of success, because that’s how their design process is supposed to work. They already shifted the goalposts themselves by saying landing isn’t a certainty.

A successful first launch can be done. SLS and Vulcan both did it (after countless delays and scrubs).