SpaceX catches the Starship to end Flight 15

Nice! I wonder how the engineering involved here compares to the engineering behind manufacturing TSMC chips (including ASML machines, Zeiss optics etc.). Which is harder?

As it seems building rockets has historically been a capital intensive business with low profits and limited demand, so there just wasn't much competition in the space industry.

Reusable stages is very neat, but seems a little crazy to pay the tyranny of the rocket equation twice. I heard one person say that carrying fuel to land over the whole flight means it takes 23x more launches to get an equivalent payload to orbit.

Using modern technology, couldn't disposable first stages be produced much more cheaply than during the space race?

How much of modern manufacturing disposable booster's cost would be fuel vs metal?

Do we just look past the failed primary booster objective? (I didn't write the brief)

Edit: Yes, ignore that bit.

From Wernher von Braun to Elon Musk... It seems we're living in a Mel Brooks movie (with the funny parts removed).

bet they used lidar

(let's see who gets the joke)

seriously though, do we know the names of the engineers who made this possible or is it a secret?

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