This is a good history from @SciGuySpace, but there's a word missing in it: Starship. Tory's problem is that he thinks that he's competing against Falcon, but Elon is going to obsolesce Falcon ASAP. How will Vulcan or New Glenn compete against a fully reusable heavy lifter? The thing about Elon is that he never faces the Innovator's Dilemma. His first instinct is to obsolesce his own product line before a competitor can. Anyone who wants to seriously compete against SpaceX has to compete against his future plans, not his current business.

This makes no sense, on multiple levels.

https://x.com/SpcPlcyOnline/status/1735031168867717338?s=20

First, there is no relationship between the learning period and NASA "certification." If private astronauts imagine there is, they will be disabused of the notion as part of informed consent.

@MarcAndreChart1 @kfacciol @Simberg_Space Oh, I agree. From a safety standpoint, in both design and management, Shuttle was seriously flawed from the beginning. I discuss that in the book. But we can't just say "safety first," or have a one-size-fits-all approach for probability of loss of crew. It depends. @MarcAndreChart1 @kfacciol @Simberg_Space Let's talk a minute about Apollo 13, and "Failure is not an option" (which Kranz never actually said). Once the LOX tank did a rapid unscheduled disassembly, mission control had no choice, except to do everything possible to get the crew back alive.

Some thoughts on the USAF launch competition.

First, since people are saying that Blue Origin should demonstrate the ability to develop an orbital rocket, it's fair to say that so should ULA. They're flying vehicles developed by other companies over two decades ago. Arguably, only two teams with recent orbital launcher development experience are SpaceX and NGIS (by acquiring Orbital ATK). Vulcan and New Glenn both currently remain paper rockets. At this point in time, SpaceX has the most experienced launch-development team on the planet.