Question why is it so easy today to build reusable rockets? Is it because the onboard cpu speed of the chips can solve more granular control problems with low latency?
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If you know that something can be done, and there is a potential market for such a project, it then becomes easier to get the funding. Chicken or the egg...
One thing we also need to point out, is that SpaceX uses like 80% of their yearly launches, for their own communication / sat service. This gave a incentive for that investment.
Is the same reason why, despite SpaceX throwing those things up constantly, there really is a big lag of competitors with reusable rockets. Its not that they where / not able to quickly get the same tech going. They simply have less market, vs what SpaceX does non-stop. So the investments are less, what in time means less fast development.
SpaceX is a bit of a strange company, partially because they used a lot of the public funds to just throw shit at the wall, and see what sticks. This resulted in them caring less if a few rockets blew up, as long as they got the data for the next one with less flaws. It becomes harder when there is more oversight of that money, or risk averse investors. Then you really want to be sure that thing goes up and come back down into one piece from the first go.
A lot of projects funding are heavily based upon the first or second try of something, and then (sometimes unwisely) funding is pulled if it was not a perfect success story.
This is where I think the business acumen came into play. Because the govt is self-insured, it allowed SpaceX to pass the high risk off to the taxpayer. Once the tech matured, the risk was low enough to be palatable for private industry use.
And FWIW, I don’t mean that as disparaging to SpaceX, just an acknowledgment of the risk dynamics.
It cost them more than Falcon 9 development.
Same with Starlink.
This isn't Concorde
SpaceX itself took the risk on reusability after expendable launch was proven.
Your comment seemed to me like the Feds bore most/all of the risk for this development.
I’m not making an argument about reusability. I’m talking about the business risk. Note my original statement is about business strategy.
The Feds do bear most of the launch risk. That’s exactly what “self-insured” means. If you have enough wealth, many states allow you to self-insure your car; that means if something happens the resulting financial responsibility is yours. In the case of spaceflight, when a govt loses its payload, the taxpayer just eats that cost; no insurance company reimburses them. Many in the govt aren’t thrilled with that risk dynamic because it subsidizes the risk but privatizes the profit. But when the risk of a new industry is too high for private industry to shoulder, the government is about the only game in town with that level of risk tolerance.