Comment by danpalmer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by danpalmer | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

People can attempt to explain it, but it’s a bit of an apples to oranges comparison.

SpaceX have a much more agile approach, and Blue Origin are following a more traditional waterfall style approach, to put it in software engineering project terms. While it may seem obvious that one is better than the other, I think it’s hard to say conclusively.

The different approaches mean that while SpaceX might have more milestones under their belt, Blue Origin could leapfrog them on some aspects. The fact this first launch went as well as it did is an amazing feat, SpaceX have never had that much success from a first launch.

What we can say however is that the endgame of Starship will be far more capable than the endgame of New Glenn. If or when either reaches that point remains to be seen.

> SpaceX have never had that much success from a first launch.

That is incorrect. Both F9 and FH have successfully launched on the first try, with full primary mission success.

F1 (20 years ago) had 3 failed flights and succeeded on the 4th flight.

Starship hasn't had an operational flight yet.

I see your point but disagree in the conclusion. F1 and F9 are a clear lineage, same engines, scaled up somewhat. It's fairly clear that their experience with F1's failures directly contributed to F9's early successes.

FH is again part of that same lineage. So much of that was a known quantity already. I know that it took way longer to build because it turned out to be way harder than expected, but it was still so much closer than SpaceX's other vehicles.

Also, where F9 built on F1's failures, it also built on its own failures to land, and took a very iterative approach to re-use.

Starship hasn't had an operational flight, no, but neither has New Glenn, and yet NG jumped straight to a flight somewhat equivalent to Starship's flight test 4?

My gut feeling is that SpaceX are far ahead of Blue Origin, but it's hard to compare because of the radically different approaches.

If Falcon 1 is to be thrown into the ring for consideration due to engine similarity, then we'd have to figure out where Vulcan fits. It already flew the same kind of engines that powered New Glenn.

Just a thought.

Very fair point. In some ways that would make NG a more iterative approach, but Vulcan is another example of, at least mostly, a waterfall approach.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com