Obviously Elon hasn't innovated anything because he does no work. But has SpaceX actually innovated anything? I was kinda under the assumption that they were reinventing the wheel and hadn't done anything the USSR/Nasa hadn't already done.

[–] xiaohongshu@hexbear.net 19 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Reusable rockets have made the cost of launching rockets very cheap, to the point where it’s feasible to launch new satellites every week if not every other day.

They’ve also gotten the Raptor engines to (mostly) work, which is a full flow staged combustion engine that is more efficient than their Soviet counterparts built… 40 years ago.

Obviously none of the concepts is new, but they’re ahead of everyone else at this time.

[–] Runcible@hexbear.net 7 points 6 days ago

Obviously none of the concepts is new, but they’re ahead of everyone else at this time.

Incremental progress while an awful political message is pretty significant in technical fields