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by yellowcherry 2898 days ago
I have no idea what this headline is supposed to mean.

"Vows to resist"

Resist what, exactly?

2 comments

The headline is horrible.

"Steamroller surges"? Really? Has the author seen a surging steamroller? That's not what steamrollers do. It's hard to stop a steamroller, yes, but its moves aren't sudden. It doesn't suddenly accelerate. You can see the steamroller a mile coming. It starts slowly and goes slowly.

And as you noted, you don't usually resist steamrollers. That's a silly thing to do.

Reminds me of the singing octopus from Orwell's examples of how not to write:[1]

> The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image. When these images clash — as in The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the melting pot — it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking.

[1]http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit...

SpaceX and other low cost space companies. If I read the article correctly, they plan on doing this by not innovating.
Isn't the article mentioning that they are working on 2 new rockets and that the plan is to not compete in SpaceX niche?

I assume that we do not know that much about the innovation due to much smaller PR budgets.

AFAIK they don't have any capabilities SpaceX won't have, so SpaceX's "niche" is to just charge less for the same service.
> they don't have any capabilities SpaceX won't have

Correct. Falcon 9 is cheaper than Ariane 6 and the Falcon Heavy can launch more mass than Arian 5 or 6 for less. Given the piggyback market, where unused launch mass can be sold to third parties, the only reason to pay up for this platform is for political or scheduling reasons.

What niche? They're all getting things into space.

I assume the innovation is regulatory...