[bryanlarsen]

> It's certainly slow.

Slow compared to what? Compared to SpaceX they're slow, but compared to everybody else?

NASA/Boeing's SLS program started in 2005 as Constellation. It's still over a year away from it's first test launch and several years away from fully operational status.

China's Long March 5 started in 2007 and it can be argued that it wasn't fully operational until this year.

ULA's Vulcan, started in 2014 is at least a year out. And it reuses the same Centaur upper stage as Atlas.

[liability]

Slow compared to Rocket Lab; 11 years to orbit, compared to Blue Origin's 20+ and counting.

Slow compared to Orbital Sciences, who took 8 years in the 1980s.

[versteegen]

Rocket Lab took about 7 years for Electron: for the first ~5 years after founding they did some sounding rockets and DARPA/ONR-funded non-orbital-rocket propulsion tech before pivoting. Can't remember or find when Peter Beck said they started on an orbital rocket, but they got NASA funding to do a study of the concept December 2010 [1]

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20110723113333/http://www.rocket...