[emusan]

They have copied the external look of the rockets (which is, for obvious reasons, not protected by ITAR), but to my knowledge no one, China or otherwise, has managed to match the internal engineering prowess nearly a decade later.

To say that China is "very effective at copying all the stuff SpaceX is doing" is quite the stretch.

[adastra22]

Blue Origin has finally turned it around and is getting close to matching SpaceX.

[ben_w]

I sure hope so, but also caution (admittedly as an outsider, your posts suggest greater familiarity than I have) that there's not enough evidence yet to be confident of that — finally getting to launch is really impressive, but their first orbital capable rocket is still a sample size of 1.

(Counter point is that New Glenn's one orbital launch is more impressive than all of the Starship launches combined, as SpaceX is willing to burn hardware during tests and they have many more Starship tests to go).

[adastra22]

I know people at SpaceX, but I don't know anyone at Blue Origin. We're all very curious to know what has changed, as they very clearly have made changes. There was a large shakeup in company management there in late 2023, and the turnaround on timeline was stunning. They are certainly moving very, very fast now.