[cmiles8]

An unfortunate setback but rockets are hard.

The fact that the US has multiple extremely active commercial ventures plus a vibrant government programs with launches every few days just highlights har far ahead the US has become in this area of tech. Many people have never seen a rocket launch ever and yet for a big part of the US looking up in the sky and watching the amazing sight of a rocket going through staging is just a normal Tuesday evening.

That sort of expertise and base of scientists and engineers is not something other countries can just quickly replicate. For a while it looked like the US had put space on the back burner but now it’s back and bigger than ever before.

The occasional test going boom is just part of the fun in the end.

[ponector]

Achievements of SpaceX are enormous. But is US actually far ahead? Both China and EU have pretty much the same capabilities for space exploration.

[panick21_]

This is incorrect. If you look at the total size of Space sector, US dominates. Total amount of launches and sats, the US dominates. Total size of spend on civilian research, NASA dominates. Total spent by DoD, US dominates.

Amount of starups and new company formation in space, US dominates.

SpaceX alone dominates so completely that almost everything else is noise. And if you remove SpaceX, the US still ahead in most categories.

[philipwhiuk]

> Both China and EU have pretty much the same capabilities for space exploration.

China maybe soon, but the EU is not close.

Ariane 6 is in no way comparable to either SLS or Starship or New Glenn. It does 10t to low-earth orbit, 4t to lunar-transfer orbit.

[perilunar]

For comparison, the Saturn 5 was 140 tonnes to LEO and 43.5 tonnes to TLI.

[cmiles8]

China is behind and making progress, but still hasn’t hit key milestone the US hit decades ago. The EU isn’t even close.

[ponector]

You can say the same about US: still hasn't hit key milestone US hit decades ago.