[ben_w]

Likewise, though I figured they'd solved the "engines are a bit explode-y" with the Falcon 9 and Heavy.

Turned out not, and also that handling re-entry was much much harder than the Space Shuttle (and Buran) had made it seem.

Is this category of launch vehicle just that hard, or did Musk aggravate just enough of the competent engineers and lose just enough talent to grab defeat from the jaws of victory? Timeline's about right for the latter, but I could easily believe the former.

[rsynnott]

Thing about N1 and starship is they have _loads_ of small engines; lots of complex plumbing and vibrations. Falcon 9 has a more sensible number.

On re-entry, Buran re-entered once. You can’t read much into that. The shuttle did about a hundred times, but exploded doing it once and had a number of near misses. One reason it was killed off was that making re-entry safe was considered to be impossible. I think it’d be fair to say that re-entry for large objects remains an unsolved problem.