And everybody stop talking as though ITS is a given. A reusable first stage has yet to fly. And even if it does, 1, 2 or 3 times stills doesn't prove the effort.
It is not that ITS has to be fake either. That could be the honestly intended end point, but what happens in between exactly? I just keep expecting something to pop out and fill in the "underpants" stage, even if it is a bit smaller than advertised.
Quote from: KelvinZero on 10/19/2016 02:40 amIt is not that ITS has to be fake either. That could be the honestly intended end point, but what happens in between exactly? I just keep expecting something to pop out and fill in the "underpants" stage, even if it is a bit smaller than advertised. The timeframe given is much too short for a useful fake. It could be a trick if the timeframe for first hardware would be 2025 or beyond. But the timeframe is real hardware before the end of this decade and we are near the end of 2016.
Maybe [a shortened first stage] is the sort of intermediate step [...] that could also serve some launch market