Elon Musk

[AFTT47]

TBO is a fact of life on any engine. Has Musk reduced that drastically?

SpaceX advances the design to a point and then launches with that design and sees what happens. Tweak the design based on the results and try again. Rinse and repeat. Eventually, you arrive at your goal.

Gosh, it's like no other company in the world does that.

The space shuttle main engines burned liquid hydrogen. They are highly complex and are the worst choice for a motor you want to reuse. Falcon 9 uses kerosine motors which are more suitable for that. Is the improvement that dramatic? Well, how about 20+ reuses with minimal maintenance? How about 1/25th the launch cost? I would call that a "yes".

I don't know what the point was of the comment about other companies using the same modus operandi as SpaceX. Honestly, I don't know of any. Certainly there are no other aerospace companies that operate that way. I only brought it up to help point out what should be obvious to anyone paying the least bit of attention: Starship is in development. The four flights to date have been test flights, not operational flights.