It is hard to convey how "sustainable" this feels to me. For the first time, humans have gone into orbit in a spacecraft that was designed from the ground up to be a commercial venture.
All of the NASA missions prior to this have an ambience of "uneconomical but useful". Even the shuttle, which was supposed to be this cost effective space truck, turned out to be not even close.
And the last thing I'm feeling is the amazement at how much technology has evolved to get us to this point. I imagined as a child that the Apollo program would lead to a factory of rockets that launched people to orbit, to the Moon, and even to Mars on demand. And seeing what SpaceX has done to get to this point, it is clear to me that was never even close to possible. The Russian program is great in that way. It shows what that path might have looked like. And yes we could have refined the making of F1 engines, the construction of boosters, and just pushed that, but that leads to a steady state that is below what you need to run a program like this with a net positive economic outcome.
All of the NASA missions prior to this have an ambience of "uneconomical but useful". Even the shuttle, which was supposed to be this cost effective space truck, turned out to be not even close.
And the last thing I'm feeling is the amazement at how much technology has evolved to get us to this point. I imagined as a child that the Apollo program would lead to a factory of rockets that launched people to orbit, to the Moon, and even to Mars on demand. And seeing what SpaceX has done to get to this point, it is clear to me that was never even close to possible. The Russian program is great in that way. It shows what that path might have looked like. And yes we could have refined the making of F1 engines, the construction of boosters, and just pushed that, but that leads to a steady state that is below what you need to run a program like this with a net positive economic outcome.
So very impressed guys, congratulations!