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4 days agoI’ll grant that terms have different meanings in different regions. English is rife with it. But the term “South East Asia” is in reference to the part of Asia, not the direction you have to go to get there. If we went by that then all of Asia would be “West Asia” for me and most of America would be South America.
There are two American rocket projects in the works that can carry a significant payload to the moon. One is using existing parts in a new configuration. It had one successful launch and cost $4B ($2.5B in launch costs alone). One is building a largely new system and improving existing elements and is estimated to have cost less than $2B so far, although it hasn’t reached the moon yet. That said, they have done 7 tests, at least 3 with a full configuration. How is that not better than the other option?
Also, you are acting like there are no fundamental advances happening in space engineering. Sure, the physics is pretty well-known, but the engineering problem of landing and reusing stages/rockets commercially has only been done since the Falcon series, so I think it’s safe to assume the technology and associated product lines is still maturing.