Yes, but also no.

There is technological or process advancement savings for which this argumemnt might be made.

And then there is savings from not doing things in a knowingly financially inefficient but politically expedient manner.

Towards instead of away as the earth spins? I feel like the poles would make more sense, no?

Earth spins, inertia would drive water to the equator. Disregarding the moon.

Depends, is the earth still rotating? If so, pretty much the same way as the winds. You'd have some local variations due to the weather, but more or less it would behave like the wind.

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I think it spread out until level. Remember, down is towards the centre of mass

On a smooth dry sphere it would flow toward the equator.

I think it depends on frequency of launches. If they end up being as reusable and more relaunchable than Falcon 9, they could possibly catch up.

Depends how well it performs in the long term. Barring Starship/Super Heavy's approval and development flights work out, it will take bit catchup with Falcon 9.

SpaceX maybe hurting after Rocket Lab's Neutron and hopefully Terran R work out in the end.

When deep space exploration ramps up, it’ll be the corporations that name everything.

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

|Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |ASDS|Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship (landing platform)| |DoD|US Department of Defense| |EELV|Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle| |GEO|Geostationary Earth Orbit (35786km)| |GTO|Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit| |HLS|Human Landing System (Artemis)| |LEO|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |LOX|Liquid Oxygen| |MECO|Main Engine Cut-Off| | |MainEngineCutOff podcast| |NET|No Earlier Than| |NSSL|National Security Space Launch, formerly EELV| |RLV|Reusable Launch Vehicle| |RTLS|Return to Launch Site| |SLS|Space Launch System heavy-lift| |SSTO|Single Stage to Orbit| | |Supersynchronous Transfer Orbit| |ULA|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)| |USSF|United States Space Force| |VTVL|Vertical Takeoff, Vertical Landing|

|Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |Raptor|Methane-fueled rocket engine under development by SpaceX| |Starlink|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation| |retropropulsion|Thrust in the opposite direction to current motion, reducing speed|

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They were founded in NZ and have their primary launch site there but the company relocated their headquarters to California several years ago. They've launched multiple payloads for both NASA and the US military.

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A long time ago Elon claimed that he wanted increased competition in the launch services sector. Let’s see if he still feels that way

That sounds like a really fulfilling job! What do you do as part of the team?

Thanks, that does sound like really cool research. But I’m looking to stay in industry to avoid the pressure of publishing papers in academia

The first Hayabusa spacecraft malfunctioned during the sample collection attempt. It did manage to return several tiny grains of dust from an asteroid despite the sample collection mechanism not operating. There is quite a bit of information about it at wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayabusa

Estimated $15 million for the upper stage, the most expensive part of the launch.

Play whatever semantic games you want, loads of federal money went into developing the private tech instead of going to NASA or other federal tech funding. I'm not saying it was a bad bet, I'm saying is we can't just achieve the same results but adopting similar looking policies except without the money.

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Ok, but that's theoretical math. In reality that effeciency actually needs even more money to be developed. Unless we just outsource it to the Americans.

Many? There are three Starships ready to launch as soon as they are tested (though they pribably won't be) and one tested and ready for launch next month. SpaceX can build one in about two months now. Starship will be on the moon in two or (more likely) three years. It will probably be launching starlink satellites by year end. Of all the new generation, it is the closest to operation.

The strange part of it isn't the acceleration, but the fact that it's not moving at all in regards to the rest of the galaxy.

I’m not too well-versed on the specifics of RL’s business and am rusty on US spaceflight conventions but are they a viable option for USSF or NASA since they’re based in NZ?

Falcon 9 is still very much current generation. I look forward to starship but it's still many years away from being commercially used.