Nice! I wonder how the engineering involved here compares to the engineering behind manufacturing TSMC chips (including ASML machines, Zeiss optics etc.). Which is harder?
As it seems building rockets has historically been a capital intensive business with low profits and limited demand, so there just wasn't much competition in the space industry.
I would say that they're orthogonal except for the requirement for exacting results and standards. Doing anything once is hard. Doing anything repeatably is hard^2.
As it seems building rockets has historically been a capital intensive business with low profits and limited demand, so there just wasn't much competition in the space industry.
Only a few companies in the world can manage the top-tier fab processes for modern chips.
Only one company in the world has successfully caught a rocket. *Edit: 2!
It's hard to directly compare, safe to say they are 2 of the pinnacle examples of modern human engineering.
China did that too.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/07/10/china/china-reusable-rock...