One Step At A Time

The Rocket Man has another marathon post comparing and contrasting the development efforts behind big dumb boosters (ELVs), airplane-like reusables like Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne, and VTVL reusables like the DC-X or the RVT. ELVs, by their nature, are not amenable to incremental flight testing and development. We can all hope that the steady, incremental development of vehicles by the current crop of X-Prize competitors and the Japanese RVT program will lead to cheap access to space in the near future.