>> and reliable vertical landings
reply> We know how to do reliable vertical landing since the DCXA in 1991. Meaning more than 25y ago
One could argue the applicability of "reliable" given the project's track record, but it's not really relevant in any case since that program only got up a few kilometers and nowhere near orbital velocity.
Falcon 9 is as reliable and safe as an airliner flight - what more do you want?
replyStill, you ideally just want to launch people and some complex machinery from Earth & produce about everything for in space use from local resources. That makes it possible to heavily optimize Earth to LEO craft for safety and reliability, alleviating most of these concerns.
replyIf I had a few hundred billion lying around, I'd be spending a couple of billion a year on grants for new physics research.
replyHire all those smart people who waste their lives being quants and steer them in the direction of something useful.
This is fair but I'm not sure the low hanging fruit is going to be developing technology that can reach earth escape velocity without being extremely sensitive to how well built and prepared the system applying the enormous amount force required is. Even the hypothetical stuff like Spin Launch and space elevators is going to have catastrophic failure modes....
reply> If I had a few hundred billion lying around, I'd be spending a couple of billion a year on grants for new physics research.
replyUnfortunately, this is not the way the world is going right now.
Physics research, and generally speaking fundamental research, is publicly funded.
Meaning, most of the time, under funded.