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Many countries are capable of space flight & deploying satellites.

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.

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> Only one company in the world has successfully caught a rocket.

China did that too.

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/07/10/china/china-reusable-rock...

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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.
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Chips are harder.
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