However, the Soviets shall get the last laugh, because 50 years later the American SpaceX company would copy the same concept for their super heavy lift vehicle design (Super Heavy used for Starship), which in many ways conceded that the Soviet design was a more viable one
This happens often in American industry, especially aeronautics . More promising designs are considered “ahead of their time” and often lose out to more conventional designs, only for the more promising designs to return later and be adopted. With regards to fighter jets, one just needs to look at the YF-23 vs the YF-22. The battle for the fifth gen fighter jet program. The YF-23 was faster, stealthier, more maneuverable in most common scenarios. The YF-22 ended up winning, and becoming the F-22, because it had thrust vectoring and was more appealing to conventional tactics. But now that the US wants to build a sixth gen fighter plane, and other countries want to build 5.5 gen planes, all the proposed designs look extremely similar to the YF-23. Almost as if it was the better overall design. Similar is happening with the Airforce’s proposed replacement for the F-35, the replacement looks like a clone of an F-16XL. An experimental design that also lost out on a contract to the F15E if I remember correctly, but is now coming back.
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This happens often in American industry, especially aeronautics . More promising designs are considered “ahead of their time” and often lose out to more conventional designs, only for the more promising designs to return later and be adopted. With regards to fighter jets, one just needs to look at the YF-23 vs the YF-22. The battle for the fifth gen fighter jet program. The YF-23 was faster, stealthier, more maneuverable in most common scenarios. The YF-22 ended up winning, and becoming the F-22, because it had thrust vectoring and was more appealing to conventional tactics. But now that the US wants to build a sixth gen fighter plane, and other countries want to build 5.5 gen planes, all the proposed designs look extremely similar to the YF-23. Almost as if it was the better overall design. Similar is happening with the Airforce’s proposed replacement for the F-35, the replacement looks like a clone of an F-16XL. An experimental design that also lost out on a contract to the F15E if I remember correctly, but is now coming back.