hinkley parent
I recall hearing SpaceX cite manufacturing improvements as well. How do you feel about materials science and the ability to source parts not made of unobtanium?
Many of the hardest problems facing rocket engines are about temperature, heat and thermal density, not structural strength.
This means that 3d-printed copper (alloy) is an amazing process and material for them. You can build the kind of structurally integrated cooling channels that the people building rockets in the 60's could only dream about, and it's not a gold-plated part that required a million labor hours to build, it's something you can just print overnight.
I learned a couple of years ago that the people in the sixties did in fact 3d print, but they did it via electroplating and wax. It took weeks to print a Saturn V rocket bell because they had to build up something like 5mm of material onto the outside of the bell after carving the channels into the outer surface of the inner bell and then packing them with wax.
I don't know how representative it is, but this photo seems impressive:
https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Spac...
With the block 3 design they have hardened all of the surfaces within the bottom skirt on the rocket so the blowback during reignition can’t melt anything. And the flanges on the turbopump exhaust exist to facilitate redesign and inspection of the system. Once they know the exact shape they need they can construct a single pipe with two flanges instead of three pipes with six. Flanges make bigger failure points than a solid pipe due to the seals.