How excited should I be about Skylon?

[Nibb31]

Right, but if SpaceX succeeds, it may be quite soon. And given the time lag to develop rockets, starting developing a fully expendable rocket, even now much less after they demonstrate recovery & reuse, is betting that they will fail.

Not necessarily. What works for one company in its environment might not work for others. With Ariane 6, ESA is trying to cut costs through lower production costs instead of reusability, because they have different requirements.

Reusablility is not a Holy Grail. There are several ways to skin a cat.

And even if reusability is achieved, we are only looking at a decrease of 10 or 20% in launch costs. It is a great incremental improvement, but it's not a revolution.

[Crook]

So essentially, the technological side of things looks reasonably promising, and it's possible we'll see things like the precooler tech in other applications, but the project as a whole is unlikely to succeed economically? Thanks for the help, guys!