Sense of urgency lets one leverage the best current technologies and take the best compromises within the time and monetary budget. But this is incremental innovation. It fails at tackling novel concepts where the paths forward are not so clear. You can't incrementally tunnel through a wall.
At one point maybe SABRE is ready and the next SpaceX comes along and will build a spaceship with it. The spoils of innovation seldom accrue with the inventors.
> The spoils of innovation seldom accrue with the inventors.
We are British, why change the habit of a lifetime ;)
That said, critical aspects of the design are protected and the private investors (big scary defense contractors etc) would no doubt sic the lawyers on anyone that attempted to rip it off.
Some ideas also have a tendency to be leapfrogged by a combination of lesser novel ideas used in a new way, the idea of a plane as a first stage was probably great until SpaceX showed up and landed a Falcon9 first stage to reuse.
At one point maybe SABRE is ready and the next SpaceX comes along and will build a spaceship with it. The spoils of innovation seldom accrue with the inventors.