[HN Gopher] Virgin Orbit pauses all operations
___________________________________________________________________
Virgin Orbit pauses all operations
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 105 points
Date : 2023-03-16 15:42 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| Symmetry wrote:
| There are real advantages to launching from higher up, not just
| in terms of reducing drag losses but in using larger engine bells
| with higher ISPs, saving on structural mass due to lower
| aerodynamic forces, and maybe launching from over the sea if
| otherwise you'd have a hard time finding a safe launch corridor.
|
| But rockets are usually launched from the middle of large, empty
| pads for a reason since there's always the danger of an
| explosion. Unmanned planes could help but planes are expensive
| pieces of capital to have sitting around if you don't have a fast
| launch cadence. I'd tend to favor balloon style designs, though
| that makes getting to remote launch locations more awkward.
| [deleted]
| SonicScrub wrote:
| Balloon launch is a god-awful concept. Not only do you have the
| logistical challenges of air-launch (compounded by carrying a
| bomb with a minimally controllable vehicle), you also don't
| have the horizontal velocity of an aircraft to provide
| additional dynamic pressure at the critical pitch-up first turn
| phase of flight, AND you have the absymal lifting capabilities
| of a balloon. Balloon launch is all the downsides of air launch
| with a few extra thrown in for good measure, with almost zero
| advantages over traditional air-launch (let alone ground
| launch)
| schiffern wrote:
| > you also don't have the horizontal velocity of an aircraft
| to provide additional dynamic pressure at the critical pitch-
| up first turn phase of flight
|
| Isn't one of the (few) advantages of balloon launch that this
| critical pitch-up maneuver is far less dramatic? At launch
| the rocket can already be oriented mostly vertical instead of
| mostly horizontal.
|
| Of course this has the attendant disadvantage that your
| rocket starts with less kinetic energy.
| stametseater wrote:
| Still a more successful launch provider than Blue Origin.
| greesil wrote:
| For now
| stametseater wrote:
| Blue Origin has been in business for more than two decades
| and still hasn't put anything in orbit. Two more decades
| maybe?
| ravenstine wrote:
| "Business" is a generous descriptor when no viable product
| has ever been sold.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _no viable product has ever been sold_
|
| They sell engines.
| miniman1337 wrote:
| Except the engines they built are finally launching in
| about 2 months.
| trollerator23 wrote:
| Not really
| jimnotgym wrote:
| > and furlough almost all its staff, although the company did not
| officially confirm the furloughs to BBC News
|
| It is a fun point that I live in the UK and have headed up
| finance at SMEs. Until the pandemic I had never even heard the
| term 'furlough'. What does it mean now? If they are UK staff I
| doubt you can do anything other than make them redundant.
| [deleted]
| CydeWeys wrote:
| It's been used in the US much longer than that:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furlough
| jimnotgym wrote:
| I'm aware of that. I, like everyone else in the UK, googled
| it at the start of the pandemic. My point was more that the
| linked article was from the BBC, and this is a phrase that is
| basically legally meaningless in the UK.
| starik36 wrote:
| That is sad. I thought the idea of using a 747 as a glorified
| first stage (or stage 0) was sound as it saved a ton of money.
|
| I wonder why they couldn't make it work. And why does a single
| failure doom a company after 4 successful launches.
| wongarsu wrote:
| > And why does a single failure doom a company
|
| "This one failure killed it" is a poplar story. See also
| Zeppelins being doomed by the Hindenburg disaster, and the
| Concorde being doomed by an exploding tire. Failures can be the
| straw that breaks the camel's back, but saying they are the
| reason for killing their product is only true in the technical
| sense.
| bombcar wrote:
| Yeah, usually a "single failure" dooms something that was
| _already on life support_.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| I'm surprised they would ever shut it down. I always thought of
| these corporate space programs as pet projects of billionaires
| with effectively infinite funding.
| stametseater wrote:
| Orbital Sciences, now Northrop Grumman, has successfully used
| plane launches for the Pegasus a few dozen times since the 90s.
| They use a Lockheed TriStar instead of a 747, but the principle
| is the same. It definitely works.
|
| Their launch volume has been trending down though. I don't
| think they're able to effectively compete for most contracts.
| ianburrell wrote:
| There are other small-sat rocket which are cheaper. The
| Rocket Lab Electron is $7.5 million for 250kg while Pegasus
| is $40 million for 450kg. Plus, SpaceX has piggyback program
| for small sats that is cheaper but longer wait.
| trollerator23 wrote:
| Even Antonio Elias, the person behind Pegasus and main
| designer, admitted that it didn't work out at all the way
| they predicted. You had the complication and rigmarole of
| launching from an aircraft but you still had to launch close
| to a range for comm and safety reasons.
| jojosbuddy wrote:
| Yes, launch stage was pretty bulletproof, 2nd upto the liquid
| stage were the problems (should be fixed by now that the tech
| exists). The systems are likely the same as 2005 that new VC
| funded launch companies can undercut price with updated
| designs/tech (R&D expenses absorbed by VCs). I think the
| telemetry live stream/OpenGl viz of the last minotaur launch
| looked like a slightly revised UIX of the original live
| stream tool I built back in the 90s (I worked on Pegasus),
| aka _old tech, not shiny_.
|
| Edit: Really it's a potential energy to cost problem. 5% more
| efficiency is [actually] big when leaving this planet, but
| yes, cost of air launch is still stuck in 1990 times. From
| the outside I didn't see any innovation from the VO team
| aside from electronics. As for VG, I used to work with their
| new CEO and Eng VP: they know ops, but I thought the
| systems/tech hadn't been flush out 100%, so may have the
| similar fate if a few customers start canceling. I have some
| ideas to 'fix' air launch requiring big R&D, but knee deep in
| fixing autonomous drones!
|
| Peg was not financially successful cause prior 2002, the
| space race was maybe 15 launches a year: not profitable.
| Stuff like Iridium failed, shutting down ideas of having
| thousands of sats in LEO, mind that the only markets were
| communications (cellular/fiber won), science experiments, and
| imaging (imaging/remote sensing? Drone tech will eventually
| win). Luckily LEO payloads are a cool idea again-- _tech is
| better + moore 's law_, thus demand is HOT. Heck Orbcomm is
| up there today, but old tech no one really wants.
|
| Today, Elon played the long game (2002) and kept innovating
| where SpaceX has found the cost-benefit balance via
| reusability, and [with timing] being the only system post
| Shuttle it's a duopoly with ULA--charge as much to stay in
| the black. BUT the markets are still the 3 above, nothing new
| (Elon's Mars thing == passion project) though every country
| now wants their 'own constellation' cause of the NRO, hehe.
|
| Trivia Edit: Peg's GNC computer was an 80386SX :)
| panick21_ wrote:
| That rocket close to as much as a Falcon 9 now cost.
| SonicScrub wrote:
| It definitely works. But whether the it works economically
| compared with the traditional static ground launch is the
| question. Pegasus is simply more expensive than it's ground
| based competition.
| ptmcc wrote:
| It seems like a neat idea but it really doesn't save money,
| though. The hard part, as in the vast majority of energy & fuel
| needed, is to get horizontal velocity not altitude.
|
| The complexity and cost of a 747 carrying a rocket up for an
| additional maybe ~3% of orbital velocity just doesn't pencil
| out in the end
|
| And reusable boosters sway the calculus even further toward
| ground-based launches, both in cost and launch system
| simplification.
| ta1243 wrote:
| The benefit of a plane based launch is the flexibility
|
| Want to launch from say Israel, currently you can only launch
| retrograde (to the west), as you can't launch over land
| (especially countries with questionable friendliness)
|
| You could in theory launch via Virgin One, fly south along
| the red sea and then launch over the Indian Ocean
|
| Same with launches from the West Coast US -- want to launch
| Polar, that's fine, you can launch south out of LA (and
| that's what they do). You can't launch East though, you have
| to move the rocket from California to Florida to launch.
|
| You don't need to worry much about bad weather at the launch
| site either. Got rain and lightning in Florida? Unless it's
| really bad you can still take off in a plane, then launch
| from above or away from that bad weather
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Though non of this applies to Virgin Orbit, which is a US-
| based company.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _benefit of a plane based launch is the flexibility_
|
| That much more than a drone ship?
| simonh wrote:
| Indeed. As usual XKCD is helpful here.
|
| https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/
|
| It's similar to why launching from a mountain top isn't worth
| it. If you're launching to a few hundred km altitude, a 2km
| or even a 10km head start is peanuts. And altitude is only a
| small fraction of the problem, compared to orbital speeds
| large jet aircraft are barely even moving.
|
| If you're launching anti-satelite missiles that's different.
| Getting altitude is the main aim, and military jets can get
| reasonably high with a small missile as payload.
| hoseja wrote:
| The major savings is in exponentially less air to go
| through, so you can do more aggressive gravity turn so you
| have less gravity losses.
|
| And he didn't even address the reentry questions, both of
| which are actually plausible - if you somehow have the fuel
| to drastically reduce your orbital velocity, you're
| suddenly no different than a sounding rocket, indeed not
| needing a heat shield. And if you cleverly slow down your
| reentry over many orbits, it can be very gentle.
| SonicScrub wrote:
| The benefits of the "exponentially less air" diminish
| once you have to slap an aerosurface on the vehicle
| (added weight + drag) to perform the pitch up maneuver
| Coupled with the fact that on deployment the vehicle is
| gaining velocity in the wrong direction until the engines
| ignite, accelerate forwards, and the vehicle begins the
| turn. The theoretical benefits of air launch quickly fade
| away given these practical realities. Nevermind the much
| more complex operations that comes with air launch.
|
| There's a reason why air launch has more or less died as
| an idea. The theoretical savings don't typically manifest
| once the additional complexities are accounted for.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I've seen it pushed as a potential way to launch into orbits
| that are harder to achieve via current launch sites; in
| theory, a plane-launched rocket can start from anywhere in
| the world.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| So how fast & high would the carrier aircraft have to go for
| it to make sense?
| IshKebab wrote:
| Very. Orbital velocity is like Mach 23 or something. The
| X-15 could apparently go to Mach 6, but probably not if it
| was carrying a rocket!
| aidenn0 wrote:
| The x-15 _was_ a rocket
| jojosbuddy wrote:
| Pros and cons.
|
| You can instead of using that 747 with more optimized
| aircraft for this purpose. And you can make the boosters
| reusable. Stratolaunch was on a good path long term but ran
| out of cash.
|
| The dilemma with VO's approach was the same as OSC, thinking
| that reusing parts made for something else is cheaper short
| term and long term, where in fact more $ short and long. Yes
| the carrier was too expensive to maintain and material tech
| wasn't there yet to stop boil on the upper stages during
| staging. But the tradeoff was you can launch (nearly)
| anywhere, anytime, but regs/politics killed that benefit. I
| think we had potentially 8 locations at one point, ended up
| with 3. And thus, here we are. Sad VO couldn't keep the idea
| innovating.
| generj wrote:
| To pile on on other comments regarding the non viability of air
| launch rocketry, the only reason it makes sense is for
| rerouting launch locations based on weather.
|
| The only customer needing an asset in orbit regardless of a
| weather violation is the military. The other bonus would be
| spreading out launch locations to essentially any airport
| rather than a few launch locations that could be denied by
| enemies.
|
| However their desire for it hasn't been enough to fund it. Even
| Astra (with a similar launch anywhere, whenever premise) hasn't
| been robustly funded by the US military.
| PlutoIsAPlanet wrote:
| Elon said somewhere that using a carrier aircraft to replace
| the first stage doesn't scale.
|
| I think Virgins space ventures are all pretty much dead in the
| water, similar the space plane it's just outdated and
| outmatched by the competition.
| [deleted]
| panick21_ wrote:
| Its literally the exact opposite of saving money.
|
| It cost a HUGE amount of money. The reason is that in the plane
| you have people, so the rocket design has to take that into
| account and validating the rocket costs more. Just for
| reference, SpaceX and RocketLab sent their rocket to space for
| under 100M, while Virgin spend like 500M. That's partly because
| of worse leadership, but its partly inherent.
|
| A plane also isn't cheap, a ground launch station for a small
| rocket isn't that expensive.
|
| Additionally engineering the rocket to get carried vertically
| adds structure, that cost money and lowers payload. You end up
| not gaining that much from air-launch. It also makes the
| structure and avionics quite complex.
|
| Once you drop the rocket, the engine has to start or the
| payload is gone. Other rockets can start the engine, verify its
| good and then launch. Relativity space just did that.
|
| It also puts huge constraints on your rockets, the size in both
| weight and volume is inherently limited, and you can't evolve
| the architecture. In comparison SpaceX Falcon 1 could have
| easily been slightly upgraded and turned into a rocket that
| could lift 1T+ and even more eventually. And then they managed
| to use that engine to build a Falcon 9.
|
| Virgin Orbit has this one rocket, and its impossible to make
| back 100s of millions of investment with a tiny rocket and low
| launch cadence. They can't make the rocket significantly bigger
| because of the limits of the plane.
|
| I thought it was impossible for them to ever be a real company
| and that seem to have ended up happening. Launch is a really
| tough business.
|
| > And why does a single failure doom a company after 4
| successful launches.
|
| Because they have already burned down a gigantic amount of cash
| and were in a bad stage, launch success or not. A launch earns
| them 12M or so. That basically nothing considering their
| investments and their burn.
| starik36 wrote:
| > Virgin spend like 500M
|
| Is that really true? If it is, I am struggling to understand
| what the money is being spent on. I mean the cost of Space
| Shuttle launches was in that neighborhood.
| panick21_ wrote:
| We don't have official numbers but pretty good industry
| reporting that puts the numbers there. Read Eric Bergers
| reporting on them over the last 5 years or so.
|
| Its mostly just lots of people and time. Plus buying 1-2
| planes.
|
| Space Shuttle development was of course way more. A single
| margin launch cost 500M. But with fixed cost it was 1
| billion+.
| detrites wrote:
| These points are all so well-reasoned and difficult to argue
| against, I can't fathom how they managed to get all the way
| to this point without these things coming up and causing a
| rethink of the base approach. Quite incredible.
| thefounder wrote:
| Probably just a rug pull by the original
| "investors"/founders
| tablespoon wrote:
| > These points are all so well-reasoned and difficult to
| argue against, I can't fathom how they managed to get all
| the way to this point without these things coming up and
| causing a rethink of the base approach. Quite incredible.
|
| Isn't "launch from a plane" basically reusable first stage,
| 1.0? It was also more conservative, since the idea _had
| already been successfully implemented_ in 1990:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_Pegasus.
|
| Some quick googling shows Virgin Orbit started in 2011, and
| SpaceX landed their first rocket in 2015. Virgin Orbit's
| idea may have make a lot more sense before SpaceX proved
| out an alternative, and that didn't happen until maybe
| they'd done a lot of development that could have possibly
| paid off.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Successfully implemented in technical terms. Not really
| in financial terms. The rocket cost a huge amount and
| even with the already absurd launch prices the US
| military paid it wasn't the most successful. It never
| competed for the competitive international launch market.
|
| SpaceX landed a rocket in 2015, but Virgin Orbit wasn't
| even competitive with Falcon 1. Landing rockets has
| little to do with why it wasn't working out.
|
| Yes without Falcon 9 the market would be quite a bit
| bigger, but even then its hard to see how VO ever gets
| very far. Its offering even compared to the other small
| launch competition isn't really competitive. Their
| offering was 12M for a tiny payload, their competition
| was often less then 10M for payloads with more
| flexibility in size and volume.
|
| They simply have no migration path, no way to make their
| vehicle bigger, and pretty much every small launch
| company has realized that small launch isn't really a
| business you want to be in.
|
| They managed to get a lot of financing pretty early on
| and managed to be one of the first to orbit, but their
| financial outlook was always pretty bad.
| throwaway67743 wrote:
| I'd like to remind everyone this is the same guy that took tax
| breaks and grants and has failed at pretty much everything,
| including trains, somehow, it's pretty much given on a silver
| platter - this is not unexpected
| stirlo wrote:
| Richard Branson's last 3 investments ($25, $20 & $10 million)
| have all been secured against the company's assets. I don't see
| anyone paying $55 million for it as a going concern so it looks
| like he'll inherit it. Will be interesting to see if he chooses
| to continue or shut it down once it's back in his hands.
| tempsy wrote:
| Between Virgin Galactic and now this hard to see him as much
| more than a pump and dump SPAC grifter.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Virgin Galactic was the most disgusting pump-and-dump ever.
| They literally SPAC telling a story about intercontinental
| hypersonic flight. Fucking absurd, the company can't make low
| power hybrid engine burn a short time readability and have
| constant issue with their air-frame. And beyond have a
| terrible safety culture.
|
| Yeah that company is gone build an intercontinental
| hypersonic airliner that about 100x more difficult problem.
| When will the get it working, in 2150?
|
| It was literally a pure lie and grift for money, and soon
| after Branson and all the leadership of VG dropped stocks
| like crazy.
|
| Branson also invested in this idiotic Hyperloop company.
| Another pure investor drift nonsense, but at least it didn't
| SPAC.
| ta1243 wrote:
| I struggle to think of a successful Branson venture in the
| last 20 years, possible even longer. Other than selling the
| "Virgin" branding of course.
| peoplearepeople wrote:
| I wonder if a country without an orbital rocket program would
| consider buying them out.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Maybe a country with inconvenient geography. You really want to
| launch rockets close to the equator to save fuel, and ideally
| you want to launch on a path that doesn't drop debris (from
| spent stages or potential failures) on inhabited areas or
| foreign nations. Few such sites exist, but if you launch from
| an airplane you can just fly to a convenient location somewhere
| in international waters
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Why wouldn't they just ship their payload to one of the
| existing launch providers? And save the money?
| bleuarff wrote:
| Geostrategic considerations might make it impossible to use
| a foreign launch site.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| No country that I know of is currently, or has ever been,
| on bad terms with all launching countries simultaneously.
| Do you have any examples?
| wongarsu wrote:
| As an example, Russia's launch sites are all suboptimal.
| Baikanur is at about the latitude of Quebec (not exactly
| the equator), the launch path is over land, and it's in
| Kazakhstan instead of in Russia. They recently opened
| Vostochny on the Russian East coast which improves two of
| those points, at the cost of being even further north.
|
| For most things, including servicing the ISS, it's
| perfectly adequate, and for satellites that go into polar
| orbits it doesn't matter, but some orbits are hard to reach
| from those launch sites because of the inclination. In the
| past Russia has used ESA's launch site in French Guiana for
| those, but that's not an option for them right now.
| localplume wrote:
| What will happen to Spaceport Cornwall then, if Virgin Orbit
| shuts down? Seems like a massive waste of investment then since I
| don't think any launch provider will take its place. Pretty grim
| for the UK space launch industry as a whole.
| rexreed wrote:
| It will be just fine:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newquay_Airport
|
| "The airport handled 461,300 passengers in 2017, a 24.2%
| increase over the previous year.[2] Newquay has a CAA Public
| Use Aerodrome Licence that allows flights for the public
| transport of passengers or for flying instruction. The Cornwall
| Air Ambulance is based at the airport. Since 2012, the airport
| has hosted the Aerohub enterprise zone.
|
| The airport is also the base for Spaceport Cornwall / Virgin
| Orbit space satellite launches."
|
| Not that much was actually invested or committed, relatively
| speaking:
|
| "In June 2019, the UK government and Cornwall Council announced
| they were prepared to invest up to PS20M into the airport to
| create the Spaceport Cornwall as a base for Virgin Orbit. On 5
| November 2019, the UK Space Agency announced that it would
| provide PS7.35M to establish Virgin Orbit operations at
| Spaceport Cornwall."
|
| Not all of that was provided.
| ac29 wrote:
| "Spaceport" Cornwall is just Cornwall Airport. There are no
| traditional (vertical) launch facilities there.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > the UK space launch industry as a whole
|
| Was the UK ever a good place for space launches in the first
| place? It's too far from the equator.
| peoplearepeople wrote:
| Countries often want independent capabilities even if it
| costs more.
|
| And plenty of of launch types don't care about distance to
| the equator, for example polar orbits.
|
| Lots of launch sites are very north, for example Baikonur,
| Plesetsk, and Vostochny.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| The UK's only orbital rocket launched from Australia.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Arrow
| basementcat wrote:
| Some satellites have polar or higher inclination orbits.
| ta1243 wrote:
| UK is perfect for launches to about 55 degree retrograde
| inclination
|
| You wouldn't want to launch into a sun-syncrhonous orbit from
| the Equator. Or from Florida or Cape Canaveral for that
| matter. The delta-V you start with which is great for an
| equatorial launch has to be shed to get into a polar or near-
| polar orbit.
|
| From Scotland though, there's far less Delta V than Florida,
| or from French Guiana.
| immmmmm wrote:
| i've been fascinated about rockets since im 3, was drawing
| engines with turbopumps by 5, but since i read about ecology at
| 35 i am now convinced we need exactly two types of satellites:
|
| 1) earth observation and weather one, to monitor a very dangerous
| warming on this planet
|
| 2) icbm early warning systems, to avoid cooling it very fast.
|
| what argument do you have for more orbital stuff and which type?
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Communications and astronomy seem like very reasonable uses of
| space. Comms because how much of the planet can be seen/covered
| be a single device, and astronomy to bypass information loss
| from the atmosphere.
| immmmmm wrote:
| agreed! it's important to communicate, and studying distant
| worlds makes us human (but as a physicist im biased).
|
| maybe an international mission to mars could be useful.
| dunno.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| That's sad, but this space is likely ready for consolidation...
| eagerpace wrote:
| Yes, but the odds of them finding a buyer are astronomical.
| Full reusability is the future. Even ULA is reportedly up for
| sale after backing away from plans for their new rocket to be
| reusable. The new space race will be SpaceX and Blue Origin.
| [deleted]
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| ... in the USA.
|
| Japan, China, Russia, and the EU will all insist on their own
| rocket launch capability, won't they?
|
| At a minimum SpaceX shows the path to Starship-level
| reductions in launch payload costs, then the other state
| actors will follow the formula.
|
| If this just represents flawed approaches being trimmed from
| the marketplace, well ok.
|
| ... Blue Origin needs to get to "real" orbit, right? Last I
| heard they were resorting to troll-lawsuits against SpaceX
| because they weren't getting government launch contracts.
| Yeah, because... you ... can't yet?
| kown7 wrote:
| Europe will have to develop a fully reusable launcher to be
| competitive. Let's call it Ariane 7 and expect it to fly
| around 2035. They first have to get Ariane 6 off the ground
| and that's, from what I've heard, a horribly slow process.
| stametseater wrote:
| The ESA/ArianeGroup was blindsided by the economic
| feasibility of rocket reuse. They have only recently come
| to terms with this and begun developing their own semi-
| reusable equivalent to Falcon 9. Ariane 6 (no reuse) hasn't
| even flown yet but is already obsolete. A European Falcon 9
| equivalent is many years away.
|
| I expect the EU to continue building their own rockets
| anyway, so they don't have to rely on the US and/or Russia.
| They do want their own launch capability as you mention.
| But will they produce anything that can compete with SpaceX
| for the sort of contracts that _could_ go to an American
| company? Not anytime soon; they 're already years behind
| and _if_ Starship flies soon the gap will be huge.
| jojosbuddy wrote:
| "Japan, China, Russia, and the EU will all insist on their
| own rocket launch capability, won't they?" For their spy
| sats: well OF COURSE! And we're on the verge of a lot of
| demand, not considering cheap cubesats can use a 50MP
| camera + good opticcs and near real-time, global comms.
|
| Man times have changed.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Japan builds their own rockets but they are low volume and
| not in the market, mostly domestic stuff. Russia is for now
| out of the international a launch market. China is mostly
| out of the 'Western' launch market as well, but there is a
| lot going on there.
|
| EU is spending lots of money for bad results. But because
| of Amazon they have some contracts. Basically any heavy
| lift rocket not by SpaceX will get contracts. But SpaceX
| for now will have to fly a lot of the European payloads,
| because it will take a long time before Ariane 6 is full
| operational.
|
| And then it will take another 10 years and another 5-10
| billion $ for Europe to launch a competitor to Falcon 9. By
| that point of course, Starship will already be standard.
|
| India builds rockets at low cadence and are not a serous
| contender.
|
| > then the other state actors
|
| That takes 15-20 years.
|
| > Blue Origin
|
| Blue Origin spends 2-3 billion a year without revenue. But
| they are pushing forward. They want be in orbit until 2025
| and to be fully operational it will take a lot longer.
| palebluedot wrote:
| Rocket Lab will likely be a contender in there, as well
| DennisP wrote:
| And Stoke Space, which is going for full reusability with
| an aerospike on the second stage. Everyday Astronaut got a
| visit and it seemed pretty impressive.
|
| https://everydayastronaut.com/stoke-space/
| stametseater wrote:
| Blue Origin failing to deliver on time is a big part of the
| reason ULA is floundering. ULA bet on Blue Origin being able
| to provide engines for the Vulcan Centaur in a timely manner,
| but what they got were years of delays.
|
| And now that Bezos had his little joyride, he seems to have
| checked space off his bucket list and turned his attention
| towards yachting with his new wife, so I don't expect we'll
| see productive management reform in Blue Origin anytime soon.
|
| The real space race is between SpaceX and China.
| ben_w wrote:
| For the moment it's SpaceX vs everyone else combined, given
| how far ahead they are.
|
| I won't rule out China rising to the challenge, but I also
| wouldn't want to rule out Relativity Space and their 3D
| printing, nor some as-yet unannounced group saying they've
| made a breakthrough with superconducting levitation or
| active support structures or skyhooks or fusion-powered
| second stages that let them go directly (from a high
| altitude but suborbital first stage so you don't have to
| worry about backscattered radiation from the air) to Dv =
| 0.1c.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Yeah but here is the reality of the situation. The AR-15,
| the alternative engine, was years behind the BE-4 in
| development and likely would have been delayed just as much
| and also costs more for worse performance and a with a
| company behind it that has no independent interest in the
| engine.
|
| Also, ULA is not floundering. In fact the opposite. Amazon
| bought all Ariane 5s and given the increasingly constrained
| launch market, if you have a heavy lifter that can launch,
| you likely get some contracts.
|
| Bezos might be yachting, but he is currently spending 2-3
| billion a year on a company that doesn't have revenue. So
| he is serious and they will just push threw.
| benj111 wrote:
| >astronomical
|
| So does that mean it's likely in this context?
| nothingneko wrote:
| It's sad that Virgin Orbit isn't able to survive it was a really
| novel idea
| SonicScrub wrote:
| It really was not all that novel. Pegasus had been around for
| over 20 years before it was founded, and had already proven air
| launch more or less economically unviable compared with ground
| based launchers.
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