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Francoflier wrote:It was great to see Vulcan finally launching and Blue Origin finally joining the big boys' playground.
Forget iterative design for a minute, there's still room for good old 'engineering the crap out of something so it works right the first time'.
kitplane01 wrote:Francoflier wrote:It was great to see Vulcan finally launching and Blue Origin finally joining the big boys' playground.
Forget iterative design for a minute, there's still room for good old 'engineering the crap out of something so it works right the first time'.
I'm not sure I see it that way. Seems to me if it's not reusable it cannot compete economically. The best horse draw carriage ever made still loses to cars.
GDB wrote:kitplane01 wrote:Francoflier wrote:It was great to see Vulcan finally launching and Blue Origin finally joining the big boys' playground.
Forget iterative design for a minute, there's still room for good old 'engineering the crap out of something so it works right the first time'.
I'm not sure I see it that way. Seems to me if it's not reusable it cannot compete economically. The best horse draw carriage ever made still loses to cars.
And what if one of these, so far there is only one, semi reuseable booster has an anomaly and is grounded?
In terms of government use, this is what happened with the pretend reusable Shuttle (so expensive to launch and maintain it mocked the economic aspect as well as a death trap), in the 1980’s after it had been deemed ALL launches, had to use it.
The question is whether it has a decent number of customers (it does and not just US government ones), does it add anything new (the engine).
kitplane01 wrote:The fact that neither ULA nor the Europeans are even trying reusable,
The company’s concept is to recover just the booster’s engines, by dropping them from the rocket for capture by an aircraft. Engines make up about two-thirds of a booster’s cost, Bruno said.
kitplane01 wrote:GDB wrote:kitplane01 wrote:
I'm not sure I see it that way. Seems to me if it's not reusable it cannot compete economically. The best horse draw carriage ever made still loses to cars.
And what if one of these, so far there is only one, semi reuseable booster has an anomaly and is grounded?
In terms of government use, this is what happened with the pretend reusable Shuttle (so expensive to launch and maintain it mocked the economic aspect as well as a death trap), in the 1980’s after it had been deemed ALL launches, had to use it.
The question is whether it has a decent number of customers (it does and not just US government ones), does it add anything new (the engine).
I'm not arguing for the Space Shuttle (eek). I'm arguing for reusable like SpaceX. The fact that neither ULA nor the Europeans are even trying reusable, and SpaceX did something like 96 successful reusable launches (out of 96 attempts) says a lot.
The only way ULA has any customers is government payloads (or Amazon trying to avoid SpaceX for commercial reasons). Subsidized government payloads. Same with the Europeans.
Note the owners of ULA are trying to sell it.
bikerthai wrote:kitplane01 wrote:The fact that neither ULA nor the Europeans are even trying reusable,The company’s concept is to recover just the booster’s engines, by dropping them from the rocket for capture by an aircraft. Engines make up about two-thirds of a booster’s cost, Bruno said.
Not quite total reusable. But they are trying.
bt
ZaphodHarkonnen wrote:kitplane01 wrote:GDB wrote:
And what if one of these, so far there is only one, semi reuseable booster has an anomaly and is grounded?
In terms of government use, this is what happened with the pretend reusable Shuttle (so expensive to launch and maintain it mocked the economic aspect as well as a death trap), in the 1980’s after it had been deemed ALL launches, had to use it.
The question is whether it has a decent number of customers (it does and not just US government ones), does it add anything new (the engine).
I'm not arguing for the Space Shuttle (eek). I'm arguing for reusable like SpaceX. The fact that neither ULA nor the Europeans are even trying reusable, and SpaceX did something like 96 successful reusable launches (out of 96 attempts) says a lot.
The only way ULA has any customers is government payloads (or Amazon trying to avoid SpaceX for commercial reasons). Subsidized government payloads. Same with the Europeans.
Note the owners of ULA are trying to sell it.
ULA has partial reuse planned for Vulcan and reuse is actively becoming a priority going forward for ESA.
On top of that ULA was able to win USSF launches on price competing against SpaceX. With Vulcan, ULA have decided to focus on a specific launch niche and appear to be having some reasonable success with it. Mostly with large GTO payloads. Falcon 9 is much more optimised for the LEO and MEO market.
Just because Vulcan is not a Falcon 9 killer and ULA is not just trying to directly copy SpaceX, it does not make Vulcan or ULA a failure.