3 ms·
Ontop of all of this.. ULA's heavy lift capability is entirely dependent on Russian engines to reach orbit. Made much worse by the fact ULA had until SpaceX arr
by jpgvm 11y ago
Ontop of all of this.. ULA's heavy lift capability is entirely dependent on Russian engines to reach orbit.
Made much worse by the fact ULA had until SpaceX arrived, complete monopoly of the US defence market.
It does make me wonder how much of this is just follow on from the exact events you described. Specifically that the Russians were for the longest time far ahead in liquid fuel rocket engine technology.
- kunai 11y agoThey still are very ahead — of course, the Merlin and RS-25 are amazing designs, but they're still more of the brute-force American methodology that made the Saturn V so brutally effective at travelling to the moon. The Russian aerospace industry has always tried to approach rocketry with a lot more emphasis on finesse, precision, and clever engineering solutions — the astonishing reliability of the Soyuz is a testament to this. von Braun and his team at Marshall always pulled off amazing technological feats, but at the expense of greatly increased complexity and less efficiency. That legacy has largely carried on to the present day; I hope that this newer generation of American LVs (Falcon 9.1R, Vulcan) will turn things around in the opposite direction.
- InclinedPlane 11y ago> ULA's heavy lift capability is entirely dependent on Russian engines to reach orbit. Huh? ULA's heavy lift capability is dependent on the Delta IV (specifically the Heavy variant), which does not use Russian engines. ULA's most economic launcher, Atlas V, uses Russian engines however.
- jpgvm 11y agoValid. Though as you said, it's not an overly economic platform.
- InclinedPlane 11y agoIndeed. The Delta IV Heavy is priced out at above $1 billion per launch, and a regular Delta IV launch is probably about 2-3x as costly as an Atlas V, which itself is about 2x as costly as a Falcon 9.