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Rocket Lab Unveils Plans for New 8-Ton Class Reusable Rocket
- abledon 6y agoUntil spaceX goes public (if they ever do), this company seems pretty close in their intentions of providing a great space service in the 2030s, (they are also exposed via a SPAC deal announced just this morning).
- yholio 6y agoIt's nothing yet except for a statement of intention: we aspire to become the next SpaceX and hope to raise the interest of investors that can't access SpaceX stock. There is no talk about the engines, it's quite clear that the Rutherford won't cut it (Electron already uses 9 of them). So they have to either buy or develop an engine, expensive in time or money. The mega-constellation sweet spot argument is not really convincing, if you have a reusable mega rocket with a relightable second stage (like SpaceX plans), you can hit multiple planes in a single launch. The 8 ton class is probably just the largest they can afford to plan at this stage.
- Robotbeat 6y agoI disagree. For mega constellations it’s about cost per kg to orbit, and for reusable it’s about launch rate. If you build too big, your launch rate isn’t high enough to get the full advantage of reuse. I think Starship is awesome, but even Falcon 9 is so big it leaves some room for something a bit smaller. 8 tons is in the Soyuz/R7 range, which is what the other megaconstellation is using. And it has had well over 1000 launches and still holds the record (in the 70s and 80s) of the most number of launches per year for a single rocket type, which makes it a good target class for size of a reusable rocket. 8 tons is about where Falcon 9 v1.0 started out, by the way. How many customers wish they had that built the smaller falcon 5. Additionally, a smaller rocket is useful for some human spaceflight applications. If you only need to launch two astronauts in orbit to fix a satellite, it’d be nice to have a smaller rocket option. An 8 ton first stage reusable rocket is also big enough to eventually have a reusable upper stage and still carry a a couple astronauts, their space suits, a small (Gemini-sized) vehicle (possibly integrated with the reusable upper stage), and some tools and parts to repair the satellite. Launch costs could in principle be less than $1 million, which is about the propellant costs alone for Starship. Starship is awesome. But we don’t have JUST 757s and 777s. We also have smaller utility aircraft. I’ve long thought that something just under 10 tons, partially or fully reusable, is a good market opportunity. Makes a lot more sense than tiny rockets for megaconstellations.
- DennisP 6y agoBut we do have just airplanes that are 100% reusable. So far, Rocket Lab only talks about reusing the first stage; second-stage reuse is hard, and a huge cost savings. But maybe until Starship gets the launch rate to reach its potential, there's room for smaller rockets with disposable upper stages. SpaceX is banking on the space industry expanding well beyond megaconstellations, but that will take a few years. By the time we get there, maybe other companies will manage reusable upper stages too.
- Robotbeat 6y agoRight. Having a decent sized reusable first stage on Neutron gives RocketLab the option of a reusable upper stage down the road. It’s pretty tough to justify going for full reuse before you have even accomplished partial reuse. Something similar to the recovery method of Electron’s first stage would be appropriate for a reusable upper stage. (And at one time, SpaceX was planning it for Falcon 9’s upper stage... ballute/heatshield and parachute for Falcon 9 upper stage recovery).
- CarVac 6y ago> If you build too big, your launch rate isn’t high enough to get the full advantage of reuse. But if you throw away second stages, your rate of reuse goes waaay down. I don't think an 8-ton lift vehicle is going to achieve second stage reuse.
- Robotbeat 6y agoOn the contrary, there are MORE viable methods for reuse with a smaller vehicle. They can do mid-air recovery with such an upper stage, for instance, but no hope of that with a Starship-sized upper stage.
- CarVac 6y agoMore ways to land, but the performance penalty of heat shielding will be crippling on a smaller stage.
- sandworm101 6y ago>> The mega-constellation sweet spot ... multiple planes in a single launch. Mega-constellations are exactly the type of project that doesn't need multiple planes. They require multiple sat in each plane, meaning one rocket full of small sats can go to one plane and dump them all. I suspect something has been lost in translation. I think they mean to say that the relightable engines will allow access to different altitudes on a single launch, multiple orbits within a single plane.
- Sanzig 6y agoDepends on the plane. Inclination changes are expensive, so if you want different inclinations, it almost always makes sense to use a separate launch vehicle for each inclination you want to target. However, the longitude of the ascending node (Ω) is perturbed by the earth's oblateness, and the rate of Ω precession is a function of the semi-latus rectum (p) and the inclination (i). If you adjust the orbit altitude to tweak p, you can adjust the precession rate to swing the plane around to where you want it. This takes a while (months), and you of course need some sort of propulsion on the spacecraft to return you to your target altitude after the maneuver, but if the launch vehicle can drop you into the higher/lower altitude above/below the target plane rather than doing that on-board the spacecraft, the delta-v cost is halved.
- sandworm101 6y agoI would call that on-orbit maneuvers rather than part of the launch process. This rocket will drop the sat off at the contracted orbit and fly away. Multiple engine firings will mean separate customers can get at best separate altitudes.
- api 6y agoRutherford is really reliable. Why not use like 27 of them? Is there some reason that this is inherently bad? It would probably be less efficient to use lots of small engines, but perhaps the reduced cost of using an already existing engine that you can mass produce would make up for it.
- vermontdevil 6y agoBatteries. Imagine all the weight.
- yholio 6y agoRutherford is only a 26 KN engine. An original Merlin 1 engine was 340 KN, so you would need 15 Rutherfords for each Merlin. A total of 135 engines for a rocket comparable to the original Falcon 9 which they are targeting.
- api 6y agoYeah I guess we tried lots of engines once, though that was a long time ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket)
- cnlevy 6y agoThe N1's first stage had 30 engines, not much more than the Falcon Heavy which has 27
- Already__Taken 6y agoRead the launch history most of it the engines weren't the problem. *edit control was the problem, it just happens to be connected to parts of the engines.
- nickik 6y agoThe Falcon Heavy has 27 engines and works fine. Its not the number of engines that is the problem. The problem is how efficient is your engine, how is the Trust-to-Weight ratio. To do a reusable launcher you need to be really damn efficient on every part of the rocket. Elon explains this pretty well in the talks he gave around 2014.
- MichaelMoser123 6y agointeresting if the Neutron will use electric-pump-fed engines, is this a concept that is scalable to bigger engines?
- Gibbon1 6y agoI read a paper that indicated you can build them to any arbitrary size. Electric feed pump designs don't get worse as they get bigger. But turbo pumps have better performance at large sizes than electric feed pumps. However the paper also assumed a fixed weigh battery pack. On the second stage electron tosses one of it's battery packs overboard. Also raw performance isn't as critical for the first stage. One other thing, electric feed has much simpler plumbing than a turbo pump feed. Ans: Maybe, but I have no idea.
- MichaelMoser123 6y agoInteresting, do you have a link to that paper? I guess the regular engines that are running inefficient fuel cycles to power the fuel pumps aren't too weight efficient either, due to the inefficiencies of these fuel cycles. Interesting why this approach wasn't tried earlier.
- Gibbon1 6y agoTook a bit of searching but I found it again. https://www.aacademica.org/hernan.emilio.tacca/9.pdf https://www.aacademica.org/hernan.emilio.tacca/9.pdf If I remember correctly simple turbo pump feed engines have to run using a lot of excess fuel. Simple designs just dump the turbine exhaust overboard. That represents a fair amount of wasted energy. Advanced designs feed the exhaust back into the engine. I think they also scavenge some energy from cooling the nozzle.
- MichaelMoser123 6y agothanks!
- Azrael3000 6y agoNot quite as capable as Falcon 9 (16.kT to LEO, 5.2m fairing diameter) but it will certainly cut into SpaceX's cake once it is online. While they are currently spending a lot of effort on recovering the 1st stage of the Electron via parachute the Neutron is going to land on a drone ship just like SpaceX does it. Clearly due to the different size of these two first stages. Looking forward to their design, particularly the engines they will be using. Is there any info out there yet? Finally a video by Rocket Lab: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agqxJw5ISdk&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agqxJw5ISdk&feature=youtu.be
- xoa 6y ago>but it will certainly cut into SpaceX's cake once it is online. Doubtful. And that isn't a knock against Rocket Lab, targeting a different niche is smart business, but still doubtful. Because the target of any rocket under development right now that wants to directly compete with SpaceX can't be F9, it needs to be Starship. The fundamentals along with the iterative capability and in-house demand built into the core of the design plan indicate they're going to be about to push costs below $200/kg and eventually even below $100/kg, along with enormous other sets of capabilities. That will represent just a mind blowing paradigm shift in cost to LEO, and SpaceX will probably want to retire F9 completely as soon as they're done with contracts and SS/SH is fully certified. Rocket Lab should still be able to find a healthy market, like now, for customers who want specific orbits and times for smaller payloads that don't line up well with ride sharing on a big rocket. But it just won't be in the same market slice at all. Which is fine! The entire space market is set to grow a lot, no zero-sum games for a good long while, and in a growing market there can be room for many players to grow together. But everyone not on the leading edge is going to have to stay nimble.
- bryanlarsen 6y agoNeutron is fully reusable, just like Starship. It'll have similar price efficiencies. I expect Neutron eventually to be cheaper than Electron. Edit: acd10j says I misread. I still think they're working on full reusability, but that's just my guess, not an announcement.
- Robotbeat 6y agoI’ve been waiting for this for a while. This is a really good market niche. And being human spaceflight capable is also really good. Peter Beck, who once claimed he’d eat his hat if they made a reusable rocket, sure made a big 180 on the topic, and I couldn’t be happier! Speaking of, watch the announcement video: https://youtu.be/agqxJw5ISdk https://youtu.be/agqxJw5ISdk I’m also GLAD they copied the Falcon 9 design (which is as old as scifi and was demonstrated by DC-X and Masten Space Systems and Armadillo Aerospace) for the first stage landing concept. Better to use what works instead of just making a novel approach just for the sake of novelty or Not Invented Here. Rockets ought to land on a pillar of flame like God and Heinlein (EDIT: and apparently the Soviet Cosmists) intended: https://youtu.be/TdSxDNnqRlo https://youtu.be/TdSxDNnqRlo Also, RocketLab has a TON of ex-SpaceXer employees... I’ve long said that the high churn (for aerospace, but not any higher than typical tech company) of SpaceX, while not necessarily really good for SpaceX, is really good for the industry as a whole.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- potench 6y agoI think you intended to link to a different video showing rockets landing on pillars of flames. Can you edit your comment or drop the real video link because I’m very intrigued?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Robotbeat 6y agoI fixed it. :) https://youtu.be/TdSxDNnqRlo https://youtu.be/TdSxDNnqRlo
- imglorp 6y agoAnd Buck Rogers comics from the 30's had tail-sitters before Heinlein. Some were rockets (tractor, from the nose) and some "ultronium" antigravity. http://nick-stevens.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/buck-rogers-2.jpg http://nick-stevens.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/buck-roge...
- bryanlarsen 6y agoIMO the reason that Rocket Lab is doing an eight tonne rocket is not because of the market for mega constellations. It's because 8 tonnes is about the minimum size for a fully reusable rocket. You need a rocket big enough to launch all the propellant and shields needed for landing and still have room for payload. And so the bigger the rocket, the more margin you have. Once fully reusable, costs drop dramatically, so I wouldn't be surprised if the price of Neutron is similar to that of Electron. Who would use a small launch vehicle when a medium one is the same price, giving you a lot more room for maneuver propellant. This is the size of Falcon 9 v1.0, and they once believed full reusability was possible. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sWFFiubtC3c&feature=youtu.be https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sWFFiubtC3c&feature=youtu.be Edit: they haven't announced full reusability. But I believe they're working on it. Edit 2: I still don't believe mega-constellations are the reason for Neutron. It being the minimum size for full reusability could be one, but another explanation is it being the minimum size for human space flight.
- darknavi 6y ago> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sWFFiubtC3c&feature=youtu.be https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sWFFiubtC3c&feature=youtu.be Wow I forgot SpaceX originally wanted a reusable second stage on F9. Would have been pretty cool.
- shazmosushi 6y agoSecond stage reusability on the Rocket Lab Neutron will be much easier than the Falcon 9 because the carbon fiber frame doesn't need a heatshield. I may be wrong on this, but I believe they can just slam the second stage into the atmosphere and bring it back without even a re-entry burn, like they already do with their first stage. If Rocket Lab achieve second stage reusability while delivering a lot of payload to orbit it would be revolutionary. Like it will take hundreds of flights for a Starship to become as cost competitive to just a few flights of the Neutron rocket. If I was SpaceX, I would be worried. Rocket Lab is SpaceX's most fearsome competitor.
- nickik 6y ago> Second stage reusability on the Rocket Lab Neutron will be much easier than the Falcon 9 because the carbon fiber frame doesn't need a heatshield. I may be wrong on this, but I believe they can just slam the second stage into the atmosphere and bring it back without even a re-entry burn, like they already do with their first stage. That is very much wrong. A second stage always needs a heat shield, and a lot of it too. In fact, Starship moved away from carbon fiber partly BECAUSE it performance in heat. And we don't know if Neutron is carbon fiber, doesn't look like it from the picture. > If Rocket Lab achieve second stage reusability while delivering a lot of payload to orbit it would be revolutionary. They have not even announced that they are working on that. They are planning for first stage re-usability in 2024. Lets not jump to wild conclusions. If anybody is gone achieve second stage re-usability anytime soon its SpaceX Starship. > If I was SpaceX, I would be worried. Rocket Lab is SpaceX's most fearsome competitor. Actually no. RocketLab is not a competitor in any meaningful way. The whole history of launches on RocketLab rockets could fit easily without in a single Falcon 9 rocket. The have now announced that they might have something in 2024 that might compete with the price of Falcon 9 for some applications. And that is likely gone slip like most rockets do. And if you make the argument that RocketLab is the best competitor of SpaceX that just shows how absurdly far away removed from everybody else SpaceX is.
- unwind 6y agoCool, but rather boring (as in, devoid of rocket images) PR page. The page about the actual rocket [1] is more fun for armchair space dreamers like myself. [1]: https://www.rocketlabusa.com/rockets/neutron/ https://www.rocketlabusa.com/rockets/neutron/
- Gravityloss 6y agoCool, a rather stocky rocket, with dense propellants! Lots of room for growth by simple stretching. 4.5 m diameter vs Falcon 9's 3.7 means 50 m rocket for same volume as Falcon's 70 meters. They could design it for really high flight rate off the bat.
- hourislate 6y agoIt's exciting to hear about all these companies trying to bring more to the table but while they (Rocket Lab, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic) talk about what their plans are, SpaceX continues to push forward with real world results. It's the dollar short and the day late scenario. Maybe at some point these B and C companies (Rocket Lab, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic) can take over the low tier/mundane stuff, while SpaceX is taking us to the Moon/Mars or beyond on a daily/weekly/monthly schedule.
- solarkraft 6y agoAs far as I know SpaceX don't offer substantially low prices for launching reused rockets yet. Why should they - there's no competitor forcing them to do it. While the extra money is certainly well invested in SpaceX, there's still the potential to lower prices through competition, if nothing else. The different approaches are also great to see. So far the pie looks big enough for everyone.
- shazmosushi 6y agoVirgin Orbit launches their LauncherOne to orbit from a 747 Jumbo Jet. Virgin Galactic aspires to launches people for suborbital tourism on SpaceShipTwo. Different companies.
- rrss 6y agoRocketlab does have "real world results" - they've launched customer payloads to orbit 18 times in the last few years. AFAIK, blue origin has not achieved orbit, and virgin orbit is still doing (years-delayed?) demonstration missions (which have achieved orbit), so I don't think it makes sense to lump all "not spacex" together.
- Gibbon1 6y agoInteresting thing to me is they haven't had any failures of primary components either. 18 launches, 10 engines per rocket, 180 total, no failures as far as I've read. Don't know if they are going to stay with the electric pump-fed engine design or not for the neutron.
- wffurr 6y agoSo what changed to make re-usable rockets reality? Is there a specific advance in materials science or computing that made this possible not just for SpaceX but other companies too? Or is it just an array of advances in a variety of fields that came together? Reading about the DC-X, it seems like this was possible in the 1990s but NASA had no interest in funding it for whatever mysterious reason: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X
- cma 6y agoShuttle was fully reusable. The boosters came back down on parachutes.
- dnautics 6y agoMain tank
- NikolaeVarius 6y agoMain tank is lost and side booster and shuttle required extensive refurbishing. It sorta counts, but against the point of reusability
- cma 6y agoStarship moved to tiles too, instead of transpirational cooling, it will likely require refurbishment. If shuttle had continued on tile inspection could have likely moved to machine vision based approaches, maybe they will be able to use something like that to keep refurb costs down on spacex's shuttle/starship.
- NikolaeVarius 6y agoThey are created with better materials and also do not require special one offs for every single tile, unlike the shuttle. Replacement is supposed to be "break it and attach a new one" without needing special glues, curing times which was the reason why shuttle heat shield refurbishment took so long at high cost.
- syntaxing 6y agoI've always been a big fan of rocket lab (Carbon Fiber layup + Metal 3D printing + electric rocket turbo sound amazing). But this announcement seems to coincide to their SPAC merger announcement so not sure what to think of it.
- jiofih 6y agoMarketing, clearly. Doesn’t mean it’s not a good opportunity.
- GoOnThenDoTell 6y agoI’m sad that they’re not building and launching it from New Zealand like the Electron rocket
- cnlevy 6y agoExactly half the Starship diameter. I wonder if they're planning for a 9m Neutron 2.0, like the 18m Starship 2.0 Musk has alluded to.
- justaguy88 6y agoElectron -> Neutron -> Proton...ohwhat
- gok 6y ago> Neutron will feature a reusable first stage designed to land on an ocean platform, enabling a high launch cadence and decreased launch costs for customers 10 years ago this was totally crazy and is now table stakes. Exciting times.
- everyone 6y agoWe seem to be throwing greater and greater quantities of frivolous shit into LEO. Are people in the industry not worried about Kessler syndrome?
- stevenhuang 6y agoAt our current launch rate, by 2210 we'll be at around ~22000 effective number of objects in LEO and see ~20-50 "catastrophic collisions" per year. We're not at that point yet so concern is not as great (but we're working on it). https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/9967/how-long-before-were-stuck-on-earth-due-to-space-debris-kessler-syndrome#10003 https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/9967/how-l...
- nickik 6y agoThe discipline in terms of orbit cleanup is actually far better. All sats need to have a de-orbit plan. We are also getting far better at monitoring both systematic and individual high accuracy measure. Both US and ESA are improving that technology. Commercial startups are also starting to work on it. ESA is already setting up technology to move objects from the ground with a laser. This is needed for moving dead objects. The first garbage truck mission is already financed by ESA. With Starship coming, garbage truck services will be pretty affordable and in 10-20 years removing your own dead sats will very likely be a requirement as well. Its a problem that needs to be worked on, but I am a bit sick of the endless doom and gloom and everytime anybody does anything in space everybody talks about Kessler syndrome.
- hermitcrab 6y agoThat page is a triumph of design over usability. My 55 year old eyes couldn't get past the colour scheme and font. Ugh.
- antattack 6y agoLooks like the new rocket will be made from stainless-steel rings, like Starship. https://www.rocketlabusa.com/rockets/neutron/ https://www.rocketlabusa.com/rockets/neutron/
- HPsquared 6y agoForgive my sarcasm, but now all they need to do is build it.
- coolspot 6y agoShouldn’t be that hard - it’s not rocket science.