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> Nothing special just the first privately funded rocket to make it to orbit. That would be Pegasus in 1990, though. > The first new rocket engine developed i
by orbital-decay 4y ago
> Nothing special just the first privately funded rocket to make it to orbit.
That would be Pegasus in 1990, though.
> The first new rocket engine developed in the US for decades.
There were plenty of engines developed in the US in that timeframe. Merlin in particular was a "spiritual successor" of the Fastrac, and Kestrel was implemented by the former Beal Aerospace engineers who worked on BA-2 before being hired by SpaceX.
- peterfirefly 4y agoPegasus didn't have much of a path towards bigger payloads, though. (It's launched from underneath an airplane.)
- panick21_ 4y ago> That would be Pegasus in 1990, though. Fair point. > There were plenty of engines developed in the US in that timeframe. Engines that actually flew or at least fully finished development. As far as I know there are none.
- orbital-decay 4y agoBA-810 (by a SpaceX predecessor, huge cheap engine!), Fastrac, RS-68, XRS-2200, TR-106, to name a few. These are only large liquid fuel engines created from scratch which either flew or have been fully tested in the US in a decade before the Merlin-1A. There were many more solids, derivatives, small engines, upper stage engines etc.