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I hope the roadmap for these guys includes controlled descent and landing for the rockets - otherwise they haven't got a snowballs chance against SpaceX. The ae
by dojomouse 12y ago
I hope the roadmap for these guys includes controlled descent and landing for the rockets - otherwise they haven't got a snowballs chance against SpaceX. The aerospike dependence on aerodynamics implies it will be much less effective when running in reverse for the landing phase - better have a way around this. When you look at the breakdown of fuel cost vs vehicle cost, it's obvious that reusable rockets will win so resoundingly that everything else will probably fall by the wayside.
- Solarsail 12y agoI'm not so sure the economics works so well for reusables. Flying a reuseable LV requires (as far as anybody's managed, we'll see with SpaceX) far more work than just fuel & go. Typically you'd need a lot of maintenance work and repairs between each flight, not to mention the added complexity to the vehicle required for recovery. That's largely why the Shuttle wound up pushing a billion per launch, instead of the $10 million initially targeted, or the $110 million marginal cost of a launch.
- dojomouse 12y agoIt depends heavily on the level of refurbishment required between flights; agreed. I don't think there's enough examples to say "typically". The shuttle didn't come close to targets, but SpaceX seem to be progressing pretty well. At the very least, a new orbital launch venture which is existentially dependent on SpaceX failing to achieve something that they're very well on track to achieving seems pretty commercially risky... and that's in the already highly commercially risky domain of space launch in general :-)