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Old January 22nd 19, 11:53 AM posted to sci.space.policy
Jeff Findley[_6_]
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Default Stratolaunch Out Of Launch Vehicle Business

In article ,
says...

Stratolaunch is halting development of its own engines and launch
vehicles and focusing on aircraft development to launch
Northrop-Grumman boosters. This action, with the accompanying layoff
of 50 or so people, is occurring in the wake of Paul Allen's death and
may be a sign that without a 'sweetheart' investor the development of
their own engines and vehicles, announced last year, is just too
expensive for them to sustain.


Stratolaunch had put a lot of money into their expensive aircraft but
had not funded a launch vehicle development program to the same level.
Early on, they thought they could just partner with a launch company and
essentially get away without paying (much) development costs. In
hindsight, they should have started liquid fueled rocket engine
development when they started aircraft development.

Unfortunately, this was short sighted, IMHO.

The double whammy for Stratolaunch is the inherent limits on air launch
(on earth). Air launch requires an extremely large, extremely expensive
to develop, carrier aircraft for a rather unimpressive payload to LEO.

The final nail in the coffin for Stratolaunch is the fact that SpaceX
has proven out a way to recover first stages from orbital launch
vehicles with relatively little added development costs (I'd like to see
a direct comparison between SpaceX first stage recovery development
costs and the development costs for Stratolaunch's carrier aircraft).

One has to wonder if the same thing could happen to Blue Origin if
Jeff Bezos were to drop dead for some reason. That seems less likely,
as they're further along in vehicle development, but still possible.


Agreed that it's less likely for Blue Origin because they have already
won the engine contract for the Vulcan first stage (BE-4 engine). If
such a thing happened to Blue Origin, BE-4 would certainly continue to
be developed and built. So Blue Origin with its liquid fueled rocket
engines already has much of the development completed (or nearly
complete) for their entire launch vehicle.

All IMHO, of course.

Jeff
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