Main Engine Cut OffThe total AR1 agreement is valued at $804 million, so it’s just about halfway there. Worth noting that the Falcon 9 launch vehicle was developed for $390 million. And that includes the cost of Falcon 1 development.
Cutting travel time to Mars from six to four months is not unique to nuclear thermal propulsion, and more importantly, getting there two months faster is pretty pointless without the most important piece: a lander.
In the wake of the announcement that Dream Chaser will fly to the ISS on an Atlas V 552, I’ve been curious how much performance the dual engine Centaur will add to the Atlas V configurations we know and love.
A launch on an Atlas V 552 probably runs pretty damn close to the $200 million mark. Yikes.
XCOR laid off the rest of its staff and is closing up shop after losing a contract with ULA, which leaves ULA in an interesting spot for Vulcan-ACES. On the ULA side, they won their first Phase 1A contract from the Air Force, and the contract price sheds some light on just how much they’re cutting their costs.
I always thought the north side of the UK would be a great spot for a polar launch site. Some will liken this to the spaceport dilemma in the US, but it’s totally different.
This leaves ULA’s Vulcan-ACES in an interesting position. Blue Origin and Aerojet Rocketdyne are now in direct competition for engines on both stages of Vulcan-ACES: BE-4 and AR1 for the first stage, BE-3U and RL10 for ACES.
The EELV section of the House Armed Services Committee markup is quite interesting. The full committee will be marking up the bill today, so things may change quite a bit. But until then, there are a few interesting bits within.
The entire hour-long show is absolutely worth a listen—she gives a good update on where SpaceX is at, currently—but one particular moment stood out.
Andy Pasztor hasn’t been very fond of SpaceX over the years, but his recent article on SpaceX’s double-launch weekend is something else.