Main Engine Cut Off

Relativity now has a hell of a backlog, plenty of facilities, and the holy grail that is both an east and west coast launch site, if they can successfully build one at Vandenberg. I honestly wouldn’t bet on the latter.

Surprisingly, OmegA is on track to be the first to fly of the three new launch vehicles bidding for the National Security Space Launch program. Northrop Grumman is looking mighty smart to use a pair of RL10 engines on their upper stage rather than the BE-3U.

An FAA environmental assessment shed some light on changes that would come to SpaceX’s Falcon family if and when they’re selected as a Phase 2 launch provider: the new service tower that would be built at Pad 39A to support vertical integration of payloads, and the longer fairing that would be required for certain payloads.

Doug Messier has a hell of a read over on Parabolic Arc about the Firefly saga over the last three years. We’ve heard bits and pieces of this before, but there’s a ton in here about investors, some Vulcan (Stratolaunch) involvement I had not heard previously, and a bunch of accusations in both directions.

I could pretty much copy and paste my thoughts from last week about Dream Chaser flying on Vulcan: not surprising news since we had expected Atlas V, and I wonder what will happen if Vulcan doesn’t get to be a part of the next round of Air Force contracts.

It’s better news for ULA than it is for Sierra Nevada, but it’s not quite the type of commercial contract that we’d need to see for Vulcan to be a standalone success.

From what I’ve heard, Vulcan is making really good progress, and is one of the odds-on favorites for selection for NSSL Phase 2. That said, we’re still waiting for BE-4 to get to full power.

This shit is as annoying as when the Alabama Space Mafia does the same sort of thing.

Catching up on some reading, and there’s an interesting little tidbit on Dream Chaser’s launch costs in a SpaceNews article by Jeff Foust.