[AR] Re: Another small launch company bites the dust - Aphelion Orbitals calls it quits
- From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2018 15:40:02 -0500 (EST)
On Thu, 13 Dec 2018, Bill Bruner wrote:
My contribution to 20-20 hindsight is - if you're a rocket company with
$500K, buy printed engines from Ursa Major or ARC.
Do they come with warranties? Serious question -- if they don't, then
they aren't sufficiently fully developed for buying them to be a
no-brainer. (For a solid product, there is plenty of development work
that comes *after* the "videos of successful firings" stage.) Buying them
might nevertheless make sense, but "it's a brainer" -- a decision with
both pluses and minuses, requiring careful thought.
Not least, careful thought is indicated because the technology/product
space is not well explored and there may well be opportunities for
significant competitive advantage in parts of it. The Wrights didn't
build their own engines because nobody else was building them, or because
they couldn't afford to buy them -- they built their own because none of
the off-the-shelf products came anywhere near meeting their specs.
Airplane makers don't make their own engines - that went out with the
Wright brothers.
The engine business kept Curtiss-Wright alive through the 1930s, and in
fact outlasted their aircraft business. The J65 engines in the early
Skyhawks and the first F-104 prototypes had "Wright" nameplates on them.
Henry
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