[AR] Re: Another small launch company bites the dust - Aphelion Orbitals calls it quits
- From: Ben Brockert <wikkit@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2018 14:14:37 -0800
On Fri, Dec 14, 2018 at 1:40 PM Rand Simberg <simberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
So is there a lesson here for ULA re: BE-4 (or AR1, had they chosen it)?
ULA is such a weird construct of rent seeking and sanctioned monopoly
that the challenges of newspace startups almost certainly shouldn't be
applied to them. Blue is newspace but not startup; they have no
obligation to pretend to ever return any of their investment.
I'd say that ULA's acknowledgment that they aren't equipped to build
an engine is a good sign and competing Blue vs. Aerojet was a good
idea. Orbital demonstrated (twice!) that you can buy an engine from an
established player and be competitive in government launch contracts
(though not at all competitive in commercial launch contracts) so
there is a proof of concept. If they think they're going to be
commercially competitive with SpaceX then they better have a good
theory of how they're going to do that better than Antares.
Related, if Elon Musk was really serious about humanity expanding out
into space, then SpaceX would be selling Merlins and letting other
people figure out compelling things to do with them. They are
completely unwilling to do that and have never done anything more than
taking suitors money and giving them nothing in return.
Ben
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