Nothing egregious, its just an extension of the company culture everyone hears about in the press. They know who they are and what they do [relative to the rest of the industry] and that comes across at all levels. They don't treat customers as equals, they treat customers as a means to an end. Its no secret that A6 and NG will have comparable pricing F9 (no point in building a rocket that wouldn't) so it will be interesting to see how sentiment unfolds with competition. Then again, there also seems to be margin in an F9 that can bring the price down even more...
@bxr140 I just want to say thanks for your informative, thoughtful posts. I quite enjoy reading them, and you do a good job of sharing your knowledge in accessible terms. Your explanation on how to deal with precession was really good. Between the commenters on these types of threads here at TMC, and the comments on stories over at Ars, I learn a ton of interesting stuff that I'm not exposed to in my daily life otherwise.
Seems as though Khrunichev is considering reusability for Angara: Russia’s Roscosmos to consider option of Angara carrier rocket with reusable stages. Its always a little hard to accept Russian state news at face value, but if true this is good news (not to mention an imperative roadmap). Just to align, KhSC is a state-run shop that's 0th order equivalent-ish to ULA, if ULA was honest about being a state run shop.
It is difficult for me to envision that Russia has the financial resources to devote to developing a reusable vehicle. I think it’s just face saving talk that will not result in anything concrete. The Russian economy is resource-extraction based, primarily fossil fuels. Not a good long term strategy. See Key Facts about the Economy of Russia and Russian Economy Faces Deep Recession Amid Global Pandemic and Oil Crisis, Says New World Bank Report
It looks like the Electron failure was due to a wiring failure. Rocket Lab to Resume Electron Launches in August | Rocket Lab
Interesting turn of events for Telesat. Related, Maxar is up 21% on the news. Telesat's been struggling with funding for a while now, so maybe Maxar doesn't see the project going forward, or at least in any way that could be profitable for Maxar. Maxar backs away from Telesat LEO competition - SpaceNews This pretty much means the current Thales-Airbus marriage is the defecto partner for the Telesat constellation, with airbus supplying the platform--ostensibly leveraging OneWeb to some degree or another, since Airbus has rights to use components in other satellites--and Thales supplying the payload. You may remember that previously it was a Maxar-Thales forced marriage vs Airbus, which was Telesat's request after the original bids from Airbus, Thales, and Maxar were assessed. Those original bids produced a generally solid concept from Airbus, but a superior platform + weaker payload from Maxar and a superior payload + weaker platform from Thales (Maxar was leveraging their then-business-unit MDA for the payload). That marriage was always doomed to fail; after they divorced last year Maxar went back to the MDA well for another go at the payload and a full in-house solution...but then a few months ago Maxar decided to divest MDA... Got all that? If nothing else, old space is good for drama.
Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser gets a name. Sierra Nevada will be the third provider in the COTS 2 ISS resupply program. Meet 'Tenacity': 1st Dream Chaser space plane gets a name | Space
Less rising tide and more Bay of Fundy, Northrop is finally [publicly] pulling the plug on Omega. I know, I know. You're all completely shocked. Northrop Grumman weighing exit options for OmegA rocket - SpaceNews
Well it wasn't Electron Heavy. It's the upgraded kick stage: Photon. Originally mentioned a year ago but is now official and can be a satellite as well as a kick stage. So the announcement is for satellites to order.
Bit of a link-the-news day for me, but Tory Bruno--generally a straight up guy--has an interesting, if not light-on-details suggestion. TLDR, government funds should focus on building fuel reserves in space.
To which SpaceX tweeted this out today: NASA has selected Starship for a propellant transfer demonstration! Combining Starship’s rapid reusability with orbital refilling is critical to economically transporting large numbers of crew and cargo to the Moon and Mars Maybe Tory was trying to get some NASA funding to pursue the technology. SpaceX is probably wiling to do it for very little to nothing since they were already planning on doing it anyway.
Still no news on Telesat's satellite partner, but some interesting stuff in here on C-band and IPOing.
Vector is restarting under new ownership, targeting 'the suborbital market'. Honestly, I've never heard reference to any material 'suborbital market' so its curious what they actually mean by that. Like...are there a handful of government projects they're looking to capitalize on early? Like New Shepard recently did with the moon (or mars) landing lidar thing on the last flight?
From the article: Under/over for their mystery investor being tied to a non-US government? Regardless, not very exciting...