Comment on Vulcan rocket's debut brings long-awaited challenge to SpaceX dominance
JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
It’s not really able to compete with SpaceX on price. But with customers like the DOD or Kuiper, there’s probably a market for someone who isn’t SpaceX.
weew@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
they can compete in very specific cases - like heavy load to GTO. Falcon Heavy would require full expenditure of all 3 cores to match, which wouldn’t be much cheaper. Plus the larger fairing size helps with certain kinds of satellites.
JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Yeah, but gto with fairings bigger then even the extended falcon heavy fairing willing to accept higher costs is a very narrow use case, I doubt it would support the whole vehicle. I’m guessing they will get quite a bit of business from trying to diversity away from SpaceX though.
weew@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
the point is that it isn’t higher cost for those missions. Falcon Heavy will have to run at 100% expended mode which is nearly the same cost as Vulcan.