Submitted 10 months ago by stopthatgirl7@kbin.social to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2024/01/11/tech/vulcan-rocket-spacex-dominance/
Dependence on SpaceX has been a concern for the Pentagon, which wants multiple vendors of rides to orbit.
Well… Capability wise there’s still a huge gap between SpaceX and all the rest. The Vulcan is only competition for Falcon 9 because the DoD wants an alternative at all cost.
Yeah, this is not a competitor in terms of cost or launch cadence. Just good to have any second option.
India and China have active space programs, and all other concerns aside, the more, the merrier. I really hope ESA starts demonstrating some progress; it’s about the only thing that could shame the US Gov into properly funding NASA.
ESA demonstrating progress?! Maybe by Ariane 9. Whatever abomination Ariane 6 is, it ain’t competitive.
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.
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.
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.
So the company is called Vulcan?
A Boeing-Lockheed joint venture’s launch of a new Vulcan rocket
It’s the first sentence of the article…
FlexibleToast@lemmy.world 10 months ago
The important part about this is that Vulcan doesn’t just use yet another Russian bought rocket engine. It uses BE-4, from Blue Origin. Finally, someone other than SpaceX building rockets. Too bad it’s the other out of touch billionaire with too much power and influence that is doing it.
WHYAREWEALLCAPS@kbin.social 10 months ago
Right? What could possibly go wrong by putting our future in space in the hands of a bunch of narcissistic dickbag billionaires?
TimeSquirrel@kbin.social 10 months ago
Nobody ever said it we start spreading into space, we won't be taking all our current problems with us. Star Trek kinda gave us a rosy vision.
MumboJumbo@lemmy.world 10 months ago
SYLRC (Support Your Local Rocket Company) Seriously though, there’s a lot of new ones coming online and/or developing: Stoke, Astra, Relativity, Rocket Lab, etc… Yeah, it sucks that two of the behemoths are ran by egomaniacal sociopaths, but some of the other ones are bringing some cool tech and innovation to the table, and even getting government contracts.