Comment by cubefox | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cubefox | Hacker News Reader

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> "I’ve been around long enough to know that any rocket development program is hard, even if you make it as simple as possible," [the Stoke Space CEO] responded. "But this industry is going toward full reusability. To me, that is the inevitable end state. When you start with that north star, any other direction you take is a diversion. If you start designing anything else, it’s not something where you can back into full reusability at any point. It means you’ll have to stop and start over to climb the mountain."

I wonder whether this is really true in the long term. Their current "Nova" rocket is projected to deliver only five tons to LEO, so I assume they eventually want to go bigger. The question is whether their current design can be scaled up to a significantly larger vehicle. Otherwise they will also need to "start over", just like the other companies that are currently working on partial reusability will need to come up with different designs once they go to full reusability.

The whole thing that differentiates this company from the dozen other seemingly-interchangeable new-space entrants is the novel technology they've developed to facilitate reuse. Even if it were the case that there isn't a market for five tons to LEO (and to be clear, Rocket Lab seems to be doing decent business launching a lot less) and all this was was a technology demonstrator, why would you build a technology demonstrator that doesn't show off the thing that makes your company interesting?

RocketLab isn't doing decent buissness launching less. Launch is a small part of their revenue and the make low or negative profit.

They are developing an 8t to orbit rocket.

The market today cares about constellation. Its about launch rate and cost.

5 tons is more then enough for the types of sats that go into all the constellations.

5 tons doesn't seem to be enough.

> Amazon Kuiper is positioning to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink broadband constellation but it would not rule out seeking launch services from its competitor given the tight deadline, Limp said. “We are open to talking to SpaceX. You’d be crazy not to, given their track record.”

> The Falcon 9 [22.8 tons to LEO], however, is not as large as Amazon would like it to be in order to get maximum bang for its launch buck, as Kuiper satellites are larger than Starlink’s.

> “I would say Falcon 9 is probably at the low end of the capacity that we need,” Limp said. Perhaps a better option would be Falcon Heavy or the much larger Starship, which is still in development. As Starship transitions to production readiness, “that becomes a very viable candidate for us as well.”

https://spacenews.com/as-clock-ticks-on-amazons-constellatio...

> The Falcon 9 [22.8 tons to LEO], however, is not as large as Amazon would like it to be

At the end of the day its about price and launch rate. An individual sat isn't 5t.

I think this is more marketing speak to pretend they had technical reasons not to pick Falcon 9.

Maybe, but they also say Starship would be the best option. There is no way Nova or any other rocket could compete here. Nova would only be good relative to Starship for launching individual smaller payloads into specific orbits, so not for satellite constellations.

The X-prize Lunar Lander Challenge was an interesting alternative way to get to reusable rockets.

There were rules to take off from one pad and land on another pad while hovering 90 seconds. And the higher level challenge had 180 seconds of hovering. And then the rocket must fly back (after refueling).

This doesn't need any complicated launch ranges and permits like "real" rockets. But the delta vee capability needed to hover that long is still significant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Lander_Challenge

I think it's a shame it didn't directly lead to viable businesses. Armadillo Aerospace and Masten Space and others acted as an inspiration though. You can make rocket flights reliable and relatively routine.

If they could have made that work as a business, say, first for sounding rockets, then they could have scaled that up to orbital.

Back in the 2008 era there wasn't that much VC money floating around either...

It certainly would have been far more effective for NASA to spend money on private companies instead of spending those billions on their Constellation program. Even today, NASA invests far more money into the in-house project SLS/Orion than into rockets by private space companies.

So there was enough money, it was just spent inefficiently by a government agency.

Yes, definitely, but that's politically hard though. Ie the NASA administrator can't do that on their own. EELV:s had supposed "black zones". Ares I was the thing. And so on. Even when Dragon and Cygnus were a thing, SLS had to be developed.

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