With the Arion 1, PLD Space wants to gain enough technical and commercial experience before going forward with Arion 2's design, an bigger orbital microlauncher. It seems that the Arion 2 will finally have 2 stages (they were pondering whether to add a third stage) and multiple engines on the first stage. This rocket will use technologies originally created for the Arion 1, including various of the recovery techniques. By the way, if you're of those who think that Arion sounds similar to Ariane, don't worry, because Raśl Torres - one of the CEO's of the company - has told me that they have the intention to change its name soon to avoid any confusion.
According to their launch manifest for the Arion 1, they are charging ~1M$ for a suborbital flight with a nominal payload of 100 kg. Is it worth to pay 10,000 $/kg for a +4 minutes of microgravity? It is not even orbital.
Note watch out for July 16th. 😁
@PLD_Space and @TelespazioVEGAD sign MoU to provide suborbital flight opportunities from Europe on-board ARION 1Source.
Known as T2 bench, this new facility at @TeruelAirport will help us to qualify the complete flight vehicle for our first space launch attempt next year.This is a huge step forward for @PLD_Space and our #Microlauncher space program.
https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1047473376548335616
GNC: outsourced to GMVRecovery: outsourced to AirborneStructures: outsourced to AciturriNosecones: outsourced to RuagLaunch site: outsourced to CSGIt's more like a PC "manufacturer" who just assembles components, not clear what they do in-house at this point. And not a very low cost model either...
Interesting deck. But do I read it right that they moved from 150kg to 300kg class? In other words they have completely re-designed the second launcher Arion 2 to be much bigger?