Quote from: Darkseraph on 10/21/2017 09:06 amQuote from: Lars-J on 10/21/2017 12:50 amHow is it already reusable? It's early in development, and re-usability has not been something that AJR has promoted as a part of AR-1 - unless I missed it.AR-1 is a candidate for SMART reuse on Vulcan. So is BE-4 and that one is actually being designed and constructed for reuse (given it's role on New Glenn).
Quote from: Lars-J on 10/21/2017 12:50 amHow is it already reusable? It's early in development, and re-usability has not been something that AJR has promoted as a part of AR-1 - unless I missed it.AR-1 is a candidate for SMART reuse on Vulcan.
How is it already reusable? It's early in development, and re-usability has not been something that AJR has promoted as a part of AR-1 - unless I missed it.
Martin said the AR1 could be reused if selected by ULA.“We have had discussions with ULA about reusability, and in the context of their concept, where it’s (something) like five to 10 reuses, AR1 meets that requirement,” Martin said. “For example, during development testing, we’ll baseline testing these engines at least 20 times, and usually quite a bit more. They’re inherently reusable to a certain amount, and then it’s just a question of how reusable.
They have to have limited reuse to allow for testing/qualification/aborts.Better question - are they designed for reflights? BE-4 is/many.Suggestion - ask AJR about how many reflights for AR-1? Highly likely they'll hedge the question
Quote from: Space Ghost 1962 on 10/31/2017 06:21 pmThey have to have limited reuse to allow for testing/qualification/aborts.Better question - are they designed for reflights? BE-4 is/many.Suggestion - ask AJR about how many reflights for AR-1? Highly likely they'll hedge the question BE-4 is designed for 100 or more flights, based on Blue's targets for New Glenn reflight.RD-180 is rated for 10 reflights (IIRC) so AR-1 probably is designed to that spec if it's designed for reflight at all.
There is definitely competing interests there. For ULA competing with AR-1 being a very expensive engine ($25M a pair) will be very difficult without reuse. But for AR only selling one pair for every 10 flights they wouldn't have a hope of breaking even.
The root presumption was that space would always remain small, hard, and rare. I.E. that a BO or a SX would never happen.
Quote from: Space Ghost 1962 on 11/03/2017 06:20 pmThe root presumption was that space would always remain small, hard, and rare. I.E. that a BO or a SX would never happen.Given history, not exactly a bad wager. SX made it just barely by the skin of their teeth with a big assist from NASA (COTS/CRS).
They are, as Sowers describes, professional leeches. That is in fact what they were designed to be by circumstance, as an outgrowth of decision from the Nixon administration's forced acqusitions in aerospace.So when people talk of using AR-1 with yet another government program, it doesn't necessarily do AJR the kind of favor it really needs to remedy its root issues. It just gives the leach another artery to temporarily avoid the necessary reinvention. This does not make a firm better. And that idiot Casper Wienberger, while not directly complicit in this situation, did create this, one of many, by a colossal idiocy that caused many of these, ironically to "make Amercian aerospace great again".
Quote from: Space Ghost 1962 on 11/03/2017 06:20 pmThey are, as Sowers describes, professional leeches. That is in fact what they were designed to be by circumstance, as an outgrowth of decision from the Nixon administration's forced acqusitions in aerospace.So when people talk of using AR-1 with yet another government program, it doesn't necessarily do AJR the kind of favor it really needs to remedy its root issues. It just gives the leach another artery to temporarily avoid the necessary reinvention. This does not make a firm better. And that idiot Casper Wienberger, while not directly complicit in this situation, did create this, one of many, by a colossal idiocy that caused many of these, ironically to "make Amercian aerospace great again". I'm thinking of the analogy that AJR is like a virus that infects ULA. Raising it's prices is like raising the temperature of the body. Sooner or later either the body overcomes the virus or the body dies. They are both a product of the USG's absolute desire to maintain access to space at all times, regardless of a level of price inflation that sometimes seems to outsiders a lot like extortion.
More of a decision for AJR than a decision for ULA.Unlike the past, ULA is getting to the point where it has more options. The pivot point appears to be the down selection of engine providers for Vulcan. (Were AR-1 to be selected, Vulcan would in effect become an even more narrower (because of expectation of flight frequency) platform than Atlas V.) If BO carries through with timely qualification of BE-4 for Vulcan, we may see a much broader platform than previously described.The original point of AR-1 was missed. Does AJR want to narrow its options still further? It's really easy and seductive to follow the old game plan of using Congress to proffer more contracts to keep the old space masters alive. But when there's too much new, and the old ones can't play the new game, at some point this becomes ... risky.It's always been necessary to reorient the firm, just like ULA, to have a greater revenue base through commercial contracts to offset likely "shrinkage" in govt contracts. An AR1 contact to supplant SLS solids, while causing a hit eventually to NG/OA, won't breath much life into AJR. And in the interim Centaur 3/5 use of RL10 at high price, more than the booster engine, might be tolerable ... but its long term viability is in doubt. If AJR only sells infrequently flown engines on govt HSF vehicles, it becomes a single customer company whose fortunes might be tied to a single LV that's 20x more costly with 2-3 alternatives that might replace it?
Answered upthread. They get lobbyists to insist on its use as "Advanced boosters for SLS" in LRE to displace the solids, which were abandoned politically earlier. (Which does have a sensible point, as it did then, because the solids limit the performance of SLS, and get you much of Block 2 performance, at a political cost.)But this would be a desperate gamble. And before its brought up, AR-1 is too expensive for use on Antares to displace the RD-181's.I suppose Congress could write a law banning non indigenous LRE's.
{snip}I found it very telling that when ULA and AJR (or whatever it was called then) had the same corporate parent and ULA was shopping for an RL10 replacement they went to XCOR to develop it.