RD-180 Ban Modification

[ethan829]

From Wikipedia:

'On May 13, 2014, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin announced that "Russia will ban the United States from using Russian-made rocket engines for military launches"[3]—a frequent payload of the ULA Atlas V launch vehicle which powers its first stage with a single RD-180 ...'

Is this no longer a concern?

It really never was a concern. Rogozin is well known for talking tough and not following through. This is the same guy who threatened not to fly US astronauts on Soyuz. He also once threatened to personally bomb Romania with a Tu-160 after they wouldn't allow his plane in their airspace.

[oldAtlas_Eguy]

With a possible 3rd provider that offers low prices for medium (probably slightly smaller sat capability than SpaceX but may have almost identical GTO capability due to LH2 US), ULA's assured 40% of gov will go away. This would happen at about the same time as ULA says that it would be able to start launching Vulcan.

If you are talking about Blue Origin, they have claimed that they are not interested in cargo launches, only human spaceflight. They may have just said that to assure their main customer ULA, but if they were really going for that market, why would they sell engines to their main competitor?

Most likely it will take BO possibly a few more years to get their LV operational than it will take ULA. Selling engines to ULA will get the engines production ramped up earlier than what BO would need them plus also have someone else discover any problems with flight. Plus their vehicle will still be for not all of Vulcan's capability but just for the lower end payloads. Having a revenue stream for the BE-4 production would defray significant costs for their own LV development. Plus if Vulcan is not developed this is the sceanareo where ULA would be in trouble not the one where Vulcan is developed. If Vulcan exists BO may never attempt to compete for gov contracts except for HSF.

[Chris Bergin]

Thread devolves really fast for various reasons. Locking for now, for a re-think on how this conversation can continue without low quality discussion.