Author Topic: Antares General Discussion Thread  (Read 363214 times)

Offline edkyle99

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Re: Antares General Discussion Thread
« Reply #520 on: 02/17/2015 05:17 am »
Here's the thing about Antares.  When it returns to flight, it will have the highest performing hydrocarbon engine in the U.S., and will be the newest engine in the U.S..  The engine will share production overhead costs with Russia's new primary rocket, Angara, so it will be both "low cost" and will benefit from Angara development and flight experience.  It will be topped by the newest, most efficient high thrust solid motor in the U.S., produced in-house by Orbital ATK, so it will be "low cost" in that regard.  It will occupy a payload category all by itself.  It will continue to be conservatively run by one of the better managed companies in this business, while its competitors are all spending aggressively right now to develop new systems. 

I wouldn't count Antares out. 

 - Ed Kyle
« Last Edit: 02/17/2015 05:19 am by edkyle99 »

Offline woods170

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Re: Antares General Discussion Thread
« Reply #521 on: 02/17/2015 06:23 am »
Here's the thing about Antares.  When it returns to flight, it will have the highest performing hydrocarbon engine in the U.S., and will be the newest engine in the U.S..  The engine will share production overhead costs with Russia's new primary rocket, Angara, so it will be both "low cost" and will benefit from Angara development and flight experience.  It will be topped by the newest, most efficient high thrust solid motor in the U.S., produced in-house by Orbital ATK, so it will be "low cost" in that regard.  It will occupy a payload category all by itself.  It will continue to be conservatively run by one of the better managed companies in this business, while its competitors are all spending aggressively right now to develop new systems. 

I wouldn't count Antares out. 

 - Ed Kyle
The flight-rate of Antares, at least for the near term, will be higher than that of Angara. If anything, Antares will not benefit from Angara related flight experience for RD-181. It will be the other way around: The RD-191 of Angara will benefit from the Antares related flight experience of RD-181. I can see why Energomash was so anxious to sell RD-181 to Orbital.
« Last Edit: 02/17/2015 06:29 am by woods170 »

Offline tobi453

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Re: Antares General Discussion Thread
« Reply #522 on: 02/17/2015 05:15 pm »
It will continue to be conservatively run by one of the better managed companies in this business, while its competitors are all spending aggressively right now to develop new systems. 

I wouldn't count Antares out. 

 - Ed Kyle

Orbital and good management? When you look at the results of Orbital and SpaceX, the difference is obvious! Both of them started their rocket developments with COTS and what did they archieve?

Falcon 9 - 15 performed launches, 1 semi failure, lots of commercial/government payloads waiting to be launched
Antares - 5 performed launches, 1 failure, no non-CRS launch contracts so far...

Offline arachnitect

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Re: Antares General Discussion Thread
« Reply #523 on: 02/17/2015 05:21 pm »
Here's the thing about Antares.  When it returns to flight, it will have the highest performing hydrocarbon engine in the U.S., and will be the newest engine in the U.S..  The engine will share production overhead costs with Russia's new primary rocket, Angara, so it will be both "low cost" and will benefit from Angara development and flight experience.  It will be topped by the newest, most efficient high thrust solid motor in the U.S., produced in-house by Orbital ATK, so it will be "low cost" in that regard.  It will occupy a payload category all by itself.  It will continue to be conservatively run by one of the better managed companies in this business, while its competitors are all spending aggressively right now to develop new systems. 

I wouldn't count Antares out. 

 - Ed Kyle

It has that payload class to itself but with severe limitations.

-To anything other than a low inclination LEO orbit they need one of their third stages.
-They have some options to high inclination and SSO from Wallops, but it's severely limited.
-Wallops doesn't have the same support infrastructure as Florida and VAFB.
-Can't launch DoD payloads due to Russian engines.

Having the Medium market to themselves is great, but Spacex is selling Falcons for ~$80M. I don't know if Orbital can beat that. Antares 200 has $34M tied up in first stage propulsion alone. If that's not enough, they also have to compete with Soyuz from Kourou.

Offline TrevorMonty

Re: Antares General Discussion Thread
« Reply #524 on: 02/17/2015 05:39 pm »

SpaceX is LV provider only at present, while launch services only account for a 3rd of Orbital's business, they don't' need to go head to head with SpaceX and ULA to be profitable or survive. If their profitable CRS business disappears they will not go out of business.

Offline rayleighscatter

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Re: Antares General Discussion Thread
« Reply #525 on: 02/17/2015 05:48 pm »
Orbital and good management? When you look at the results of Orbital and SpaceX, the difference is obvious! Both of them started their rocket developments with COTS and what did they archieve?

Falcon 9 - 15 performed launches, 1 semi failure, lots of commercial/government payloads waiting to be launched
Antares - 5 performed launches, 1 failure, no non-CRS launch contracts so far...
A more correct take on it is that the Antares started development 5 years later than Falcon 9.

Offline newpylong

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Re: Antares General Discussion Thread
« Reply #526 on: 02/17/2015 06:08 pm »
It will continue to be conservatively run by one of the better managed companies in this business, while its competitors are all spending aggressively right now to develop new systems. 

I wouldn't count Antares out. 

 - Ed Kyle

Orbital and good management? When you look at the results of Orbital and SpaceX, the difference is obvious! Both of them started their rocket developments with COTS and what did they archieve?

Falcon 9 - 15 performed launches, 1 semi failure, lots of commercial/government payloads waiting to be launched
Antares - 5 performed launches, 1 failure, no non-CRS launch contracts so far...

Apples to Oranges. There is much more to Orbital than Antares.

Offline newpylong

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Re: Antares General Discussion Thread
« Reply #527 on: 02/17/2015 06:15 pm »

GenCorp earned money because they are going to redevelop Canoga Park. It was actually a real estate transaction. The removal of the president has probably to do with normal business issues. The ULA NGLV propulsion loss might have had a lot more to do with it. They still have SLS's RS-25D.
... And the RS-25 will only be about 2 engines per year, at best. Even at inflated prices, that's not a lot to run your business on. And doesn't ULA currently have a stockpile of RL-10's they are going through. Not a lot of business at the moment.

Current plan is 4 RS-25s per year once production starts again.

Yes, some RL-10s exist but the majority are being converted to RL-10C so that is some revenue. More will be needed for the SLS EUS and most likely ULA's new upper stage.

Still probably not enough orders after losing RS-68 eventually though.

Offline Space Ghost 1962

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Re: Antares General Discussion Thread
« Reply #528 on: 02/17/2015 09:44 pm »
A good analysis as always Space Ghost.  But I think you hit on it there about 3.7m wide new composite solids.  Unless and until SLS is cancelled, it seems like ATK Advanced solids are going to be a given for SLS after the first couple of launches.  That means NASA money flowing into OrbATK to develop them.  A big booster segment will be different than a stand along monolithic 3.7m wide booster for an Antares replacement.  But the NASA money would pay for the tooling required to make those 3.7m wide casings, and after that tooling exists, they really wouldn't be dependant on NASA so not sure that Wallstreet would care much.

Thank you Lobo. Rare to hear any encouragement here to speak more about anything.

Yes big solids are on "keep alive" with SLS, but as with any politically "too big to fail", fiat driven product of the arsenal system, they drag along baggage with the benefit of funding. You see, once you turn down the path of such development, things creep in, either as expedients "to make it go" somehow (but not for the right reason), or as "acceptants" (good enough for govt work but not acceptable fora business). Once in, they are difficult and tedious to remove.

The greatness of the EELV program was to weed out many of these, and transition to an almost rational business. (Aside, think that competition from SpaceX is reinvigorating what had become a stolid pace or retreat from same - hope for a committed, stable, balanced, evolving, multiple launch service provider market).

Lobo, I know you've really wanted to see something "useful" come out of the big solids side. Hate to rain on that parade, but the time for that was during STS and it past. And I can't bring it up again here, because the same abject blindness is omnipresent. If you want to understand this area more, study Europe's large solids in detail - they have gone further than America in rational economics for big solids, but are hobbled by political division, funding, and geo return.

Yes SLS can underwrite a "fast start" and parallel funding. But even with that, the incremental part of fixed costs is more than Antares. And, any threat to SLS, or postponement of developments/launches/missions would cause short selling and "death watch" mania that no rational business wants.

Then it's just a matter of getting the propellant pour and throat correct to make a monolithic booster out of those segment lengths.  Should be much easier than a mult-segment configuration I'd imagine.
As long as the transport and handling costs are mitigated, yes. But they have never been for STS, so won't be for SLS, where govt would rather spend the money elsewhere, because the improvement to a "infrequent flyer" makes no sense to them - see above.

As you said, RD-181 gets Antares flying again with the least amount of investment and the fastest time.  But it's hard to see a long term business model for that for OrbATK especially if they want USAF/DoD business as they say they do. 
Agreed. It's a pipe dream OrbATK doing nat sec launches.

Big solids solve both the Russian engine issue and the Ukrainian core issue, -and- brings it all in-house which SpaceX has shown is advantageous.  And the infrastructure to get them to CCAFS is already in place.  (unsure about VAFB, but obviously they had a way to get STS solid segments there back in the 80's, so there must be rail access from Utah to there?)
It can be brought back, but since it's been gone for far longer, much more costly. May be better ways to do so, but these (and this) are irrelevant to govt interests like discussed above.

As Ed has referenced in the past, a two SLS booster segment sized monolithic motors stacked on each other with a large hydrolox upper stage. ... I'd think between ATK and OSC, they could develop their own upper stage in-house, if they have an engine for it.
He was talking about lower incremental cost solids derived from existing projects, in the same theme as how the second stage was done - ATK's best area.

They have done work on LRE second stages, but Orb is hesitant about too much change too fast. It would appear that history proved Antares 130 was apparently that.

For heavier payloads, three 1st stage solid motors are put together in parallell.  (This all assumes new CCAFS and VAFB pads anyway, they'd build them to handle a tri-core configuration)
Who underwrites the pad like MARS was? Who is trusted not to screw it up again in like kind?

Otherwise, I don't see much of a long term business model for them with Antares launching from only Wallops as arachnitect said.  Maybe limited commercial comsat business assuming there's no interruptions in Russian engines and Ukrainian cores would be about all they could compete for aside from CRS I believe?
Antares was to be a Delta-II replacement. WFF is fine for that. As a "gap filler". F9/AV are in contrast "frequent flyers".

But F9 is getting the Delta II payloads now. To survive, Antares 2 will have to steal payloads. It will be seen as an unproven LV, and they cannot afford to test LV/LRE like F9, so they may not have the reliability of AV or F9.
The military will always need solid motors due to the launch immediately requirement.  How much of space launch should/could take advantage of that requirement?  A sober business analysis would be good here.
The next platform for the military will either/both be hypersonic cruise missiles (see Russian treaty violations), or son of Midgetman - from where we get the GEM line of Delta solids (actually the GEMS are much bigger). Super Strypi is an example of a single launch LV platform from same. The analysis currently accepted, which has a rather large thumb on the scale, does not look promising (turnover rate of weapons upgrade is too little, dev sched too long as well). Typical impedance mismatch between use models for each application.

Is there any way at all that Antares in its current, as antonioe called it, upside down Isp configuration can compete with Falcon 9 for cost and reliability?  I think its days are numbered.  My consideration of an all-solid version would only be negligibly more sanguine.
Original choices were to minimize cost and amount of novel propulsion systems. Next investment was meant to be uprating the second stage.

Too much needs to change and be new, thus cost/risk doesn't have the prior platform(s) to leverage off of.

Too much of a miracle to pull off, at a point when rivals are better proven.

I'm not sure I agree with throwing all of AR under the "no LOX/RP competence bus."  Canoga entered the stage long after Sacramento and Dulles made that dubious decision.
Didn't mean that. Meant they have to prove themselves now, can't ride on past laurels as before.

They can do a kerolox LRE. But then, they should have done more of a kerolox LRE already. "Put up or shut up" time?

Here's the thing about Antares.  When it returns to flight, it will have the highest performing hydrocarbon engine in the U.S., and will be the newest engine in the U.S..
Lovely aerospace romanticism Ed.

Unproven LV. And the payload/performance benefits delivered by that engine to the LV against more proven competition aren't significant enough to matter.

It will occupy a payload category all by itself.
F9R? Might likely be reflown by that time. What if its economic? What if you've been wrong all along and too pessimistic on reuse? We both know they'd get creamed.

It will continue to be conservatively run by one of the better managed companies in this business, while its competitors are all spending aggressively right now to develop new systems. 
That is yet to be seen in regards to LV. Want to talk about OCO and other sins?

...The engine will share production overhead costs with Russia's new primary rocket, Angara, so it will be both "low cost" and will benefit from Angara development and flight experience.
The flight-rate of Antares, at least for the near term, will be higher than that of Angara. If anything, Antares will not benefit from Angara related flight experience for RD-181. It will be the other way around: The RD-191 of Angara will benefit from the Antares related flight experience of RD-181. I can see why Energomash was so anxious to sell RD-181 to Orbital.
Absolutely. And am not keen on the means to prove this LV given current experience. Nor in the geopolitical environment hastening this process.

Orbital and good management? When you look at the results of Orbital and SpaceX, the difference is obvious! Both of them started their rocket developments with COTS and what did they archieve?

Falcon 9 - 15 performed launches, 1 semi failure, lots of commercial/government payloads waiting to be launched
Antares - 5 performed launches, 1 failure, no non-CRS launch contracts so far...
A more correct take on it is that the Antares started development 5 years later than Falcon 9.
Pardon me, but Orbital has done more LV's, and over a much longer time. Expect more from them as well as shorter time to prove a new LV. Also, company has been around much, much longer.

Same is even more true for ULA.


GenCorp earned money because they are going to redevelop Canoga Park. It was actually a real estate transaction. The removal of the president has probably to do with normal business issues. The ULA NGLV propulsion loss might have had a lot more to do with it. They still have SLS's RS-25D.
... And the RS-25 will only be about 2 engines per year, at best. Even at inflated prices, that's not a lot to run your business on. And doesn't ULA currently have a stockpile of RL-10's they are going through. Not a lot of business at the moment.

Current plan is 4 RS-25s per year once production starts again.
Not yet authorized. Clouds on the horizon.

Yes, some RL-10s exist but the majority are being converted to RL-10C so that is some revenue. More will be needed for the SLS EUS and most likely ULA's new upper stage.
I am skeptical.

Still probably not enough orders after losing RS-68 eventually though.
Absolutely.

Offline rayleighscatter

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Re: Antares General Discussion Thread
« Reply #529 on: 02/17/2015 10:54 pm »

Pardon me, but Orbital has done more LV's, and over a much longer time. Expect more from them as well as shorter time to prove a new LV. Also, company has been around much, much longer.
And SpaceX has been working on liquid rockets much longer.

It's like comparing apples to orange juice.
« Last Edit: 02/17/2015 10:57 pm by rayleighscatter »

Offline Space Ghost 1962

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Re: Antares General Discussion Thread
« Reply #530 on: 02/17/2015 11:27 pm »

Pardon me, but Orbital has done more LV's, and over a much longer time. Expect more from them as well as shorter time to prove a new LV. Also, company has been around much, much longer.
And SpaceX has been working on liquid rockets much longer.

It's like comparing apples to orange juice.
Hypers? I think Orbital beats SpaceX by more than a decade along there.

You could use that style of argument to make all LV providers/sources different for less than significant reasons.

I'd wish to challenge that with any that become a launch services provider, they've had to make the whole set of choices to do so. In this process, they have to become experts in all relevant propulsion choices (as well as others) to have the experience to make the decision.

Let me get this straight, everyone in this industry has the knowledge for these decisions as far as I see it. Am not saying otherwise. My issue I am leaning upon here is not that, but in justifying those decisions as they played out.

And a critical eye to that as they revisit such decisions. Because it is warranted. So what if its hard nosed.

Offline rayleighscatter

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Re: Antares General Discussion Thread
« Reply #531 on: 02/17/2015 11:40 pm »
everyone in this industry has the knowledge for these decisions as far as I see it.
Hence my earlier point about how SpaceX had a 5 year head start on their LV. The longevity of the companies and prior work being irrelevant as both had the knowledge for those decisions.

Offline Space Ghost 1962

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Re: Antares General Discussion Thread
« Reply #532 on: 02/18/2015 12:04 am »
everyone in this industry has the knowledge for these decisions as far as I see it.
Hence my earlier point about how SpaceX had a 5 year head start on their LV. The longevity of the companies and prior work being irrelevant as both had the knowledge for those decisions.
And I was referring to past LV designs prior to the existence of SpaceX. What makes you think only of the most recent or public? Or that SpaceX has somehow been anticipating Orbital, and been able to evade Orbitals 33 year history?

Sorry, doesn't wash. Please don't strain so hard. You are better than that.

Offline rayleighscatter

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Re: Antares General Discussion Thread
« Reply #533 on: 02/18/2015 12:53 am »
And I'm still referring to the Antares having a development cycle five years shorter than F9.

As this discussion seems to be going in tight little circles here I'm bowing out.

Offline edkyle99

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Re: Antares General Discussion Thread
« Reply #534 on: 02/18/2015 02:23 am »
Orbital and good management? When you look at the results of Orbital and SpaceX, the difference is obvious! Both of them started their rocket developments with COTS and what did they archieve?
Orbital ATK had $5.14 billion in revenues during the past year. 

What did SpaceX bring in?  Six launches at $70 million plus a bit more for the Dragons, maybe half a billion?  Certainly less than $1 billion.

Orbital ATK had $322 million in earnings last year.  SpaceX?  Did it spend less or more than it brought in? 

Consider those Falcon 9 v1.1 launches of Orbital-built satellites last year.  Who made more money on each of those flights - Space X or Orbital?

I'm hoping SpaceX turns out to be as successful as Orbital ATK, but I'm wondering after reading about Tesla's most recent quarterly.

 - Ed Kyle
« Last Edit: 02/18/2015 02:35 am by edkyle99 »

Offline Space Ghost 1962

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Re: Antares General Discussion Thread
« Reply #535 on: 02/18/2015 04:01 am »
SpaceX and Tesla are disruptors, like PayPal was. And Google.

Disruption is not a business growth activity. It's a active destroyer of business, especially business as usual. Perhaps it ends with something better. Not always true, just that it works by different rules eventually.

Journalism and media were among the earliest to be disrupted, and the disruption continues with no certain end in sight. It is wise to be wary of disruption. But, its a potential built out of pent up change, often due to structural issues deeply embedded in an industry. IMHO, a perfect storm when communications technologies cause exponential change to a world population.

Expect  revenues to decline across the board, maybe even drastically. Again, its irrelevant, because you can't run the metrics to "improve" until the economics shift enough and steady out. At the macroeconomic level, as it shifts, the reliance on, say component providers, is extremely short lived, because it is an interim step to the next interim step indefinitely. When things settle out, then you can see the macroeconomics firming up, and the metrics (automated) help tell you how to survive growth in the next stage to stability. The rest comes on afterwards.

Back to aerospace - its tremendously labor intensive. Start-up in silicon valley reduced the time to design, integrate, test, and revise ... all the way to on orbit - as a productivity improvement. Another in Colorado does ultrarapid, highest reliability flight software for spacecraft. The big change is big data and data science integrated in such a way that  you need 4-5 labor hours instead of 1,000's. Much is in flux.

So its not just SpaceX - they just bootstrapped the disruption. Lots to come.

Back to OrbATK - it's not going away. But that doesn't mean that Antares is going anywhere either. They've gotten a one year "timeout" on launch, and hundreds of millions in losses, at a time when rivals for launch services are potentially rewriting the rules, and building up a record of launch successes.

Offline tobi453

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Re: Antares General Discussion Thread
« Reply #536 on: 02/18/2015 07:40 am »
Orbital and good management? When you look at the results of Orbital and SpaceX, the difference is obvious! Both of them started their rocket developments with COTS and what did they archieve?
Orbital ATK had $5.14 billion in revenues during the past year. 

What did SpaceX bring in?  Six launches at $70 million plus a bit more for the Dragons, maybe half a billion?  Certainly less than $1 billion.

Orbital ATK had $322 million in earnings last year.  SpaceX?  Did it spend less or more than it brought in? 

Consider those Falcon 9 v1.1 launches of Orbital-built satellites last year.  Who made more money on each of those flights - Space X or Orbital?

I'm hoping SpaceX turns out to be as successful as Orbital ATK, but I'm wondering after reading about Tesla's most recent quarterly.

 - Ed Kyle

Those 5 billion come from other businesses like satellite building and military stuff. I was specifically speaking about Orbital's launch business.

You also forgot to mention SpaceX's commercial crew contract from NASA. Because Orbital selected a conservative Cygnus and Antares design, they couldn't build on it for their commercial crew bid. A lost opportunity.

You also need to look at the future. SpaceX got contracts for nine commercial launch contracts last year according to SpaceNews, the same as the market leader Arianespace. So which commercial satellite company wants to launch with Antares? No one so far, because the launcher design is not competitive. Another lost opportunity.

Finally, I wonder why Google invested close to a billion in SpaceX in order to build the internet constellation. Why didn't they go to Orbital Sciences, which is the more experienced satellite builder? Will OneWeb select Orbital as their satellite partner? I guess we will find out soon...

Offline woods170

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Re: Antares General Discussion Thread
« Reply #537 on: 02/18/2015 09:02 am »
Orbital and good management? When you look at the results of Orbital and SpaceX, the difference is obvious! Both of them started their rocket developments with COTS and what did they archieve?

Falcon 9 - 15 performed launches, 1 semi failure, lots of commercial/government payloads waiting to be launched
Antares - 5 performed launches, 1 failure, no non-CRS launch contracts so far...
A more correct take on it is that the Antares started development 5 years later than Falcon 9.
Incorrect. SpaceX started development of F9 v1.0 in 2005. Orbital began development of Taurus II (now known as Antares) in 2007. There was only a two year difference, not five.

Offline baldusi

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Re: Antares General Discussion Thread
« Reply #538 on: 02/18/2015 11:57 am »
Here's the thing about Antares.  When it returns to flight, it will have the highest performing hydrocarbon engine in the U.S., and will be the newest engine in the U.S..  The engine will share production overhead costs with Russia's new primary rocket, Angara, so it will be both "low cost" and will benefit from Angara development and flight experience.  It will be topped by the newest, most efficient high thrust solid motor in the U.S., produced in-house by Orbital ATK, so it will be "low cost" in that regard.  It will occupy a payload category all by itself.  It will continue to be conservatively run by one of the better managed companies in this business, while its competitors are all spending aggressively right now to develop new systems. 

I wouldn't count Antares out. 

 - Ed Kyle
The flight-rate of Antares, at least for the near term, will be higher than that of Angara. If anything, Antares will not benefit from Angara related flight experience for RD-181. It will be the other way around: The RD-191 of Angara will benefit from the Antares related flight experience of RD-181. I can see why Energomash was so anxious to sell RD-181 to Orbital.
And both share their production line with RD-170 and RD-180. The former is is closing down, but RD-180 are being produced as fast as they can build them. Of course this efficiencies will only be there until 2018. But Angara should be ramping up by then.

Offline newpylong

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Re: Antares General Discussion Thread
« Reply #539 on: 02/18/2015 01:12 pm »

Current plan is 4 RS-25s per year once production starts again.

Not yet authorized. Clouds on the horizon.

Negative - 6 ordered.

Yes, some RL-10s exist but the majority are being converted to RL-10C so that is some revenue. More will be needed for the SLS EUS and most likely ULA's new upper stage.

I am skeptical.

They have already begun converting them. EUS is happening, as is ULA ACES.

« Last Edit: 02/18/2015 03:31 pm by newpylong »

 

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