Quote from: JayWee on 05/18/2022 02:21 pmQuote from: Robotbeat on 05/18/2022 02:17 pmAlthough Astra’s mass-expendable concept also would work well for munitions. A micro-ICBM for Global strike (non-nuclear) for less cost than a Tomahawk cruise missile. (Note they haven’t actually achieved the $100,000 or whatever price point they had been hoping for a while ago.)Careful, it'd be hard to distinguish between nuclear and non-nuclear ones. Similar to how the Navy does NOT want nuclear missiless on their ships - enemy would then treat all ships as nuclear ones.I'm not advocating for it. It's one of the reasons I'm not hugely in favor of the mass-expendable approach.
Quote from: Robotbeat on 05/18/2022 02:17 pmAlthough Astra’s mass-expendable concept also would work well for munitions. A micro-ICBM for Global strike (non-nuclear) for less cost than a Tomahawk cruise missile. (Note they haven’t actually achieved the $100,000 or whatever price point they had been hoping for a while ago.)Careful, it'd be hard to distinguish between nuclear and non-nuclear ones. Similar to how the Navy does NOT want nuclear missiless on their ships - enemy would then treat all ships as nuclear ones.
Although Astra’s mass-expendable concept also would work well for munitions. A micro-ICBM for Global strike (non-nuclear) for less cost than a Tomahawk cruise missile. (Note they haven’t actually achieved the $100,000 or whatever price point they had been hoping for a while ago.)
Quote from: Robotbeat on 05/19/2022 02:32 amQuote from: JayWee on 05/18/2022 02:21 pmQuote from: Robotbeat on 05/18/2022 02:17 pmAlthough Astra’s mass-expendable concept also would work well for munitions. A micro-ICBM for Global strike (non-nuclear) for less cost than a Tomahawk cruise missile. (Note they haven’t actually achieved the $100,000 or whatever price point they had been hoping for a while ago.)Careful, it'd be hard to distinguish between nuclear and non-nuclear ones. Similar to how the Navy does NOT want nuclear missiless on their ships - enemy would then treat all ships as nuclear ones.I'm not advocating for it. It's one of the reasons I'm not hugely in favor of the mass-expendable approach.I thought liquid fuelled ICBM’s lack strategic value due to the slower response times necessitated by the fuelling process?
The idea was simple. If Astra's small satellite customers would accept a bit of risk, the launch company could cut down on its testing, analysis, and redundancy in design. In turn, Astra would pass those launch savings along to customers.... The most recent failure appears to have catalyzed Astra to move in a new direction. In short, Astra will shift away from its previous mantra of being lean in terms of staffing, moving at breakneck speed, and being willing to tolerate failure in launch vehicles.
Astra announces that after two of its four Rocket 3.3 flights were successful, the Company will transition to the next version of its launch system and is working with customers to re-manifest all payloads onto the new launch system, designed for higher capacity, reliability, and production rate....Updated, streamlined plan to invest in delivering higher reliability, higher capacity 600kg Launch System 2.0 to market.
Events since the opening of this thread also show the power of Rocket Lab's broader business strategy of becoming an end-to-end space solutions provider, in particular selling spacecraft components (which is already a bigger part of their bottom line than selling launches). Astra has also talked about similar plans, but their efforts with the acquisition of Apollo Fusion seem to have been less successful so far.
