Solids can't be made reusable and be cost effective, thus the emphasis on liquids. AJ should take the que from SpaceX and redesign their engines to take advantage of 3D printing and reducing the number of parts. This could not only make their engines reusable, but lower the price. I too want to know what happened to the RL-60? It was supposed to be about the same size as RL-10 but twice the thrust. They also do not have a metholox engine in design. Why can't the RS-25 be modified to run metholox? It should be in the range of the BE-4 or the Raptor.
Quote from: spacenut on 10/05/2018 10:58 pmSolids can't be made reusable and be cost effective, thus the emphasis on liquids. AJ should take the que from SpaceX and redesign their engines to take advantage of 3D printing and reducing the number of parts. This could not only make their engines reusable, but lower the price. I too want to know what happened to the RL-60? It was supposed to be about the same size as RL-10 but twice the thrust. They also do not have a metholox engine in design. Why can't the RS-25 be modified to run metholox? It should be in the range of the BE-4 or the Raptor.All of Aerojets major future offerings include a lot of printed parts. RL10C-X has a printed combustion chamber and injector (~70% of the total labor in the current design according to some people that have worked there), AR-1 had a printed injector and much of its turbomachinery, RS-25E has some number of printed parts.A methane RS-25 is a new engine (and fuel rich staged combustion with methane seems like a bad idea), and even RS-25E will cost >a billion dollars to develop (largely related to production restart). Its also a sustainer engine, which is a poor fit given most notable launchers in development now have 2 distinct non-overlapping stages. Booster/second stage-optimized RS-25 variants were proposed in the past (with expansion ratios of 35 or 150 instead of 70), but that further distances this hypothetical engine from the current design
Quote from: woods170 on 10/01/2018 07:17 amlosing AR-1 business to Blue's BE-4 doesn't hurt their business model one iota, as evidenced by this:The rest of your post makes sense, but then you undercut your point by saying this.Of course it hurts them. Any business is going to be hurt when they lose a major contract.They have enough other business that being hurt in this one area doesn't mean that they're in trouble. That's not the same as not being hurt "one iota" by losing a major part of their potential future business.
losing AR-1 business to Blue's BE-4 doesn't hurt their business model one iota, as evidenced by this:
Quote from: spacenut on 10/05/2018 10:58 pmSolids can't be made reusable and be cost effective, thus the emphasis on liquids. AJ should take the que from SpaceX and redesign their engines to take advantage of 3D printing and reducing the number of parts. This could not only make their engines reusable, but lower the price. I too want to know what happened to the RL-60? It was supposed to be about the same size as RL-10 but twice the thrust. They also do not have a metholox engine in design. Why can't the RS-25 be modified to run metholox? It should be in the range of the BE-4 or the Raptor.Do you really believe that 3D printing was not part of the AR-1 design? I would think any one designing an engine today from scratch would use 3D printing to reduce cost, parts count, and reduced development and production schedule.
I dunno, we probably won't see a big commit to 3D printing from AJ until they 3D print a RL-10 nozzle they can sell. They still weld the cooling tubes entirely by hand, right?
Quote from: ChrisWilson68 on 10/01/2018 05:37 pmQuote from: woods170 on 10/01/2018 07:17 amlosing AR-1 business to Blue's BE-4 doesn't hurt their business model one iota, as evidenced by this:The rest of your post makes sense, but then you undercut your point by saying this.Of course it hurts them. Any business is going to be hurt when they lose a major contract.They have enough other business that being hurt in this one area doesn't mean that they're in trouble. That's not the same as not being hurt "one iota" by losing a major part of their potential future business.Emphasis mine.That's incorrect IMO. You can't lose a major contract if you never stood a chance of winning it.Which is exactly what happened here. Aerojet recognized this late last year (yes, that is right: a year ago they already were aware of what was coming) and quietly re-negotiated their DoD development contract. Only 1/6 of the amount of money spent on AR-1 development, under the OTA between USAF and Aerojet, was invested by Aerojet itself. The rest is government money.Aerojet is not going belly-up from losing a mere $60 million of its own money on a contract.https://spacenews.com/aerojet-rocketdyne-seeks-other-customers-for-ar1-engine/
Quote from: woods170 on 10/11/2018 06:56 amQuote from: ChrisWilson68 on 10/01/2018 05:37 pmQuote from: woods170 on 10/01/2018 07:17 amlosing AR-1 business to Blue's BE-4 doesn't hurt their business model one iota, as evidenced by this:The rest of your post makes sense, but then you undercut your point by saying this.Of course it hurts them. Any business is going to be hurt when they lose a major contract.They have enough other business that being hurt in this one area doesn't mean that they're in trouble. That's not the same as not being hurt "one iota" by losing a major part of their potential future business.Emphasis mine.That's incorrect IMO. You can't lose a major contract if you never stood a chance of winning it.Which is exactly what happened here. Aerojet recognized this late last year (yes, that is right: a year ago they already were aware of what was coming) and quietly re-negotiated their DoD development contract. Only 1/6 of the amount of money spent on AR-1 development, under the OTA between USAF and Aerojet, was invested by Aerojet itself. The rest is government money.Aerojet is not going belly-up from losing a mere $60 million of its own money on a contract.https://spacenews.com/aerojet-rocketdyne-seeks-other-customers-for-ar1-engine/I agree with you up to a point. When Aerojet began developing AR-1, BE-4 had a ways to go before proving itself. At the time it was not a sure thing that Aerojet would not win. More important 60 million, if not more, is a lot for Aerojet to invest. That is IR&D that was not invested in other technologies. The IR&D not invested on other technologies will reduce their position on other future contracts. AR-1 was/is to be produced in Huntsville, Ala, rather than WPB or LA, so thee may have been sunk employee relocation costs that will not be recovered.
Quote from: Asteroza on 10/11/2018 05:13 amI dunno, we probably won't see a big commit to 3D printing from AJ until they 3D print a RL-10 nozzle they can sell. They still weld the cooling tubes entirely by hand, right?Thats what RL10C-5/C-X is.Most of the RL10 hardware currently being sold is stuff built a decade+ ago anyway, under the bulk purchase for Delta IV when Boeing had much higher expectations for its flight rate. Are they still making new nozzles at all (hand-welded or otherwise)?
"With the successful progress of the CIP, we are well on our way to achieving annual cost reductions of approximately $230 million by the year 2021. The culture of our company has undergone a paradigm shift - this is now how we do business. We are laser-focused on consolidating to create efficiencies where we can, and investing in the technologies needed to sustain our profitable growth and innovation in this industry."
(Speculation here) Maybe if RL, ABL, Relativity and Firefly continue growth in a future, they could sell her AR-1 engine for a medium rocket to this companies...?
Just for the record: I too thought that Aerojet investing in AR-1 was not good for the company. I raised that point with former Aerojet senior management and learned that the investment decision was a "no brainer" even if sales did not follow. That was because of cost sharing with the government. With government funding, there was a positive net impact on the business. Just goes to show the need for ROI analysis.
Quote from: testguy on 09/07/2019 02:29 pmJust for the record: I too thought that Aerojet investing in AR-1 was not good for the company. I raised that point with former Aerojet senior management and learned that the investment decision was a "no brainer" even if sales did not follow. That was because of cost sharing with the government. With government funding, there was a positive net impact on the business. Just goes to show the need for ROI analysis.If that's true, they were committing fraud. According to the contract, the company was supposed to be contributing part of the cost of the engine development program, even after the renegotiation.
Quote from: ChrisWilson68 on 09/07/2019 02:39 pmQuote from: testguy on 09/07/2019 02:29 pmJust for the record: I too thought that Aerojet investing in AR-1 was not good for the company. I raised that point with former Aerojet senior management and learned that the investment decision was a "no brainer" even if sales did not follow. That was because of cost sharing with the government. With government funding, there was a positive net impact on the business. Just goes to show the need for ROI analysis.If that's true, they were committing fraud. According to the contract, the company was supposed to be contributing part of the cost of the engine development program, even after the renegotiation.Without knowing the details of the accounting and if development helped build technology and production capabilities for other products, I wouldn't go throwing around the fraud speculation.
