Sadly inaccurate. Ie: while BE4 paces completion of Vulcan, as is typical in rocket development , there are no “igniter technical issues”. We will fly when our payload is ready.

So there you have it.

Col Beausabre: The petition is a nice indicator of the number of hateful totalitarians in our society today who think nothing of the idea of killing those they disagree with. I have already put this into my blacklist queue to write about at length.

“Washington Examiner

Petition calling on Bezos to stay in space and never return to Earth receives thousands of signatures

Michael Lee 25 mins ago…

A petition urging billionaire Jeff Bezos not to return to Earth after his first space flight has gained tens of thousands of signatures. (85,000 plus Tuesday Afternoon)

Seems mainly due to people objecting to his wealth and his spending it as he – not they – see fit

“Billionaire’s [sic] should not exist … on earth, or in space, but should they decide the latter they should stay there,” read a petition on Change.org, which was addressed “to the proletariat.”

“Critics have long accused Bezos of not being generous enough with his enormous wealth, with political analyst Earl Ofari Hutchinson noting former President Donald Trump has given away more than 3% of his fortune, while Bezos has parted with less than 1%.”

True, but launches ordered in 2022 won’t take place until 2024 or 2025. ULA has *a lot* of time to work through any issues they may be having before it starts impacting revenue.

Well, for anything but national security launches. By law, DoD is not allowed to buy Atlas 5 launches after Dec. 31, 2022.

For the moment, they have some buffer to play with. But if Vulcan gets pushed back much further, things start to get a little sticky.

Dynetics can bring back the F-1 with lower part count. J-2 for a bigger upper stage.

ULA and Astrobotic recently announced that due to payload issues, this launch will now occur in early 2022. ULA is still publicly saying that they intend to have Vulcan ready to fly by the end of the year, waiting for the payload. Skepticism is warranted, but that’s the public statement as of now.

ULA has a limited number of Russian engines in its inventory. At some point it must move on to American-built engines, and if Blue Origin’s BE-4 cannot be fixed then the company will be forced to look for other options.

There are currently another 30 Atlas V launches planned: 6 military, 4 NASA, 8 Starliner, 11 commercial, and 1 unreserved. And they can always order more RD-180s and build more Atlas Vs if they have to.