What is happening with Stratolaunch?
Doug Messier at his website Parabolic Arc today asks some pertinent questions about Stratolaunch and their seeming inability to settle on the rocket that will be launched from the giant plane they are building.
After going through SpaceX and Orbital ATK, the company talked to anyone and everyone with a rocket engine or an idea for one. They must have hit pay dirt with someone. [emphasis in original]
As Messier notes, both SpaceX and Orbital ATK have, in that order, made and then broke their partnership with Stratolaunch. Both companies were supposed to build that rocket, but for unknown reasons decided soon after that they couldn’t do this job. Stratolaunch has since been looking for a third company to build that rocket, but apparently has not found it. This information strongly suggests that the rocket companies found some fundamental engineering or management problems at Stratolaunch that scared them off. These same issues are also making it difficult for Stratolaunch to find a third rocket company.
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Doug Messier at his website Parabolic Arc today asks some pertinent questions about Stratolaunch and their seeming inability to settle on the rocket that will be launched from the giant plane they are building.
After going through SpaceX and Orbital ATK, the company talked to anyone and everyone with a rocket engine or an idea for one. They must have hit pay dirt with someone. [emphasis in original]
As Messier notes, both SpaceX and Orbital ATK have, in that order, made and then broke their partnership with Stratolaunch. Both companies were supposed to build that rocket, but for unknown reasons decided soon after that they couldn’t do this job. Stratolaunch has since been looking for a third company to build that rocket, but apparently has not found it. This information strongly suggests that the rocket companies found some fundamental engineering or management problems at Stratolaunch that scared them off. These same issues are also making it difficult for Stratolaunch to find a third rocket company.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Perhaps they will team up with Virgin Galactic?
Eventually, we may see component manufacturers that don’t build rockets but that will supply engines and other parts for vehicle manufacturers Like Jeff Bezos is planning to do with the BE-4 and ULA? Thats what AMC did when they found it was cheaper to buy engines and other parts from another manufacturer than build them themselves.
Unfortunately for AMC, they found out too late that loss of control of their supply lines was a slow motion disaster that put them at the mercy of hostile competitors.
I once tried to find a rear axle for my 67 Rambler Rebel (great car for a new driver). A direct replacement had to come out of another AMC built in the first half of the year, powered by a 6 cylinder without power steering or air conditioning. Air conditioning? What does air conditioning have to do with a rear axle? Sad to see it go, my VW beetle parts were interchange across about 20 years. I want a spaceship built to be repairable with a screwdriver and vice grips.
PeterF wrote: “Unfortunately for AMC, they found out too late that loss of control of their supply lines was a slow motion disaster that put them at the mercy of hostile competitors.”
I believe that is why SpaceX is “vertically integrated,” the business phrase meaning that the company itself makes most of its own parts, especially the important parts, such as engines. (Vertical integration in the space world means that the payload is mated to the rocket while the rocket is vertical, an example being the Saturn V.)
SpaceX chose to buy some of its minor parts from outside vendors, because who could screw up the manufacture of a strut?
PeterF wrote: “I want a spaceship built to be repairable with a screwdriver and vice grips.”
But take along some duct tape; that stuff does better and can be applied faster than chewing gum and bailing wire.
One of my early on the job lessons as an engineer was “design for assembleability” followed directly by “design for repairability” because whatever you were designing, it was going to have to be taken apart and put back together.