[AR] Re: P&W GTF
- From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2020 17:03:54 -0400 (EDT)
On Sat, 4 Apr 2020, Ben Brockert wrote:
Generally I think that 'stage and a half' approaches are excessively
discounted. If it makes sense to drop boosters, it makes sense to drop
engines or batteries.
Broadly agreed. But it *is* an added complication which incurs costs and
constraints. E.g., there are some sorts of systems that don't want to
drop anything (which isn't recoverable and reusable). It would be nice if
electric was competitive without that; apparently it isn't, at least not
yet.
Even if Elon figures out that running people ragged leads them to making
dumb mistakes and losing great big rockets over and over, there's still
going to be demand for one-off launches. Especially in other countries.
Depends on how big the cost difference is. This is like saying "there's
always going to be demand for SLS, from within the government at least"...
except that everybody who can get off SLS is trying to (e.g., the Europa
Clipper guys are currently required to use it, but are campaigning to get
that constraint dropped). If Elon gets his act together and shows that
fully-reusables work, he'll soon have imitators, and then the market for
expendables will shrink rapidly (and about time, too!).
Henry
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