28 thoughts on “Musk Versus Bezos”

1. Aerojet Rocketdyne has been pushing a kerosene-fueled, 500,000-pound-thrust concept dubbed AR-1, which the company says could be fully developed in four years for less than $1 billion.

   How would this replace the 860,568-pound (3.9 MN)-thrust RD-180?

   How will either compete with the 6.9 MN Raptor (available next year)?

   In any case, all the activity is welcome.

   1. You’d use two of them, BE-4 or AR-1. Of course, you’d have to change just about everything else to accommodate the new engines. It’d be a new rocket. In a way it’s like the museum that claims to have the hatchet that George Washington used to chop down the cherry tree. Over the years, the head was changed twice and the handle five times, but never both at once so it’s still the same hatchet.

      I wonder what the status is of the project ULA is working on with XCor to develop a replacement for the RL-10. An RL-10 costs over $10 million (I’ve heard they actually cost at least twice that). Replace the first stage with the new BE-4 and the upper stage with the new XCor engine. Atlas V V1.1 perhaps?

      1. The only reason to call that vehicle an Atlas at all is for branding purposes.

   2. The RD-180 is a dual combustion chamber/nozzle engine, and I assume the plan is to replace it with two stand-alone (conventional) engines. There would be more changes required if they go with methane, since a LOX tank is about 1.8 times the volume of an RP-1 tank whereas LOX and liquid methane require about equal tank volumes (depending on mixture ratio).

   3. Where did you hear that Raptor would be available next year?

      ~Jon

      1. Sorry Jon, the question mark should have been inside the parenthesis. What I meant is with development reports it seems they are really close to finishing it.

         Shhh! Don’t tell the government.

2. “How would this replace the 860,568-pound (3.9 MN)-thrust RD-180?”

   Use two.

   1. The Raptor will probably be cheaper than just one (3D printed.) They should just license it.

   2. Are you serious? There’s no way you can just change the propellant composition of a stage so dramatically and magically not have to completely redesign the whole stage.

      1. They were also talking about reusability. It’s clearly a completely new core.

3. Is the idea that the DOD and/or NASA would pay ULA and Blue Origin to develop this engine, and an Atlas variant to use it?

   1. That was unclear.

      1. OK, according to Achenbach’s article, ULA is going to pay for it. About a billion over four years. But I suspect that Bezos will kick in some as well.

         1. I wonder if even Bezos is approaching the limit of how much personal cash he can pump into Blue Origin.

            1. How much he can? No. How much he’s willing to? This may force him to start taking it more seriously, and less like a hobby.

            2. I had read he had 500 million invested.. about 50 million a year? Anyone know what the investment numbers are for Jeff B?

            3. That’s what has been reported. Although I don’t know what he has to show for it, I have a sense that it could be a lot more.

         2. I’ll bet Bezos isn’t kicking in one extra dime. He’s got the whip hand on this deal and I’m sure he knows it.

            This doesn’t sound like Bezos is declaring war on Musk; it sounds like ULA is desperately flailing to find some way out of the quadruple catastrophes of the RD-180 shortage, the Air Force’s stated desire to move to an LNG/LOX core with ULA not having anything close to deployment, the Falcon 9 starting to eat their lunch, and the dawning realization of just how little revenue they’re likely to get out of SLS operational stream (in the unlikely event that it, you know, becomes operational). Presumably these guys aren’t stupid; they know when they’re in trouble.

            I’ve been trying to figure out why Bezos would get in bed with these guys, when he knows it’ll slow him down. The obvious answer is “lots of money”, both in terms of development and sales.

            1. Money is the answer, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing for Blue Origin. They’ve been desperate for revenue for years and years. That was a mistake that Bezos made because he saw BO as a passion project and he set aside his business sense too much. BO definitely has a good amount of engine design talent, about as much as Aerojet Rocketdyne these days, it makes perfect sense for them to monetize the crap out of that with a side project if it furnishes enough cash to keep their launcher development program healthy. Who cares if ULA spends billions building some hypothetical EELV v 2.0 Deltlas 6 rocket or whatever if it’s very unlikely to affect the viability of a better designed rocket? I’m sure that’s the mindset at BO, and to a certain extent I can’t agree with them.

               They’ve been in an unenviable position of absolutely zero interaction with the market and no substantial revenue despite the cost of their development efforts piling up year after year after year.

4. If they wanted to do something much faster and cheaper, I’d suggest they stick with LOX/RP-1 (so no redesign of the stage is required), and completely skip developing a new a turbopump by purchasing existing Merlin 1D turbopumps from Barber-Nichols, kicking some money to SpaceX to cover intellectual property rights. Then parallel them, using three per engine to get 440,000 lbsf at sea level. Six Merlin pumps driving two engines should provide 960,000 lbf vacuum, slightly more than the RD-180’s 933,000 lbf vac. Of course, they could just use six Merlins, but that’s just too obvious.

   1. Nice idea, but Barber-Nichols does not make the turbo-pumps for the Merlin 1D. SpaceX makes those in-house.

      That was part of the transition from the 1C to the 1D, taking turbo-pumps in-house.

      ULA would have to buy them from SpaceX directly, and I don’t see that happening. It is better this way anyway – more competition will lower prices.

5. If they are talking Methane, I bet they are thinking 5M core and tooling.

   Sounds like a revised Atlas Phase II which proposed to replace both Atlas and Delta lines. With SpaceX out there, why maintain two separate lines? No longer necessary for ‘assured access’. Can’t milk that cow much longer credibly.

   I wonder if they are till working with Xcor on a RL-10 replacement.

   I am calling this the ‘Atlas, Phase Two, Electric Bugaloo’ strategy.

   1. ULA has to combine the two rockets into the Atlas/Delta VI before separating them, otherwise they’d have to build a Delta V, and talking about the Delta V’s delta v would just be too confusing. It’s bad enough that the rocket shares its name with a major airline, which is not the airline you think of when you see “United ____ ___”

   2. An upgrade to compete with the Falcon Heavy?

6. Blues rocket engine test facility is in Seattle.
   Its right next to a shipping company…
   Someone shoudl stop by and ask how often they hear loud things…

   500Klb rocket would be noticed.
   It probably woudl be noticed even if it was tested at their facility in Tx.

   Has any enterprising space reporter asked the neighbors?

   1. I don’t think they’re claiming that they’ve actually test fired the engine to scale.

      And they have a pretty big ranch in Texas. I don’t think there are any close neighbors.

7. Could Bezos be going after reusablity and Lockheed Martin on disposable? Would the DOD allow used engines on the Atlas? In either case, reusablity means low engine production and being able to sell more brings the costs down for both parties.

   1. reusablity means low engine production

      …and everybody said nine was a bad idea. He could sell them off to fuel depot supply companies operating F1 clones?

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