Saturday, October 30, 2021

What's left for Rocket Lab?

Assuming Starship works, as several of us are assuming, what's left for the other launch companies? In particular Rocket Lab - they can get stuff into orbit, but not much stuff at once.

Seems to be that Rocket Lab will own the space where they ship such low-mass materiel as you don't want to share with other cargo. Sooper sekrit satellites. One-and-done shuttles of V.I.P.'s, if the V.I.P. is heavily sedated.

I think, mostly, it's good for boosting radioactive fuel. I mean, yeah; the L in HALEU is for "Low", but it's still not something you want next to your food and water. UPDATE 11/10: ... until Project Babylon takes the HALEU space. So: fragiles only. UPDATE 11/28 ... like retrieving SpinLaunch hardware itself - from a 30 km balloon, after it's fired its load. Plenty room in space!

UPDATE 11/30: I increasingly think da Lab has the wrong business-model... or, anyway, has promoted such. In future I expect all rockets to be reusable or one-way (i.e. their stages never return to Earth). Rocket Lab, then, concentrates on midair salvage for such small rockets as fail midair, or DIY prototyping efforts. Even Starship, if it can disassemble parts of itself in midair.

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