The Russians RD-180 is suspect. Why the HELL would any US launcher (Atlas) use the damn things? 

 

 

Thus making that capability in Russia disappear.

 

And that would be a GOOD thing.... for the US.

 

It's not like the Rocketdyne J-2 is going anywhere, now is it? 

 

The plans for the aerospike version for that motor still exist.  

 

Any idea when the Falcon Heavy will launch?  They only have 4 months left to the end of the year!

 

Instead of one whiff and your lungs turn to carbon crystals, it's one whiff and you die of cancer in the future, if your brains don't scramble and you start seeing purple sheep everywhere.  

 

Sheesh. Don't people get a decent science education anymore? 

 

  

I think you mean the Rocketdyne J-2X. It’s a whole different beasty from the J-2.

Check out the http://www.fireflyspace.com/vehicles/firefly-a

 

Their aim is to get 400kg into LEO for less than $10 million. No idea when they are scheduled for the 1st launch.

"(SpaceX is) simply going to take another year to satisfy all the bureaucrats and regulations."

 

 "Lockheed Martin and Boeing have lots of friends in Congress and that may prove to be the deciding factor into keeping government launch services an expensive monopoly."

 

Pretty much sums up the problem with gov't contracts. 

The J-2X was/is a botched design that traced its root causes to the incompetents who mismanaged the Ares rocket. The test fire program (test stands less than a three hours from where I live), have been shut down for most of 2014 while the engineers wait on money to FIX the inter-cooler problem with a series of hardware tests that their computer modeling approach failed to uncover before they melted one of their TWO test motors. Lucky it didn't blow up!  

 

No government money... no government motor. My money is still on Falcon. One year ain't going to change those numbers. They're building their own launch facility in a nuts-to-you-NASA, type setup. If they launch from their own facilities, all they have to fight is the FAA. I know Georgia would love to become a part of the business (Camden County. Florida would like to be it, but with its screwed up government, I dunno. My money is on TEXAS.      

 

Don't know much about the methane rocket. At first glance it smells like a con job sort of like that British rocket startup was a few years ago. That is not a proper aerospike.

 

If they get it to work, more power to them.  

With you on the Falcon.  Hope they can ramp up the production fast, particular on the Falcon Heavy when it proves itself.

Flusterclucking rocket motors makes me nervous.

 

Remember the Russian moon rockets, the N-1s?

 

In no other machine does KISS matter so much, and even then you better make sure all your design critical fails are fail-nevers.

 

Four loss of missions and the Russians know flusterclucks are a very very bad idea. Now I see Firefly (a multiple methane independent nozzle ring burner BOMB-reminiscent of how not to design a Moon rocket.) and Falcon Heavy (27 engines all piped together in a common feeder tree that includes strap on boosters!) and I cringe.