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Vulcan rocket's debut brings long-awaited challenge to SpaceX dominance (www.japantimes.co.jp)

submitted 10 months ago by stopthatgirl7@kbin.social to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Dependence on SpaceX has been a concern for the Pentagon, which wants multiple vendors of rides to orbit.

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[–] weew@lemmy.ca 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

they can compete in very specific cases - like heavy load to GTO. Falcon Heavy would require full expenditure of all 3 cores to match, which wouldn't be much cheaper. Plus the larger fairing size helps with certain kinds of satellites.

[–] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, but gto with fairings bigger then even the extended falcon heavy fairing willing to accept higher costs is a very narrow use case, I doubt it would support the whole vehicle. I'm guessing they will get quite a bit of business from trying to diversity away from SpaceX though.

[–] weew@lemmy.ca 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

the point is that it isn't higher cost for those missions. Falcon Heavy will have to run at 100% expended mode which is nearly the same cost as Vulcan.

And some missions and payloads outright exclude falcon Heavy, period. High orbit and/or large satellites.