Northrop Grumman buying orbital atk

[insert_name]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-orbital-atk-m-a-northrop-grumman/northrop-grumman-to-buy-missile-maker-orbital-for-7-8-billion-idUSKCN1BT0ZZ

Thoughts?

[CastleKSide]

Not really many, this seems like just run of the mill business practice.  Rather standard. I mean its good to know and I am glad you told the forum but there doesnt seem much to say. I doubt it will influence the ISS resupply much.

[Scotius]

More classified, DoD paid launches in the future? Hey, it's another paying customer interested in putting stuff in orbit. More payloads, more launches, cheaper rockets (maybe?).

[Bill Phil]

Happens all the time. There's a reason Lockheed is called Lockheed Martin...

[kerbiloid]

"Civil" Pegasus returns to what it really did always belong to,

(I remember that discussion).

Spoiler

 

 

Edited September 19, 2017 by kerbiloid

[wumpus]

10 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

"Civil" Pegasus returns to what it really did always belong to,

(I remember that discussion).

I think we've done this to death (currently going on the Stratolaunch thread).  To put simply, there are only so many options:

"conventional jet" (turbines provide compression) - all in one stage to mach ? (3 or less, and 3 is *extremely* pushing it).  Extremely expensive and must be covered.
rocket stage, ramjet stage, more rocket stages.  Presumably recovery after mach 3 or so makes sense, or you can expend a ramjet to mach 5 or maybe even 6.  Lots of complexity, staging issues, and iffy returns
rocket stage, scramjet stage, more rocket stages.  The scramjet stage that went to mach 6.8 was *tiny* compared to the pegasus derived engine that got it to speed.  Not ready.

The problem with adding a "second" jet stage is that the Pegasus already has most of the jet powered advantages: lower back pressure on the rocket (higher Isp) and lower aero drag.  Trying to squeeze out more delta-v by adding velocity by jet engine is going to be even more expensive.  The up front costs are enormous, and there is a lot of competition now for the tiny market of small satellites (spacex nearly went out of business with the Falcon 1, it needed the CRS contract (and Falcon 9) to make a go of it.  Also companies like Rocket Labs (electron rocket) didn't exist when Orbital launched the first Pegasus.
 

Edited September 19, 2017 by wumpus
premature post (trying to create single-spaced lines).

[Kerbart]

20 hours ago, Scotius said:

More classified, DoD paid launches in the future? Hey, it's another paying customer interested in putting stuff in orbit. More payloads, more launches, cheaper rockets (maybe?).

Attracting a customer who thinks that $1,000 is a reasonable price for a hammer rarely drives down cost, rather the opposite. Doing lots of military contracts didn't drive down launch cost at ULA; having an aggressive competitor did.

[ModZero]

On 18-9-2017 at 8:05 PM, Scotius said:

Hey, it's another paying customer interested in putting stuff in orbit.

To quote the master, once it goes up, who cares where it comes down.

You may laugh now.