AST SpaceMobile says its Blacklift rocket program will not begin entirely from scratch, pointing to a new agreement with Firefly for engines, engineering support, and manufacturing rights. However, the development timelines of SpaceX and other commercial launch companies suggest that building a new medium- or heavy-lift rocket typically takes five to nine years before its first orbital launch.
A comparable launch-development schedule
Nearly 20 years ago, in 2005, SpaceX became the first purely commercial launch startup to announce plans for a new medium-sized rocket. Its Falcon 9 remains the fastest-developed orbital rocket in this category, taking 4.7 years to reach its first launch.
SpaceX, however, had several important advantages. By then, the company had been operating for more than three years, had extensive experience with its Merlin engines, and was less than a year away from the first launch of its smaller Falcon 1 rocket. In hindsight, the company also had a highly capable engineering team. The early version of Falcon 9 was significantly smaller than the recently announced Blacklift and Big Iron vehicles, with a payload capacity of approximately 10 tons.
Since 2015, several other US companies have announced medium- to heavy-lift vehicles. They include United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan, Rocket Lab’s Neutron, Relativity Space’s Terran R, Firefly and Northrop Grumman’s Eclipse, and Stoke Space’s Nova. Their stated payload capacities range from approximately 7 to 27 tons. Blue Origin’s New Glenn is considerably larger than all of these vehicles.
Only Vulcan has reached orbit so far. Its development took 8.7 years, although the vehicle was developed by a highly experienced launch team and received approximately $2 billion in federal support distributed among suppliers.
More broadly, the record of established launch companies suggests that developing a new medium- or heavy-lift rocket generally takes five to nine years from announcement to first orbital launch. Many of these companies also began with smaller rockets or brought other valuable experience to their larger programs.
Firefly engines and manufacturing rights
AST SpaceMobile’s response is that it will not be starting entirely from scratch. The company announced Friday that it had signed an agreement with Firefly to supply engines for the first three Blacklift rockets, provide three years of engineering services, and grant AST SpaceMobile a perpetual license to manufacture Firefly’s Miranda and vacuum-optimized Vira engines.
Nine Miranda engines will power the first stage of each Blacklift rocket.
Source: arstechnica.com
