Hello All,
Did you see this morning's latest launch by Astra? It came agonizingly close to succeeding (see:
https://spaceflightnow.com/2022/06/...-live-coverage/ , and
https://spaceflightnow.com/2022/06/...launch-failure/ ). I was also surprised to hear the announcers refer to its fuel as "RP-X" (every reference I've seen on the vehicle says it uses RP-1, burned with LOX). Also:
I can't help but wonder if their constant "iteration-tinkering" with its design--no two rounds are identical--is at least partly responsible for their so-far poor success record. (The old original Thor-Delta was mostly immune from failures--which were rare, after the first Delta A failed to orbit an Echo satelloon--by using all of the most reliable existing rocket and guidance system hardware, and the design was frozen, with Douglas [later McDonnell Douglas] only making uprated versions "one feature at a time," beginning by 'stretching' the Vanguard/Able second stage's tankage to create the Delta B.) Now:
Astra's vehicle, being a "clean-sheet" design, doesn't have earlier-existing rockets to draw the most reliable hardware from. But if they would freeze its design (at least for a significant spell), and make it reliable through multiple flights (and, as with the Delta, analyze what went *right* with each launch [some things just barely missed working wrong, and were subsequently beefed-up], and what didn't--this was the Delta development philosophy), Astra could make their Rocket 3.3 vehicle (it really needs a proper name! [I suggest "Shire," as "Percheron" has already been used for two rockets, see:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Per...sclient=gws-wiz and
https://books.google.com/books?id=P...0rocket&f=false ]) as reliable as the Delta, or even more so.