Some thoughts from “Main Engine Cut Off.”
I’m glad to see that Congress isn’t pushing the AR1 as hard as it’s been. This looks, ultimately, like bad news for AJR. They’re going to have to become more competitive if they want to maintain their business. They’re trying to do it with printing engine parts, but I don’t know if it will be enough. They’re going to have to really slice overhead, I think.
It is a shame that Aerojet Rocketdyne is going through this. But it was clear mismanagement on their part IMHO. Considering what they charged for their engines, they should at least have worked on ways to reduce production cost internally and reinvest the savings on R&D for future products. They got too used to the government paying for everything including R&D. This is the rot of the cost-plus mindset. Once the new Blue Origin and SpaceX engines become available their entire product catalog will basically become obsolete.
I think they still have the means to go forward though. But they need to focus on niche applications and that segment is rapidly becoming overcrowded. I think they could focus on their expandable engine know-how and repurpose the RL-10 to work on LOX/LCH4 for lunar exploration purposes. Make the engine easier to manufacture and scale it up so it can be used in more applications. Look at what the Japanese are doing with their next generation launcher architecture.
“Considering what they charged for their engines, they should at least have worked on ways to reduce production cost internally and reinvest the savings on R&D for future products. They got too used to the government paying for everything including R&D. This is the rot of the cost-plus mindset.”
The latest anyone in the cost+ contractor club would have done that was before 1987, when the F-20 was finally ditched. Northrup, starting in the late 1970s, had done exactly what you described. They produced an excellent price-competitive competitor to the F-16. It was crushed, when Congress made it clear their stake was with General Dynamics alone.
At the time, Space Services Inc. had already been subverted by the whispering campaigns of NASA turf warriors, and Pan American Spaceways had also come apart for the same reasons. There would be more such over the next 10 years.
Since the 1980s, when corporate board members of publicly held corporations were put in jail for not getting the very highest quarterly profit their pension fund stockholders demanded, it has been a *very* dicey game to *over*invest* in R&D that does not offer a quick payoff. IMHO, doing serious spaceflight, with a publicly held corporation that does *not* have 370 political patrons lined up in Congress, died between 1947 and 1987, by intent of Congress.
That, IMHO, is why serious launch competition is dependent on privately held and financed firms, such as SpaceX and Blue Origin.
Also that thing with the NK-33 and Antares. How many of those engines does Aerojet still have on stock?
If this continues Aerojet Rocketdyne’s future will be as a patent troll… I’ve seen it happen in the software business. Not a pretty sight.