/sci/ - Science & Math

>>16529091
Carbon phenolic nozzles are kind of a bitch, and Northrop Grumman's been struggling with them for a while. It might just be a bit of retirement related brain drain.

>>16258417
I think I see what happened now: I didn't have the Orbital Sciences COTS contract in mind when I was debating you, and you are correct that Russian engines were chosen because they were cheap and "good" (aside from the part where the NK-33s were a known risk factor and had to be heavily rebuilt to even be useful, and were abandoned after the LOX pump exploded in flight on ORB-3), and then moved on to the next cheapest option in the form of RD-193s.