AA puts the blame petty much all on BO
Blue Orgin dumps NASA contract with Sierra Space?! Plus, ESA and RFA's new ship!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF8NYMPn4Ns
I'm underwhelmed with Angry Astronaut and question his assertions/sources. I'm perfectly happy to bag on Jeff Who and Sue Origin just like the next guy, but I don't think he has the engineering rigor or insider information to really dissect issues related to who bailed on who.
Take the video he linked about RFA and their Argo vehicle. He just whimsically asserts that Argo is vehicle agnostic and it has a 3400kg capacity to LEO and is reusable. This is a ridiculous thing to claim since staging altitude and velocity of reusable boosters is in no way standardized at this point, since Falcon 9 is the only game in town and generally stages about 73km but with considerably different (sub)orbital velocities depending on trajectory and where recovery of the booster is planned. Neutron is anticipated to stage higher than Falcon 9, around 90km, but is still in design phase and uses an extremely bespoke and unconventional second stage, where the fairing is attached to the booster stage and the fairing opens to release the 2nd stage and payload at MECO. New Glenn has been getting different design objectives faster than the engineers can satisfy them (redirection to "Jarvis" before the flight of a single prototype) and staging altitude is going to be very difficult to manage with the payload mass they are claiming and second stage reusability they are claiming. The likelihood of all these rockets staging at the same altitude, or within an acceptable range of one another to be compatible with Argo and whatever vaporware booster RFA is claiming they will build, is very small.
When he does start talking about BO and Orbital Reef, he only cites the CNBC article on it, then launches into supposition and snark with no sources for the snark.
Here's the real truth about Orbital Reef: No one in the space industry actually thought it was going to happen anyways, because:
1. The launch provider chosen has yet to lift a single kilogram into LEO
2. The crew capsule provider chosen has yet to lift a single human being into LEO and is years late and over contract cost on their ISS capsule
3. The Bezos animosity towards Musk means BO will not gracefully eat crow like Orbital did in 2014 when Antares failed and shift payloads to another vendor
4. Even if the above points are all hammered out, Axiom is beating everyone to the punch.
There is currently no data to demonstrate the viability of a space station as an economic resource. As such, there's definitely no data to demonstrate the viability of competing space stations and the market's capability to sustain both. Orbital Reef was doomed to fail because it had zero chance of being first (Axiom already has modules in place on the ISS that can be released to serve as its own free-flying station, and it'll just get bigger as they add modules). Axiom has already flown multiple tourist and private science missions to the ISS, using their own attached modules to provide lodging and workspace.
Like I said, I lurvs me some anti-BO banter, but I don't like it in my space news. He intermixes his editorialization with his reporting way too much.
