An American Rocket Flew on Refurbished Soviet Engines From the Apollo Era
It has been 13 years since a new medium-lift rocket debuted in the United States: Antares, developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation. Ars Technica's assessment of the initial 100-series version of the vehicle is not flattering — a hot mess, in its words.
That rocket ran on old Soviet engines built during the era when Apollo astronauts were landing on the Moon. In the 1990s, Aerojet acquired those engines and refurbished them for a rocket that would launch in the 2010s. On Antares's fifth launch, in 2014, it exploded.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
Recycling Cold War engines for a 2010s launch is either inspired scavenging or a warning sign, and the only honest answer is that you find out which at ignition.
Both judgments — the hot mess and the predictable explosion — are written with the benefit of the wreckage, which is the easiest kind of engineering review to pass.
The category is worth keeping in view: medium-lift covers payloads of 2 to 20 metric tons, and Antares is described as the last of a dying breed of such rockets in the United States.