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A comment on Arianespace CEO: Europe won't have reusable rockets for another decade. Parent comment

Re:Arianespace CEO: Europe won't have reusable rockets for a... by orbital-decay on Friday May 05, 2023 @02:33PM (#35833378)
> Nothing special just the first privately funded rocket to make it to orbit.

That would be Pegasus in 1990, though.

> The first new rocket engine developed in the US for decades.

There were plenty of engines developed in the US in that timeframe. Merlin in particular was a "spiritual successor" of the Fastrac, and Kestrel was implemented by the former Beal Aerospace engineers who worked on BA-2 before being hired by SpaceX.

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Re:Arianespace CEO: Europe won't have reusable rockets for a... by peterfirefly on Friday May 05, 2023 @03:14PM (#35833907)
Pegasus didn't have much of a path towards bigger payloads, though.

(It's launched from underneath an airplane.)

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Re:Arianespace CEO: Europe won't have reusable rockets for a... by panick21_ on Friday May 05, 2023 @04:49PM (#35834990)
> That would be Pegasus in 1990, though.

Fair point.

> There were plenty of engines developed in the US in that timeframe.

Engines that actually flew or at least fully finished development. As far as I know there are none.

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Re:Arianespace CEO: Europe won't have reusable rockets for a... by orbital-decay on Friday May 05, 2023 @07:50PM (#35836546)
BA-810 (by a SpaceX predecessor, huge cheap engine!), Fastrac, RS-68, XRS-2200, TR-106, to name a few. These are only large liquid fuel engines created from scratch which either flew or have been fully tested in the US in a decade before the Merlin-1A. There were many more solids, derivatives, small engines, upper stage engines etc.
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