Thread by @Cosmic_Penguin

It's interesting to see how @RocketLab's Neutron rocket fits in with the market in a regime that I call the "Soyuz-Antares Class" for the mid-2020s.

Here's my opinion:

* Soyuz-2/6: Easily the biggest loser in the fight w/ S-2 a major player currently including mega-constellation building. W/ @Arianespace dumping Soyuz & now this it seems the venerable R-7 may finally go into history.

S-6? I'm not sure this @Rogozin trampoline will ever fly...

* Antares: Another obvious loser in this potential fight, but I'm not sure @northropgrumman want to keep it anyway (w/ Atlas V used before). Heck it seems Cygnus can be an anchor customer for Neutron as a drop-in replacement even using the same pad!

* Vulcan (@ulalaunch) - At this stage I think Vulcan isn't going to compete here w/ a) it being tailored for US government missions & b) it being much larger, the baseline Vulcan 522 offering 1/3 higher capabilities than even the current Atlas V 401

* New Glenn (@blueorigin) - To be honest I'm not even sure if NG is going to try to catch any market other than cis-lunar space operations & the Amazon constellation. It's so big that I doubt NG can be used to fight for things using <20% of capability at lower price.

* @Firefly_Space/@relativityspace/@ablspacesystems etc.: Definitely the ones to look out for RL w/ Firefly's Beta & Relativity's "Terran-2", however they haven't reached orbit yet, let alone building up reputation. I think at least one of them would give up this market later on.

* European competitors: I don't think anyone thinks of the @Arianespace Ariane 62 as anything but an institutional launcher (it's -64 that still may fight). As for new private start-ups...erm is there anyone who is close to even flying soon, let alone of such size rockets? 🤐

* Japanese competitors: @MHI_LS is actually trying to get into this market w/ the core-only H3-30 series, but at <US$ 40M I'm not sure they have the heart to fight other than grabbing several commercial contracts now and then. Time for booster recovery?

* India - To be honest I don't know what's going on w/ @isro's long-delayed RP-1/LOX LV replacements, they seems to be all in on HSF today instead? I thought they could be a dark horse a la PSLV but their new rockets' development schedule feels wrong.

* Chinese competitors: The most provocative foreign competitor of the class w/ their leading reusable rocker candidate based on the exactly-in-same-class Long March 8. Very interesting; yet CASC & other potential private LSPs are literally living in another ecosphere... 😶

And finally of course there's @SpaceX - they current handle the "Delta II-Antares" market w/ RTLS Falcon 9s, while Neutron needs ship landing. I doubt that @RocketLab can knock F9 out of the market, but at least there's room for them to coexist a la Antares/Atlas V.

Note that big customers likes to split LV contracts (in this range it's usually F9/Soyuz or F9/Atlas nowadays, not to mention using different size LVs). RL doesn't need to completely beat F9 to stand in the market as is, though perhaps w/ lower flight rate.

"But what about Starship?" Good question, but I doubt that Starship - assuming it can go in service soon (TM) - have *that* much lower cost than any rocket out there to squash competitors at an order of magnitude smaller. I can definitely see Starship/Neutron splits in contracts.

So I do think a conventional (?), 1st stage reusable Soyuz-Antares class rocket has quite some market to stand out. Whether RL is the one to capture it remains to be seen, but IMHO the chance is there for @Peter_J_Beck et al. to occupy.