Ad Astra Per Present Tense Dishonesty
Blue Origin finally launched and landed New Glenn this year. It took them long enough (they were founded in 2000!) but they did spent a while sending celebrities and the obscenely wealthy to just above the Kármán line for a few minutes at a time. NG-2's booster had only been back on land for about two days before Blue Origin announced their plans for both uprated first stage engines (about 15% more thrust) and a new "9x4" variant of New Glenn with more engines and stretched tanks.
But the way they described the design for the "9x4" bugs me to no end:
The next chapter in New Glenn’s roadmap is a new super-heavy class rocket. Named after the number of engines on each stage, New Glenn 9x4, is designed for a subset of missions requiring additional capacity and performance. The vehicle carries over 70 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, over 14 metric tons direct to geosynchronous orbit, and over 20 metric tons to trans-lunar injection. Additionally, the 9x4 vehicle will feature a larger 8.7-meter fairing.
They used three different variants of tense and planning in that paragraph alone:
- "is designed for"
- "carries"
- "will feature"
As of when I'm writing this, NG-9x4 "carries" nothing. It is an idea, a rendering, maybe some pretty cool CAD drawings, and probably a few pieces of hardware. It does nothing. Yet.
It's not just Blue Origin. SpaceX (archive.org link) used similarly varied language when describing the "Falcon 9 Heavy" in 2007, which was three years before the first Falcon 9 launch and eleven years before the first Falcon Heavy launch (emphasis mine):
The Falcon 9 Heavy will be SpaceX’s entry into the heavy lift launch vehicle category. Capable of lifting over 28,000 kg to LEO, and over 12,000 kg to GTO, the Falcon 9 Heavy will compete with the largest commercial launchers now available. It consists of a standard Falcon 9 with two additional Falcon 9 first stages acting as liquid strap-on boosters. With the Falcon 9 first stage already designed to support the additional loads of this configuration and with common tanking and engines across both vehicles, development and operation of the Falcon 9 Heavy will be highly cost-effective. Initial architectural work has already begun, and we currently anticipate first availability of the Falcon 9 Heavy in 2010.
According to SpaceX at the time, it was both capable and would be capable. It both is and will be. (And wow, Elon time is rough.)
The folks over there at Rocket Lab seem much more judicious in their use of tense. Take this paragraph from their initial Neutron announcement:
Neutron will be the world’s first carbon composite large launch vehicle. Rocket Lab pioneered the use of carbon composite for orbital rockets with the Electron rocket, which has been delivering frequent and reliable access to space for government and commercial small satellites since 2018. Neutron’s structure will be comprised of a new, specially formulated carbon composite material that is lightweight, strong and can withstand the immense heat and forces of launch and re-entry again and again to enable frequent re-flight of the first stage. To enable rapid manufacturability, Neutron’s carbon composite structure will be made using an automated fiber placement system which can build meters of carbon rocket shell in minutes.
I bet their PR people hated writing "will be" so often, but it was true. But on that same page, they quote Peter Beck:
“Neutron is not a conventional rocket. It’s a new breed of launch vehicle with reliability, reusability and cost reduction is hard baked into the advanced design from day one. Neutron incorporates the best innovations of the past and marries them with cutting edge technology and materials to deliver a rocket for the future,” said Mr. Beck.
Aw, come on, Pete! It didn't incorporate anything, because wasn't a physical thing. Yet!
Some more highlights from the up-and-commers in the space business (again, emphasis mine):
Sierra Space describes their Dream Chaser:
Utilizing internally developed thrusters with three different thrust modes, Tenacity can nimbly maneuver in space and ensure deliveries are effectively completed. For the return flight, Dream Chaser can safely return critical cargo including supplies and science experiments to Earth at less than 1.5g’s on compatible commercial runways, making cargo accessible faster.
Astra's Rocket 4's payload user's guide (pdf)
Rocket 4 is an expendable, vertically-launched two stage LOX/kerosene rocket, optimized for reliability and manufacturability, and built to significantly reduce the cost of dedicated orbital launches.
Relativity Space says about their Terran R rocket:
Terran R is a two-stage, reusable rocket built for today's satellites and tomorrow's breakthroughs. Perfectly sized to serve the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation market, Terran R will make access to space more reliable and routine.
Firefly describes their Eclipse rocket:
Eclipse is built upon the success of Firefly’s Alpha and Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket with a significant leap in power, performance, and payload capacity. The launch vehicle utilizes scaled-up versions of Alpha’s patented tap-off cycle engines and carbon composite structures to reduce mass and lower costs while improving performance and reliability. Eclipse also retains the flight-proven avionics from the Antares program with additional upgrades, including a larger 5.4 meter payload fairing.
Look at all that present tense. Sierra at least has a flight article built, but one of its main jobs is to confirm whether or not all that stuff they say about it is true. Rocket 4, Terran R, and Eclipse are paper rockets as of now. Okay, there's probablly hardware in development, but certainly no fully-stacked rockets have been built. They currently do nothing. But read the marketing and you'd be forgiven for thinking that these things have been flying for years.
I sure am glad the culture of pharmaceuticals doesn't generally accept this sort of thing. Can you imagine? "Yes, we're just entering hit to lead, but our drug cures diabetes." That would be the pits.