re: #253 Higgs Boson’s Mate

Orbital faces the obstacle that the expertise for designing and building large liquid fueled engines has all but melted away in the U.S. The specialist job shops that made most of the parts are almost all gone, the engineers who knew the work best are retired or deceased, the people who knew how to assemble and test the things the same.

Yep, so it’s either crib from other guys, use legacy parts, or spend the money to go back to basics. Seems they tried door number two and now are paying for it. Not exactly something new or different in the private sector.