Breaking: Unmanned rocket explodes on launch

[joshcryer]

45. The NK-33s were last built in the 70s.

We're talking almost 45 year old rocket engines.

The entire design of the Antares is to make a cheap rocket with antiquated rocket engines, heck, the second stage is a solid rocket engine!

Yes, absolutely, they were retrofitted and "upgraded" you could say, but the launch shows that nearly 45 years of age is going to result in something you can't plan around.

It doesn't help that the engine is being half-built/operated by a Ukrainian company (and who knows how the conflict there is affecting the build out).

I'm not trying to detract from Russian historical involvement in engine design, I believe that we were actually astonished when we discovered how far ahead of us they were. I am arguing that the current state of our programs is to outsource to Russia to save money, not because somehow magically Russia's exported engines are better. We know how they work and we can make them ourselves (the RS-68 is almost a copied hybrid design).

SpaceX's Falcon shows what an American company can do, for 2x-4x as cheap.