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Does anyone actually want to win the medium-lift race in the United States?

It has been 13 years since the debut of a new medium-lift rocket in the United States, the Antares vehicle developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation. The initial 100-series variant of the Antares rocket was kind of a hot mess. The rocket used old Soviet engines built during the era when Apollo astronauts were landing on the Moon. Decades later, in the 1990s, Aerojet acquired the engines and refurbished them for a rocket that would launch in the 2010s. Predictably, on the fifth launch of an Antares rocket in 2014, it exploded.

自美国轨道科学公司（Orbital Sciences Corporation）开发的安塔瑞斯（Antares）运载火箭问世以来，已经过去了13年。安塔瑞斯火箭最初的100系列型号表现相当糟糕。该火箭使用的是阿波罗登月时代的苏联旧引擎。几十年后的20世纪90年代，Aerojet公司收购了这些引擎并进行翻新，用于2010年代发射的火箭。不出所料，2014年安塔瑞斯火箭在第五次发射时发生了爆炸。

The Antares vehicle is the last of a dying breed of medium-lift rockets—defined as having a lift capacity of 2 to 20 metric tons—in the United States. Nearly a decade and a half later there is a new generation of medium-lift vehicles coming online, and they are starkly different from Antares, which had not just Russian engines but a core stage manufactured in Ukraine. Four forthcoming rockets all have engines built by the rocket’s manufacturer in the United States. Each of these companies has taken various lessons from SpaceX’s successful Falcon 9 rocket, arguably the most important of which is to build as much of one’s rocket, and particularly the engines, in-house as possible to control timelines and costs.

安塔瑞斯火箭是美国中型运载火箭（定义为运载能力在2至20公吨之间）中濒临淘汰的最后一种型号。近十五年后，新一代中型运载火箭即将投入使用，它们与安塔瑞斯截然不同——安塔瑞斯不仅使用俄罗斯引擎，其核心级还是在乌克兰制造的。即将推出的四款火箭，其引擎均由美国本土制造商自行研发。这些公司都从SpaceX成功的猎鹰9号（Falcon 9）火箭中汲取了经验，其中最重要的一点就是尽可能在内部制造火箭部件（尤其是引擎），以控制进度和成本。

Now, with SpaceX pulling the Falcon 9 rocket from the commercial market as soon as 2028, the “race” to bring new medium-lift capacity into service is for more than bragging rights. There are fortunes to be made, and commercial space startups to be saved. Satellite operators legitimately don’t know who to book launches with in the 2027 to 2030 timeframe because of uncertainty over which rockets will be available. The Falcon 9 is no longer for sale. The larger Vulcan and New Glenn rockets have stacked manifests and are expensive for small- and medium-sized satellites. And no one really knows which new medium-lift vehicles will be ready and capable of scaling up their launch cadence.

随着SpaceX最早将于2028年将猎鹰9号撤出商业市场，这场争夺中型运载能力的“竞赛”已不仅仅是为了争夺名声。这背后蕴藏着巨大的财富，也关系到商业航天初创企业的存亡。由于不确定哪些火箭届时可用，卫星运营商确实不知道在2027年至2030年期间该预订哪家的发射服务。猎鹰9号已不再接受预订，而体型更大的火神（Vulcan）和新格伦（New Glenn）火箭订单排满，且对于中小型卫星来说成本过高。目前没人能确定哪些新型中型运载火箭能够按时就绪并具备提升发射频率的能力。

With all of this in mind, Ars Technica is here to help with a guide to the medium-lift space race in the United States, along with some (almost certainly wrong) predictions on when the rockets may debut. The list below is in our expected order of launch. Disagree? Feel free to shame us in the comments. And if you’re an engineer or technician working on one of these projects, keep going. This stuff is really hard and we salute your dedication. Prove us wrong!

考虑到这些情况，Ars Technica特此提供一份美国中型运载火箭竞赛指南，并附上一些（几乎肯定会出错的）关于火箭首飞时间的预测。以下列表按我们预期的发射顺序排列。如果你不同意，欢迎在评论区批评我们。如果你是参与这些项目的工程师或技术人员，请继续努力。这项工作非常艰巨，我们向你们的奉献精神致敬。期待你们证明我们是错的！

Stoke Space: Nova. The smallest of the medium-lift rockets under development, with a capacity of 3 tons in fully reusable mode and 7 tons in expendable mode, the Nova rocket is also arguably the most ambitious. That’s because the rocket aims for full reusability, with a novel upper stage thruster design and heat shield to solve the difficult problem of protecting a vehicle reentering at orbital velocity. Additionally, the first-stage engines are full-flow staged combustion, which is ambitious for a first engine design. Despite all of this, the rocket is making credible progress toward liftoff. The Nova rocket’s first stage is nearly complete at its factory in Kent, Washington. Last week Stoke shipped the second stage of Nova to its test site, and if hot-fire tests are successful it will move to the launch site. The launch complex at Cape Canaveral, Florida, is nearly complete. Recently, for the first time, Stoke began to publicly talk about a date for Nova’s debut. The company is targeting “early” 2027 for launch. That’s probably optimistic, but we could see a late spring or summer debut. Predicted launch debut: July 2027.

Stoke Space：Nova。Nova火箭是目前在研的中型运载火箭中最小的一款，完全可重复使用模式下运载能力为3吨，一次性使用模式下为7吨，但它也可能是最具雄心的一款。因为它旨在实现完全可重复使用，采用了新颖的上面级推进器设计和隔热罩，以解决飞行器在轨道速度下重返大气层时的保护难题。此外，其一级引擎采用全流量分级燃烧循环，对于首款引擎设计而言非常大胆。尽管如此，该火箭在迈向发射方面取得了可靠进展。Nova火箭的一级箭体在华盛顿州肯特市的工厂已接近完工。上周，Stoke公司将Nova的二级箭体运往测试场，如果热试车成功，它将移至发射场。位于佛罗里达州卡纳维拉尔角的发射场也已基本完工。最近，Stoke首次公开谈论了Nova的首飞日期，目标定在2027年“年初”。这可能过于乐观，但我们或许能在春末或夏季看到它首飞。预计首飞时间：2027年7月。

Relativity Space: Terran R. Technically, this is not a medium-lift rocket. The company is advertising up to 33.5 metric tons to low-Earth orbit in fully expendable mode for Terran R. But new rockets rarely hit their advertised lift capacity early in their lifetime, and with a reusable first stage (which is necessary for the economics of Terran R to close), the lift capacity is closer to 20 metric tons. Nevertheless, this is a large and ambitious project. And it was pretty much left for dead until former Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt acquired the company a year and a half ago. Schmidt has injected much-needed funding into Relativity, and sources report that morale at the Long Beach, California-based company has improved significantly. In recent months the company has reported some notable progress. It completed acceptance testing for all 13 of the Aeon R engines that will power its first stage, qualified the first stage structures, and is making progress on assembly of the first stage. Then, last Friday, the company said the Terran R’s second stage had successfully completed its first integrated hot fire test. Stoke and Relativity are fairly close to one another in their development timelines. Relativity is ahead in second stage testing, but Stoke has a lead in launch site readiness. I am going to give the slight edge to the smaller rocket in terms of being ready for launch. Predicted launch debut: September 2027.

Relativity Space：Terran R。严格来说，这并非中型运载火箭。该公司宣称Terran R在完全一次性使用模式下，近地轨道运载能力可达33.5公吨。但新火箭在服役初期很少能达到其标称运载能力，且考虑到其必须采用可重复使用的一级箭体（这对Terran R的经济性至关重要），其实际运载能力更接近20公吨。尽管如此，这仍是一个宏大且雄心勃勃的项目。在一年半前被前谷歌首席执行官埃里克·施密特（Eric Schmidt）收购之前，该项目几乎被认为已经夭折。施密特为Relativity注入了急需的资金，据消息人士称，这家位于加州长滩的公司士气已显著提升。近几个月来，该公司报告了一些显著进展：完成了为一级箭体提供动力的全部13台Aeon R引擎的验收测试，通过了一级箭体结构的鉴定，并正在推进一级箭体的组装。上周五，该公司宣布Terran R的二级箭体已成功完成首次集成热试车。Stoke和Relativity的开发进度相当接近。Relativity在二级箭体测试方面领先，但Stoke在发射场准备工作上更胜一筹。我认为较小的火箭在准备就绪方面略占优势。预计首飞时间：2027年9月。

Rocket Lab: Neutron. With a lift capacity of between 8.5 and 15 metric tons, depending on first stage reuse and landing site, Rocket Lab’s Neutron rocket slots somewhere in between Nova and Terran R. For a long time it appeared as though Neutron would become the first new medium-lift rocket to debut since Antares, but the vehicle has had some teething pains: Rocket Lab has experienced some p…

Rocket Lab：Neutron。Rocket Lab的Neutron火箭运载能力在8.5至15公吨之间（取决于一级箭体是否回收及着陆点），其定位介于Nova和Terran R之间。长期以来，Neutron似乎有望成为自安塔瑞斯以来首款首飞的新型中型运载火箭，但该项目遇到了一些初期困难：Rocket Lab经历了一些……