During an hour-long event on Thursday, Abel Avellan, the founder and chief executive of the telecommunications company AST SpaceMobile, laid out his vision for developing a large rocket to launch his Bluebird satellites into orbit.
Avellan emphasized, over and over again, that AST plans to build a “simple” rocket. He paraphrased SpaceX founder Elon Musk several times, saying, “the best part is no part.” Avellan emphasized that AST has already procured engines for its proposed Blacklift rocket, asserting that engine development accounts for 80 percent of a typical rocket’s development cycle.
