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SpaceX and ULA win billions in Pentagon rocket contracts
- asimpletune 6y agoDid ULA actually do anything to deserve this or is this just to give a cut to some of the more traditional private contractors?
- sadfev 6y agoThey have deep legacy ties with DoD (aka lobbying), but they do launches for the military.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nightski 6y agoULA just launched the new Mars rover for NASA. I don't think SpaceX even has a vehicle capable of that... yet anyways.
- dogma1138 6y agoIt doesn’t, even the heavy isn’t enough.
- babesh 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy Not true. It has the highest capacity of any operational rocket.
- bryanlarsen 6y agoMars 2020 needed a vehicle that could lift almost 4000kg at a C3 energy of 18.4 Falcon Heavy can do that in recoverable mode and a lot more in expendable mode. To see available vehicles, select high energy and 18.4 into the c3 box. https://elvperf.ksc.nasa.gov/Pages/Query.aspx https://elvperf.ksc.nasa.gov/Pages/Query.aspx
- khuey 6y agoMars 2020 required vertical integration of the payload which SpaceX still doesn't do. EDIT: Also another thing I thought of is that SpaceX may not be certified to launch nuclear payloads (given their infrequency it probably doesn't make sense for them to bother).
- dwiel 6y agoWhat do you mean vertical integration?
- krisoft 6y agoIn this case "vertical integration" means that the rocket is standing upright while you are bolting the payload on to it. The alternative is "horizontal integration" where you bolt the payload on the rocket while the rocket is laying on its side. You transport the rocket to the launch pad on it's side, and only there do you tip the rocket+payload together to be upright. This sounds like a very small detail, but many payloads turns out to be highly optimized to only receive forces in one direction, and their structure is not certified to be cantilevered in such a way to "hang" from the tip of the rocket body.
- barney54 6y agoHere’s what I found: https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/43840/why-did-spacex-choose-vertical-integration-for-starship https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/43840/why-did-spac... It appears that it means the assembly of the rocket—whether it is assembled horizontally or vertically. SpaceX rockets and payload are apparently assembled horizontally and then lifted upright.
- khuey 6y agoYes, you can see a pretty cool video of it in the first 20 seconds of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbSwFU6tY1c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbSwFU6tY1c
- GoOnThenDoTell 6y ago
- babesh 6y agoElon Musk’s Tesla Roadster begs to differ. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk%27s_Tesla_Roadster#/media/File:Animation_of_SpaceX_Roadster_trajectory.gif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk%27s_Tesla_Roadster#/... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk%27s_Tesla_Roadster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk%27s_Tesla_Roadster
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Hayvok 6y agoI was watching a congressional committee discussion on this subject a year or two ago - consensus seemed to be that the gov should always have at least two companies available to provide launch services. Hedges their bets a bit and it nurtures the industry.
- ceejayoz 6y agoIn other words: Paying inflated prices for ULA launches is cheaper in the long run than SpaceX having a monopoly.
- zamadatix 6y agoI think it'd be more apt to say paying inflated prices for a secondary mitigates finical risk than guarantees less spent over time. It may or may not actually be cheaper to pay both in the long run. On one hand theoretically if they were the only option in the world they could charge absurd amounts. On the other hand it seems they stand to make more in the coming years commoditizing launches to attract more overall customers/launches and charge them each millions than to charge a few customers billions. Also they'll never be the only one in the world but it is a risk they could end up the only commercial venture in the US capable of launching. One option is medium cost with low risk of astronomical (pun intended) cost and the other a low cost with a medium risk of astronomical cost.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- QuotedForTruth 6y agoIts more about the somewhat likely probability that a single launch provider will have a failure that necessitates a lengthy investigation during which they are grounded. Its nice in that situation to have another launch provider who can pick up essential missions.
- ceejayoz 6y agoThat's certainly a risk, but "we're the only launch provider in the US, and we just raised prices from $250M to $2.5B, and any potential competition will take 5-10 years to get up to capability" is a big risk too. The DOD isn't gonna launch GPS satellites on a Progress.
- sandworm101 6y agoThere are differences in the ULA and SpaceX launch options. There is far more to spacelaunch than cost per kilo to orbit. One of the big issues is that SpaceX doesn't do vertical payload integration. It's upper stage options are also very different than those of ULA. For many sats that isn't an issue, for some military sats it is a very big deal. When the payload is worth many times as much as the rocket, with incalculable trickledown impacts should its launch not go perfectly, your choice of rocket has to tick absolutely every box.
- Tuna-Fish 6y agoParticipation in the second NSSL requires vertical payload integration. SpaceX had to promise to be able to do it to submit a bid. They have never done it so far, but they will definitely do it in the near future.
- tomatoman 6y agoWhat is vertical payload integration?
- JshWright 6y agoWith rockets like the Atlas 5 (flown by ULA), the rocket is assembled vertically in a tall "hanger", and is then rolled out to the launch pad, remaining in the vertical position. The Falcon 9 is assembled rolled out to the pad horizontally, then it raised into the vertical position in preparation for launch. It can be more complicated to design satellites (esp satellites that have large optics in them) to deal with gravity in two different orientations. Atlas 5 "roll out": https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/07/28/photos-atlas-5-rolled-out-to-launch-pad-with-nasas-perseverance-mars-rover/ https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/07/28/photos-atlas-5-rolled-... Falcon 9: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYJuHuhPxGU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYJuHuhPxGU Bonus video, Smarter Every Day chatting w/ the CEO of ULA while watching a Delta IV Heavy roll out to the launch pad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdPoVi_h0r0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdPoVi_h0r0
- 6y ago
- adventured 6y ago139 successful launches with a 100% success rate. Yeah, gee, if only they'd do something. I'm all for competition bringing down ULA's prices, however to pretend they haven't done anything to deserve contracts, is obscene.
- reddog 6y agoYou beat me to it. “Move fast and break things” isn’t the ethos your looking for when the payload cost billions.
- TomMarius 6y agoThat phrase refers to development.
- Denvercoder9 6y ago100% success rate is a lot easier if you inherit two working and tested rockets at birth of the company though. Both Atlas V and Delta IV had failures before ULA was formed. It'll be interesting to see if Vulcan can also achieve 100% success rate, or whether they'll have the same toothing issues SpaceX and others have had.
- valuearb 6y agoWhat does this track record have to do with the untested Vulcan launch system?
- vikramkr 6y agoHere's a pretty good video with some technical details on why spacex isn't always the best option: https://youtu.be/QoUtgWQk-Y0 https://youtu.be/QoUtgWQk-Y0 The government also wants to maintain redundant capabilities, and ULA, which has an incredible success rate and is an incredibly reliable company, is a pretty damn good option for one of the two.
- bryanlarsen 6y agoLike most Scott Manley videos, it's a great video, but it's out of date. That video basically mentions three things: fairing size, vertical integration and the fact that SpaceX's rockets in reusable mode don't lift as much as competitors. This contract pays SpaceX to fix the first two issues and the third can be solved by using the SpaceX rocket in expendable mode.
- simonh 6y agoAnd of course even reusable rockets are eventually EOL, so that rocket in ‘expendable mode’ might have actually flown half a dozen missions beforehand.
- jccooper 6y agoULA maintains a couple of technological advantages; they have some unique insertion steering and their hydrogen upper stage is particularly well-suited for Earth-escape missions. However, SpaceX insertion is good enough for nearly every mission and they can make up for upper stage efficiency with brute force via Falcon Heavy--at a similar or better price point. They also have a few paperwork advantages. Their vehicles have nuclear ratings, though SpaceX can certainly get that any time they want now. And they have demonstrated high reliability, which is important for uninsured billion-dollar payloads. Though it's getting harder to argue against F9. An of course, they're owned by two major defense contractors with plenty of political clout. But: their main advantage now is that they exist and are in the US and The Customer wants to maintain multiple options. Once Blue Origin comes online ULA's going to lose that one too, and will have to either figure out a way to make Vulcan price competitive, go on a crash course to develop a new competitive rocket (for which they're already too late), or lean on their relationship advantages and existing contracts to hang on for a while until at some point reality finally overcomes politics. There's a lot of moving parts but they're not moving in a direction favorable to ULA, and given how hamstrung they are by their ownership structure I'd lean towards that last one.
- garmaine 6y agoBetter launch reliability, larger payload fairing (needed for some NRO payloads).
- valuearb 6y agoLarger fairing is easy, and if launch reliability is truly important you don’t pick a paper rocket (Vulkan) being built by two companies that have never designed an orbital launch system before (ULA and BO).
- inamberclad 6y agoDon't think Falcon Heavy launches from Vandenberg yet. Delta IV Heavy does.
- GoOnThenDoTell 6y agoIf the DoD wants it, they will pay well for the changes and it will simply happen
- jccooper 6y agoIt's not far off. Vandy's built for Falcon Heavy, and was at one time slated to host its debut flight. That got changed to the Cape during development, so it may at this point be a few hardware revisions behind, but that's not a big deal, and can certainly be done in the timeframe of a FH order.
- peteretep 6y agoI wonder to what degree you need to hedge against Elon being a crazy person? 3% chance he one day decides he’s out? Wonder how quickly and easily they can eminent-domain the company in the interests of national security if Musk bugs out
- nitrogen 6y agoI don't pay that much attention, but I get the impression that the established parts of SpaceX are run by Gwynne Shotwell, and Musk focuses on new tech.
- peteretep 6y agoFor sure, but he’s still the owner and could still presumably have a melt-down and halt operations while mounting Quixotic legal challenges
- jmknoll 6y agoTotally off-topic, but Shotwell is a great name, even more so for someone who works at a Rocketry company.
- kazagistar 6y agoTalk about nominative determinism.
- vardump 6y agoTalking about names, just guess what Andrej Karpathy is working on for Tesla. :-) https://karpathy.ai/ https://karpathy.ai/
- m0zg 6y agoFrom what I've heard from SpaceX employees, Musk is extremely committed to SpaceX in general, and to putting people on the surface of Mars in particular. It's most definitely not a joke for him and I don't see him "bugging out" of something that to a large extent gives his life a higher purpose.
- irjustin 6y agoLate to the party, but Pentagon/Gov/Military always hedges its bets by running minimum 2 different launch providers almost regardless of cost. Orbital ATK, the only other active US based provider would have been another contender but they don't have a heavy launch system yet. So, all in all, this awarding is quite expected.
- jessriedel 6y agoBlue Origin was also competing.
- GoOnThenDoTell 6y agoPaper rockets though, they have to actually launch something to orbit first
- irjustin 6y agoYeah, that's why I mentioned 'active' specifically to mean having currently flying heavy launch vehicles.
- walkingolof 6y agoThey did, but more important, you do not want to get stuck again with one service provider....
- Rebelgecko 6y ago>Did ULA actually do anything to deserve this Yes, they put in a winning bid on the contract. I imagine some of the things that put them ahead of the competition would be- Vertical integration. I don't think oMeGa or BO are capable of doing this. Neither is SpaceX. Horizontal integration complicates certain missions More complicated orbits. ULA has demonstrated in the past that they can inject direct to GEO. I don't think any of the other bidders have, and I'm not sure if they claimed they'll be capable of doing so. Precision. Depending on who you ask, ULA is the best when it comes to actually hitting their desired orbits. This can add life to the payload. For a billion dollar satellite, an extra year of fuel can totally justify $20 million more in launch costs (or whatever the difference happens to be) Other than SpaceX (since F9 and F9H already exist) I think they're the closest to actually building the rockets that they put in their bid. The second stage draws heavily from existing designs.
- valuearb 6y agoSpaceX now offers vertical integration. And the difference in launch costs is closer to $100M, not $20M. That should obviate the other minor differences.
- Rebelgecko 6y agoWould you mind sharing concrete numbers? I can't imagine that Vulcan is going to cost that much more than an Atlas V. Even if SpaceX reduces their prices by 80% compared to what they charged during EELV, a $100 million difference seems unlikely to me.
- valuearb 6y agoThere is little evidence the Vulkan will cost less than the Atlas V, since it’s a higher capacity launch system with a highly capable but expensive second stage. It’s going to be about the same as an Atlas V & Falcon Heavy, but much cheaper than a Delta IV Heavy. It’s payload to LEO are about 20% higher than a Falcon 9 and about half that of a Falcon Heavy, but it’s payload to GTO/GEO are close to the Falcon Heavy. A commercial contract Atlas V is roughly $50M more than a Falcon 9, but government contracts have a lot of more expensive handling/launch requirements that can easily double the cost. It’s likely the difference is not $100M more, but it’s still going to be easy more than $20M.
- juped 6y agoDid ULA actually do anything to deserve your scorn?
- valuearb 6y agoULA was created to make a semi-monopoly to suck at the teats of the US governments pork farm. They’ve never created a new rocket or launch system, or advanced space exploration in any meaningful way. Instead they just kept flying the same old tired designs until they became utterly obsolete. Fortunately another company came along and dramatically undercut their monopolistic pricing while providing the most valuable technological innovations space launch has seen since the 1960s. And now ULA is irrelevant and on a long term path to dissolution. Bailing them out with this contract is a near criminal act by the Air Force that shows nothing but favoritism.
- juped 6y agoWell, I like to think of myself as an engineer (on a good day), and I think 100% successful launches with "old tired designs" is bragworthy.
- valuearb 6y agoIt’s not bragworthy if you achieve zero forward progress in creating new capabilities. The Atlas, Titan and Delta series of rockets were great 50 years ago, but rapidly aging twenty years ago and so expensive they were holding back progress in space. It’s like Henry Ford focusing on making the original Model T higher quality, but not cheaper. It would be a great accomplishment if he doubled the number of miles between servicing and halved the rate at which key components broke. But if he’s not also reducing its costs dramatically, it robs the world of the worst affordable car for the masses, a far higher achievement.
- juped 6y agoSome people need payloads put into space.
- 6y ago
- woodandsteel 6y agoWhen the ULA Vulcan was first announced, the plan was the engines, which are 90% of the cost of the first stage, would be recoverable and reusable. The idea was the engine section would detach from the rest of the rocket, fall a ways and then a parachute would open, and finally it would be caught mid-air by a helicopter. The idea was this would help it compete on price with the Falcon 9. However, according to the Wikipedia article on Vulcan, this has not been funded, and so the rocket is going to be fully disposable.
- drannex 6y agoThe Vulcan rocket has transitioned to using Blue Origins thrusters instead of inhouse development. The first stage will be reusable (The Blue Shepherd launch vehicle from Blue Origin has now flown over 12 times, as of December using their BE-4 thrusters). Vulcan is to be flown early next year.
- valuearb 6y agoThe New Shepherd uses the BE-3. The BE-4 the Vulcan will use has never flown. ULA has never built a new launch system. Based on their track record early next year is optimistic. ULA has no real plans for re-use, they’ve never even funded a test program for the SMART plan, and Blue Origin has never demonstrated propulsive landing capabilities for an orbital class booster.
- woodandsteel 6y agoThe first stage is potentially reusable, but according to the Wikipedia article this has not been funded, so when it starts flying next year it will be expended. The thrusters are reusable, but you need a whole lot more than that. Maybe some time in the future it will be funded, or maybe not.
- unixhero 6y agoSmarterEveryDay, United Launch Alliance factory visit, https://youtu.be/o0fG_lnVhHw https://youtu.be/o0fG_lnVhHw Earlier ULA video by SmarterEveryDay, https://youtu.be/OdPoVi_h0r0 https://youtu.be/OdPoVi_h0r0
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- lalos 6y agoIt's interesting to see how NASA has been slowly being privatized via these contracts. People used to be rooting for NASA and now they are rooting for a company that at the end of the day, will do as they please with the technology developed. Americans seem to prefer small government and 'offshore' everything to for-profit companies. In the future, what stops an American company from one day abandoning the USA to another country and leaving the USA without the infrastructure to do space travel anymore? (not familiar if there's regulation in place to stop this?) Or maybe this would just cause the price to rise in the USA for the same services.
- nappy 6y agoThis is explicitly NASA's strategy, and it is the correct one. NASA wants to be pushing the bleeding edge of possibility in space, and prefers to contract out the "everyday" stuff or orbital flight, in order focus on deep space missions.
- an_opabinia 6y agoThe fact that SpaceX is so reliable so quickly is a testament to how great a bet NASA made. The OCO failures come to mind as something that, hopefully, will never happen with SpaceX as a partner. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbiting_Carbon_Observatory#Original_launch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbiting_Carbon_Observatory#Or...
- khuey 6y agoIn the case of rocket launches specifically, ITAR stops them.
- scoopertrooper 6y agoNASA
- agustinbena 6y agoNasa did that simply because they could not get things done, is not the fault of nasa admins nor engeniers, but the corruption of their legacy contractors and congress pushing to do spreed across the country all the projects in order to give jobs in each state, leading to a massive ineficiency that simply was unsustainable. Privately companies already demostrated they can do much more for less.
- jeffrallen 6y agoAny win for ULA is a loss for taxpayers... Their entire business model is "take what you can get from a stupid/credulous customer (the federal government and it's pork barreling politicians)".
- octodog 6y agoI don't really know anything about ULA or the space industry in general so I find this to be a particularly unhelpful comment. According to you, what makes their business model like this? Could you explain why this is fundamentally different from any other contractor?
- mabbo 6y agoThe general answer is that you have up and coming companies like SpaceX (and maybe soon Blue Origin) who are pushing hard to reduce costs and be competitive, yet ULA, Boeing, Lockheed (ULA is Boeing and Lockheed actually) keep winning contracts where they offer less, but charge more. And people are left wondering why? And then people begin to notice that those companies have lots of friends working at the Pentagon, NASA, etc. On the latest bids for the moon landers, a high ranking NASA official had to step down because it appears he leaked information about the bids directly to Boeing when it was clear they were going to lose this big contract[0]. Just look at the Commercial Crew program, where private companies bring astronauts to the ISS for NASA, Boeing is being paid 60% more per seat[1]. You would expect that means they're of higher quality- yet here we are in August 2020 and so far they've failed their no-humans-test-flight, while SpaceX has sent and returned two astronauts already. The real question in my mind is why this latest contract with the Pentagon went 60% ULA, 40% SpaceX when it could just have easily done the 60-40 split the other way, saving a lot of taxpayer money while maintaining identical redundancy. [0]https://www.space.com/boeing-moon-lander-nasa-doug-loverro-resignation.html https://www.space.com/boeing-moon-lander-nasa-doug-loverro-r... [1]https://www.space.com/spacex-boeing-commercial-crew-seat-prices.html https://www.space.com/spacex-boeing-commercial-crew-seat-pri...
- simonh 6y agoAs has been pointed out in many posts to this thread, long before your post, there are still capabilities ULA offers that SpaceX doesn’t. That includes vertical integration, which SpaceX will develop but currently doesn’t have, and various fairing and launch site options. SpaceX has yet to achieve direct to GTO, and ULA have a better record of accurate insertion into the desired trajectory, that can be a big deal. ULA also has launch site options SpaceX doesn’t have, specifically while F9 can launch from Vandenburg, Heavy cant yet and the time and cost fir that might nit make economic sense Finally there are some mission profiles even Falcon Heavy isn’t ideal for due to its RP1 fuelled upper stage. There are some missions where the extra Specific Impulse from a Hydrologist upper stage makes a difference. So yes in the longer term many of these issues might be resolvable, but not all and this contract is for specific envisioned missions on a schedule and with known requirements, so nobody is making up numbers here. If it’s 60/40 there will be reasons for that.
- jondubois 6y agoHurray, more government money being laundered to pay master Elon and his gang. Let's keep increasing taxes and keep printing more fiat money and give it to Elon Musk so that we can all be good slaves, giving him and his gang tangible goods and services in exchange for what is left of the magic green paper which the government gave to him for free; much of which he burned off into the void of space. Long live master Elon.
- mabbo 6y agoSpaceX charges less than ULA for identical services. If you're arguing that the Pentagon shouldn't launch satellites because it's expensive, that's a reasonable argument, sure. But if you're arguing that the Pentagon should pick the more expensive contractor because they aren't owned by a celebrity you don't like, that's kind of silly.
- jondubois 6y agoI'm saying don't send tax payer dollars to be burned into the void of space when that same money could be used to improve the quality of people's lives here on earth. For sure it's better to waste it efficiently than inefficiently. But even better to not waste it at all.
- mabbo 6y agoBut consider the good that has come from space. GPS was a military project. Now we use it for everything from finding grandma's house to locating lost hikers. The tech behind spy satellites is now used to monitor farming fields, increasing crop yields and reducing food costs. The same tech is used in telescopes like Hubble, teaching us so much about the universe and how nature works. Most of the science on the ISS is impossible to do on Earth. We're learning a lot about human health especially (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:International_Space_Station_experiments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:International_Space_S...). And it's not like the money gets burned or sent into space with the satellites. It's spent here on earth. A $1B contract with SpaceX doesn't just go into Elon's pocket and then he magics up a rocket. SpaceX employs thousands of people. And space is a tiny fraction of the spending of all governments on the planet. Cut the military budget of the US by 10% and you could feed every hungry child, have a proper health care system, pay to reform the police system. Cut the budget spent on space, you wouldn't put a dent in those problems and you'd lose out on all the benefits we get.