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I 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 thei

I 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 ago
The 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 ago
  As 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.
  - jeffrallen 6y ago
    I'm not interested in the long term. I want my tax-paying parents to get a fair deal now. Government should work for the people, not for ULA.
valuearb 6y ago
ULA is a leech created to attach to pork. It’s current rockets were designed by parent companies 20-50 years ago. ULA just kept making the same rockets, at higher pricing without the competition the parent companies provided, and without improving them in any significant way. They got caught with their pants down by SpaceX, and now their existing rockets are technologically and economically obsolete. So instead of shutting them down, the Air Force gave them first position as a lifeline, even though they have to build their first new rocket ever, using an unproven engine, that’s unlikely to be cost competitive and won’t be reliable for years. That’s the truth, Vertical assembly and ULAs reliability on their old rockets is just red herrings. Vulkan is no more worthy of a government contract than New Glenn or any other paper rocket from a first time launch system design team.
TeMPOraL 6y ago
Part of the problem is that before SpaceX, the industry was used to "cost-plus pricing" in government contracts - i.e. "we'll pay you whatever it costs to make, plus some extra for you" - which strongly incentivizes the contractors to inflate the production costs (or, charitably assuming everyone is playing fair and 100% honest, there's still very little incentive to innovate in order to cut the costs down). ULA is still held down by that legacy. Also, note that ULA is a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing; the underlying political issues form an infinite, money-sucking fractal. It's always been like that - space industry grew out from government military programs; in fact, SpaceX is representing the new wave of private, commercial interests with no military legacy.

mabbo 6y ago

The 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 ago
As 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.
- jeffrallen 6y ago
  I'm not interested in the long term. I want my tax-paying parents to get a fair deal now. Government should work for the people, not for ULA.

valuearb 6y ago

ULA is a leech created to attach to pork. It’s current rockets were designed by parent companies 20-50 years ago. ULA just kept making the same rockets, at higher pricing without the competition the parent companies provided, and without improving them in any significant way. They got caught with their pants down by SpaceX, and now their existing rockets are technologically and economically obsolete. So instead of shutting them down, the Air Force gave them first position as a lifeline, even though they have to build their first new rocket ever, using an unproven engine, that’s unlikely to be cost competitive and won’t be reliable for years. That’s the truth, Vertical assembly and ULAs reliability on their old rockets is just red herrings. Vulkan is no more worthy of a government contract than New Glenn or any other paper rocket from a first time launch system design team.

TeMPOraL 6y ago

Part of the problem is that before SpaceX, the industry was used to "cost-plus pricing" in government contracts - i.e. "we'll pay you whatever it costs to make, plus some extra for you" - which strongly incentivizes the contractors to inflate the production costs (or, charitably assuming everyone is playing fair and 100% honest, there's still very little incentive to innovate in order to cut the costs down). ULA is still held down by that legacy. Also, note that ULA is a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing; the underlying political issues form an infinite, money-sucking fractal. It's always been like that - space industry grew out from government military programs; in fact, SpaceX is representing the new wave of private, commercial interests with no military legacy.