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Commercialization

ULA Troubles Continue

By Marc Boucher
NASA Watch
June 24, 2013
Filed under ,

Orbital Sues ULA, Seeks RD-180 Engines, $515 Million in Damages, SpaceNews
Orbital Sciences Corp., which wants to buy Russian-made RD-180 engines for its medium-lift Antares rocket, is suing rocket maker United Launch Alliance (ULA) for blocking any such sale, according to court papers dated June 20.
Orbital of Dulles, Va., claims Denver-based ULA has not only illegally prevented open-market sale of the RD-180, but also has monopolized the launch-services market for certain satellites in violation of U.S. antitrust laws, according to a complaint filed June 20 with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria.

Related: FTC Investigating United Launch Alliance
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is investigating whether United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co, violated federal antitrust laws by “monopolizing” or restraining competition through an exclusivity agreement with the maker of the engines used in its rockets, according to a FTC document obtained by Reuters.

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16 responses to “ULA Troubles Continue”

  1. dogstar29 says:
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    It’s hardly surprising that ULA is acting like a monopoly, given that it was created, with government permission, with the express purpose of creating a monopoly.

    • mattmcc80 says:
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      Well, not that it makes it any better, but this investigation is specifically about ULA trying to monopolize RD Amross’s business. ULA’s merger was of course approved by the FTC (http://www.spaceflightnow.c… but that just meant they got to monopolize the government’s business, apparently it doesn’t apply to their vendors. It’d be funny if it wasn’t the cause of hugely inflated EELV launch costs.

  2. meekGee says:
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    Dammit Jim, I’m a lawyer, not an engineer!

  3. John Gardi says:
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    Folks:

    Good! long overdue.

    tinker

  4. In The Know says:
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    So Orbital bought a bunch of crappy, outdated NK-33 engines, and now can’t get enough of them to work to meet the committments they made to NASA, and somehow it’s ULA’s fault?

    Lockheed Martin didn’t pick the NK-33 for Atlas 3 and Atlas 5 in the early ’90s for the exact reasons that Orbital is JUST NOW discovering.

    Time for Orbital management to take responsibility for their own mess.

    • Denniswingo says:
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      Orbital picked those engines for one reason, cheap.

    • ProfSWhiplash says:
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      The NK’s are antiques all right, but they aren’t really all that crappy — they’re pretty robust suckers (of course, that’s the typical Russian way: sacrifice a little weight to add performance & strength with margin, then just add more fuel for the trip). I’ve seen clips of test firings at margins way above the so-called design limit, and for longer then a typical mission. Then Aerojet would inspect them, clean them up, and use them all over again.
      But what I don’t understand is that Aerojet should have the rights to the design to build their own by now (in fact I thought they had). Or they could have even just reversed engineered with upgrades (that’s also a time honored Russian practice — where do you think they got all their bomber designs?).

    • Michael Reynolds says:
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      I am not a rocket engineer and have only a basic understanding of the performance of these engines, but from what I understand the NK-33 is a much more efficient and cheaper rocket than the rd-180. I guess I just don’t understand why the NK-33 hasn’t been fully brought back into production if it is the better engine.

      • ProfSWhiplash says:
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        I suspect the NK-33’s weren’t brought back, because they are still a reminder of an embarrassment of losing the moon race, via that N-1 debacle in the late ’60’s. Didn’t matter that all the failures were not the fault of the NK’s, it was guilt by association, and the Soviets were good at burying their mistakes. We Americans don’t hold a candle to “political correctness” … the Soviets were professionals near the very end — if something did not match their glorious socialist world view — even with physics — they tended to get rid of it if they could and then deny its existence.

        As I recall, the Powers That Be in Moscow ordered EVERYTHING destroyed to make it seem they never intended to go to the moon anyway. But some engineers were apparently too in love with their “children” to scrap them — so they wrapped up over a hundred and put them in a sealed warehouse that sat there for decades. When they opened up the “tomb” everything was still show-room pristine — but still with really old tech (like wires with woven insulation).

        BTW, I checked and Aerojet in fact did get a license to produce these — with upgrades (and those are the AJ-26’s). So that raised the question: why is OSC so paranoid about engine availability (as if there’s a shortage)??? (especially when they can get something Made In America … even if its design has a little CCCP in it)

  5. Paul451 says:
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    Any technical reason they can’t use RD-191’s? I’m sure Energomash would appreciate the extra sales.

    • Michael Reynolds says:
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      That was something I was curious about myself. I assumed it was because the 191 was going to be significantly more expensive to purchase and/or to incorporate into the Antares. Then again I don’t understand why Orbital hasn’t taken Aerojet Rocketdyne’s offer to continue production of the NK-33, considering the better performance of this rocket over both the rd-180 and rd-191 (More expensive maybe?)
      All in all I get the distinct feeling this is just Orbital spitting in ULA’s eye becaus they can (not that I blame them).

  6. CadetOne says:
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    Elon Musk on Orbital: “The results are pretty crazy. One of our competitors, Orbital Sciences, has a contract to resupply the International Space Station, and their rocket honestly sounds like the punch line to a joke. It uses Russian rocket engines that were made in the ’60s. I don’t mean their design is from the ’60s—I mean they start with engines that were literally made in the ’60s and, like, packed away in Siberia somewhere.”

    • John Gardi says:
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      C1:

      I wonder if Orbital has been in touch with SpaceX to ask about buying Merlin engines? I know that wouldn’t work but a few years down the road, Orbital might be the first customer of SpaceX’s reusable first stages.

      Boeing didn’t run airlines, they designed, built and sold planes. It’s not a stretch to see SpaceX shift gears that way when their technology is mature enough.

      tinker

  7. Jackalope3000 says:
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    Yet another reason to build your own, like Space-X.

  8. Jeff Havens says:
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    Folks, I’m a little fuzzy on the timeline here. Did Orbital try to get RD-180’s before or after getting the NK-33’s? If after, were they meant as a replacement, or another stage? Has Aerojet given up on producing these after they run out of NK-33 inventory? There is a lot of the story I’ve either missed or hasn’t been fleshed out yet.

  9. Zach says:
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    Aerojet Rocketdyne has basibally dismissed the whole monopoly argument by saying that if Orbital wants NK-33s, they simply must sign a lot buying agreenment. There is no monopoly if you can buy engines besides RD-180, in fact Aerojet Rocketdyne could sell them any other engines in their inventory if they are willing to pay for them.