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Commercialization

Shelton Vs McCain On RD-180 Engines

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
July 2, 2015
Filed under
Shelton Vs McCain On RD-180 Engines

Shelton Versus McCain on Import of SpaceX Failure, SpacePolicyOnline
“Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), and Gen. William Shelton (Ret.) view the June 28 SpaceX launch failure very differently. In a McCain statement and a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Shelton, the two take opposite positions on what should be learned from the failure in terms of national security space launches and how long Russian RD-180 engines are needed by the U.S. military to have assured access to space. The congressional push to end reliance on RD-180s began while Shelton was still on active duty and Commander of Air Force Space Command and he and McCain differed on these issues all along. At the last congressional hearing on the topic during Shelton’s tenure, in July 2014, they were fully were on display. Apparently nothing has changed.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

6 responses to “Shelton Vs McCain On RD-180 Engines”

  1. DTARS says:
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    Buy from Russia!

    Noo Noo

    Don’t buy from Russia

    • savuporo says:
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      I read that and i didn’t get where exactly has government asked anyone to buy anything from Russia.

      It also conveniently omits all the US side efforts over the last two decades to come up with viable ORSC booster engines. SLI and all the incarnations before and after.

  2. numbers_guy101 says:
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    A strategy for the Air Force avoiding a monopoly would have certain ingredients, none impossible, some easy, some difficult.

    First, and easy – should the chance arise and competing companies want to merge and create a monopoly, the Air Force has to chime in against this (FTC, courts, etc.) Letting it be known this will be the AF position from the start (anti-trust, etc.) is even better, cutting that option off at the pass, and letting companies with thoughts about selling parts of their business or merging know that participation in launch services will mean those plans won’t happen.

    Second, splitting the 10 or so launches a year from the Air Force by either number of launches, type of launches (each player matures capability across all types) or amount of funding, so as to assure two providers are always in the business. Some experts will say this is inefficient, and competition is over-rated. This will be because a competitor like ULA will charge more per launch for fewer launches, a problem from high fixed costs and inefficient internal processes. You would need the second competitor to make up this difference in effect, to keep the yearly budget the Air Force spends the same as under ULA. Experts will chime in that in effect competition, as it does not lower the yearly AF budget for a given 10 or so launches, is counter-productive. The answer to this is the third ingredient.

    The third ingredient is investing in new competitors that promise ever lower prices while also carrying out extremely efficient development. This was seen with NASA in commercial cargo to ISS, albeit not in the next round where only “service” funding is available (the first rounds had “development” investment as well). That is, be ready to ditch SpaceX and ULA both should they not keep up their game and a new player can be matured with even better prices, flexibility, or response. The Air Force, like NASA, has to stop being just a good engineer, or just a smart buyer, and go to the next step – become a good investor.

    Fourth, none of this comes without accepting risk (this is the hard one), addressed by the third step, efficient development, so that over time even with only slight increases in near term AF space launch budgets (in the range of adding only some low hundreds of millions a year) results in large strategic gains in spacelift (tonnage a year, reliability, flexibility, response) as well as eventual payback by some budget measures.

  3. Antilope7724 says:
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    Maybe they should be renamed “Putin’s Engines”. Then when they were mentioned it would remind everyone who has ultimate control of their availability.

  4. Andrew_M_Swallow says:
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    If NASA or the air force wished to buy from two suppliers it should say so in the request for quotation. The ratio of items purchased between the two suppliers does not have to be fixed. Examples 50%:50% 1:2 or 1:(N-1).

    The 1:(N-1) would apply when the 1 firm is overcharging or no longer making the product.