Russia and ULA Scramble To Compete With SpaceX For Business
Russia vs. Elon Musk: U.S. Startup Threatens Moscow’s Role in Space, Moscow Times
“There are two other means by which SpaceX poses an imminent threat to Roscosmos. The first is the impact it is having on United Launch Alliance (ULA), the immediate U.S. competitor to SpaceX. ULA currently buys Russian-made engines for its Atlas V rocket, but SpaceX’s success may cause it to rethink. Without sales to ULA, Roscosmos’ engine-making subsidiary, Energomash, will lose its main customer. An even greater impact is expected when SpaceX begins flying NASA astronauts to the International Space Station in the next two to three years. Since the U.S. space shuttles were retired in 2011, Roscosmos charged NASA $70 million for each seat. Musk promises to undercut that significantly, charging around $20 million on his “Dragon” spacecraft. Considering that Roscosmos is expecting an annual budget of $2 billion over the next decade, the loss of an $500 million annual subsidy is significant.”
United Launch Alliance to lay off up to 875 by end of 2017: CEO, Reuters
“United Launch Alliance plans to cut up to 875 jobs, or about one-quarter of its workforce, before the end of 2017 to better compete against rivals bankrolled by billionaire entrepreneurs including Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, ULA’s chief executive said on Thursday. ULA, a partnership of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co, expects a first round of 375 job cuts to be accomplished this year, mostly through voluntary layoffs. In an interview with Reuters, ULA CEO Tory Bruno said another 400 to 500 employees would be cut by the end of 2017. “We’re in the process of transforming our company,” Bruno said.”
Let me guess:
1. Tony Bruno and his cronies will NOT be losing their jobs.
2. Tony Bruno and his cronies will NOT be getting their pay cut.
Tory.
Of course not. Tory Bruno and his cronies will get huge bonuses for making the “tough decision” to cut staff. Unfortunately, that sends a clear message to the engineers that they really aren’t valued by the company.
The other facet of this problem is trying to maintain the current Atlas V and Delta IV (at least Heavy) until Vulcan is flying will be problematic. The past has shown that if the “old” vehicles don’t get enough budget, launch failures will happen. Right now, ULA’s impressive track record of launch successes is one of the few positives the company still has when it is trying to sell new launches. A catastrophic launch failure would put a bit of tarnish on that shiny image.
Well, I’ve been saying all along that launch mishaps happen and that building the entire future of your business platform on that shaky pedistal is very risky. So is saying, “Ya, those whacky folks who think they can reuse rockets just don’t know any better”. Add it to the list of famous last words.
Besides, they’ll be mass-producing rockets, reusing cores, flying 9 engines per launch, tripling up oncores on heavy launches, and doing all this with record-setting contract signing rates and flying from 3 to 4 different launch pads. How long will it take to pass up ULA on launch history?
It is ironic that Roscosmos should have become so dependent on US sales that they will be damaged by SpaceX success. What would Lenin think?
It’s not too surprising considering other recent events. Have you noticed what happens on the New York Stock Exchange when a nominally communist country (China) has trouble managing their economy? What would Joe McCarthy think?
South China Morning Post (owned by Alibaba now) says China should look at incorporating private efforts into their space program.
http://www.scmp.com/comment…
CALT, which manufactures the Long March series of launch vehicles, is state owned but is privately managed nowadays, and functions much like a major US aerospace contractor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
Chinese officials have note that SpaceX can sometimes underbid them on cost and Chinese companies have launched satellites on SpaceX vehicles.
ROSCosmos stopped bad-talking SpaceX before ULA did. That alone says something about what a history of getting their tails kicked in technology has taught them. ULA just needed a little humble pie.
Lenin would probably have someone exiled or executed.
It is sad that it has came to this. ULA could have chosen a different path for themselves, but instead they chose to sit back and wait for commercial space to fail.
True.
There are three ways to deal with new competition…condescension, development, or purchase. ULA initially chose condescension. Bad move.
Either… (1) Take the new guy’s bright, bold new ideas and use your greater experience, market cap, and other resources to develop and sell those ideas faster and bigger than a startup can, or (2) Buy the startup.
Just saying, “These little children don’t know what they’re doing” is a dangerous gamble because it only works if the “little children” die before they learn.
Now, SpaceX (and Arian) will approach a customer base that can grow beyond ULA’s existing market cap, while gobbling up chunks ULA’s market share along the way. Add that to a fast launch cadence, pushed along by SpaceX’s reusable boosters, and ULA could be stripped of the resources that it needs to catch up on innovation. Plus, SpaceX and other startups are teaching NASA and other big players a couple of things along the way, while learning all that they can from them. So the children are now teaching some of the classes.
I’m glad that ULA has joined hands a little with Bigelow. Bigelow needs their operational knowledge and it’ll give ULA a leg up on an aggressive new growth spur of the market that could keep them going long enough to rebound. The market still needs ULA…just a leaner, stronger, faster ULA.
But Elon Musk would never sell SpaceX, so the only option left to ULA would have been to not ignore SpaceX and start investing in “next generation” hardware.
As an example, ULA engineers have been publishing papers on next generation upper stage technology (i.e. ACES upper stage) for many years. But, ULA chose not to invest in actually developing ACES. Even now, ACES is won’t come online until after a Vulcan/Centaur launch vehicle is flying.
They continue to say that a reusable 1st stage is not cost effective.
I agree. The rocket maker gets paid to make more rockets if they can convince their customers that they have to crash each one into the ocean after payload delivery.
Trouble is that there are applications for space flight that we will never happen as long as Government and Communications companies are the only ones who can afford access to space. $1,000 / lb unlocks some opportunities, but $500-$800 / lb explodes the market.
Do you have some evidence for that? Because all the papers I’ve read on space economics since the 1990s say that launch price is basically inelastic (i.e. price does not follow demand linearly). And, working myself in the space industry, for a given project the price of the satellite is at least 3 times the launcher, and there’s also ground segment and so on, and so in the end the launch price is 25% or less of a given project. So even if launch prices are divided by two, it’s pretty good news for that particular manufacturer and the investor, but it’s not unlocking the door to the solar system or enabling space solar power or all these dreams.
“and so in the end the launch price is 25% or less of a given project. “
Whoa, if this be the case then so much for watching spaceflight scale up to be as common as airplane travel.
Wrong conclusion. All it means is that the number of payloads that are huge, pricey GEO comsats will decline as a percentage of all space launch missions. The expansion of the launch services market will be driven almost entirely by different classes of payload.
None of those studies were based on the assumption that it was actually possible to provide launch services at a significantly lower price than the then-incumbents charged. SpaceX broke this paradigm and its huge book of business should be all the proof anyone needs that there is considerable elasticity of demand in the price of space launch.
The current high price and large size of GEO comsat payloads is a consequence of previously high launch costs, not a driver of price inelasticity. When launch is insanely expensive, it’s only worthwhile to build big sats with 15-year lifetimes so as to minimize the number of launches. That achieving such lifetimes has made the individual vehicles so expensive is just a second-order effect of high launch costs.
NASA did a study a while back which estimates what business opportunities might be available in space and groups them by $ per pound.
Also, launch cadence and industry size also influences price, so “the more the merrier” actually fits in this discussion. As the price drops, opportunity is enabled, as that happens the market gets wider and deeper, as that happens and things get closer to routine overhead costs drop.
Yea. They waited until now to make the cuts and adjustments that would have made a better deal for the customer or at least improved the ULA bottom line.
Yes that was the one.
Thanks
This is just my opinion… but there are some very nervous staffers and SES folks. For years now they have briefed congress on how space could not be privatized. For years now they have “poo poo’d” companies like spacex and blue origin. For years now they have pushed for an unreasonable and unsustainable jobs program and in doing so sacrificed real progress.
We are not out of the woods yet but at some point we have to say we could use F-9Rs for depots. We could use F-9Rs for on orbit assembly. We could use Blue Origin and Bigelow Aerospace.
This is no longer 1968 with a room full of men wearing white button ups with black ties smoking while trying to solve problems. I enjoy watching 19 year olds work on cores at Hawthorne.
We all need to soften our stances and accept the new normal of kids with green hair and more piercings than a fencing dummy can build hardware and write software.
Sure there’s young people working on their systems but there’s also a lot of pretty senior people heading up critical areas as well.
Cheers
Spot on. I’ve visited SpaceX. I work at NASA. I saw all ages like any business. Imaging leaving behind all the dead weight and the bureaucracy that has grown like a fungus to strangle out any innovation in favor of “heritage” converting what once was an organization based on science to one of politics. That’s SpaceX. NASA and LM could learn something from them. At least LM has a chance at doing so.
I’m confused. The only thing reusable on a F-9R is the first stage. It would certainly be possible to place an Falcon upper stage into orbit, but I’m not sure it would be suitable for use as a (fuel and oxidizer) depot.
I interpreted RS327’s comment to mean cheap F9R’s could be used to launch depot hardware as payloads and that other payloads could facilitate on-orbit assembly. I don’t think he (or she) had in mind that F9R 2nd stages would be repurposed in some way to do these jobs, but I admit the wording is confusing.
Perhaps RS327 would be good enough to clarify?
F9R and BO vehicles could be used for a variety of payload from depots to on orbit assembly of “space ships” to BEO destinations.
Three main points with respect to above:
#1 Lower launch costs open up new ways to explore and settle space with various technologies, techniques, and pathways to BEO, not just with HSF but also with SMD.
#2 I specifically mentioned spacex and BO. This is not just about SpaceX. This is crucial. It is important that the market picks the winners and losers, not Congressman 199 and Senator 31.
#3 What happens when FH starts rolling? What can Bigelow do with those kinds of dimensions and now what happens in the billionaire playground?
Final thought – several friends of mine are wanting to fly things in space and test with humans. Naturally, the ISS mafia and Astronaut Office is very protective of our humans on orbit – they should be. However, the HSF scientific pipe line is crushed at JSC (and DC).
Cheaper access to space and Bigelow change the game… and that is all any of us want. Affordable game changers.
ULA and Roscosmos have nothing to worry about. Gary Hudson assured us this week that Spacex’s whole plan is flawed.
Get to da choppa !
I thought that was strange when I saw Tweets about Gary Hudson’s comments.
ROSCosmos will do fine. The expanding market will bring them new customers if they can get a handle on their launch mishaps. I think I heard that they’ve also been working on a HLV of their own to compete with Falcon Heavy, Delta Heavy, and (giggle) SLS.
One thing is for sure. They’re not laughing at Elon anymore. 😉
I am quite sure that they don’t want to have to be SpaceX or Ariane customers while trying to push back against Europe and the U.S. politically. That incentive alone will keep them moving forward. So what if it is a kick in the back-side instead of a carrot and stick!
They’re working on the Angara family. Angara looks like a terrific system… if this were the 1990s. Now they’re bringing an EELV type system into service just as the EELV model is being made obsolete.
That’s my sense. The Russians have a proud history and they have prodigious engineers. Do not count them out.
Russia has always had brilliant people. But it has also always had wretched and dysfunctional government. We all know which of these tends to win out.
You are very dependable sir 🙂
We aim merely to serve, good sir.
It would be nice if Russia would cease being an arrogant and aggressively expansionist power, but that seems beyond the elastic limit of Russian political culture – at least absent some pretty major outside influence. Losing a war with NATO which it foolishly starts is about the only thing I can think of that would be major enough.
Well, okay, I guess if the Chinese did a Pearl Harbor-type strike and took Siberia, that would probably work too. But in that case, losing Russia as an antagonist would be roughly equivalent to losing Germany as an antagonist in WW2 – we’d soon miss them when they were gone compared to what would have taken their place.
It would, indeed, also be nice if the best and brightest of Russia could contribute positively to the world to the best of their considerable abilities, but the sociopaths who dominate Russian politics have never, and will never, hold this as any sort of priority.
Would that things were otherwise, but I’m a conservative, not a leftist. Wishful thinking has no role in my political analyses.
I seem to recall in the very early days of SpaceX a couple of execs from AS visiting SpaceX and going away with the thought that SpaceX would succeed. There was an actual quote in an article but not sure where now. Oh well. Anyway seems the writing was on the wall very early on and the incumbents simply didn’t react. Now I’d suggest that it’s too late. SpaceX has too much of a head start and too much momentum to allow anyone to catch them. BO is also in the mix however there would appear to be little urgency in their activities to seriously challenge SpaceX.
It’s been a interesting decade watching SpaceX grow and develop and a great example of disruptive influence and incumbent apathy.
I’m really looking foreword to the rest of this year and next. There’s such exciting food on the menu: commercial crew, FH, more RTLS and sea-based landings/attempts; Raptor; and MCT.
It’ll also be interesting to see where ULA and Bigelow go.
Cheers
You may be referring to this article.
http://spacenews.com/38891a…
Yes that’s the one. I recall reading a couple of earlier ones as well. Not sure when SpaceX actually got their visitors.
Thanks
Don’t forget that Musk will unveiled his Mars ambitions at Guadalajara Mexico during the 2016 International Astronautical Congress.
Yes I know thanks. Hopefully he’ll make this scheduled event. LOL.
Cheers
BO doesn’t have to be urgent. SpaceX didn’t have the money to self fund so it was sink or swim always for them. Bezos can just toss billions at it once all the ducks are in a row.
Which ducks might they be? Blue does seem to be taking their time and I would suggest that their engine deal could be a distraction? On the other hand, will this get them their main propulsion unit more quickly? Who knows.
Cheers
What ducks? Customers with money in their outstretched hands ready to pay for services. BO is not offering much in the way of services yet. As Bezos said 2 years before they start selling to sub orbit passengers. Once his systems are flight tested to his satisfaction he can throw billions at building a factories and fleets.
Not sure about that. The tourism market isn’t necessarily defined as yet and probably won’t be even when someone starts offering real flights. Bezos doesn’t strike me as someone who simply throws billions at something unless he considers it a realistic enterprise.
Cheers
I said he can .. I didn’t say he would. SpaceX HAD to sell rockets or go broke. Musk had stated he was all in and would not invest any more. It was a sink or swim moment. Bezos is earning about 4 billion a year. So he can go at his leisure and fine tune his architecture as long as he wants. He also has a bill checkbook so if and when he chooses money and financing will never be an issue like it was for spaceX.
The devolution of a great national space program will be yet another result of Putin’s adventurism and overreach; if not for Crimea, assassinations of opponents and a host of other outrages, Russia would probably continue launching US astronauts to ISS and the USAF would continue to use RD-180s. Ironically, in many ways he’s helped make the US more competitive!
So true, but on the other hand, haven’t we done much the same thing but in a different arena? Haven’t we tossed away the future prosperity of our country by allowing our infrastructure to decay- building anything new would require taxes!- while at the same time borrowing huge sums in the trillions to conduct wars?
Most of that “decaying infrastructure” is located in major urban areas that have been Democratic fiefdoms for decades. Said infrastructure was mostly built decades ago when government’s share of the economy was much less than it is now. Our current high taxes don’t pay for infrastructure expansion and maintenance because the public employee unions require every additional dime go to growing government payrolls. It should be instructive to note that infrastructure in private hands, notably the Internet, is in good shape. The “crumbling” going on is all of government assets.
As to the “wars on credit” meme, that’s mostly baloney. The economic fallout of 9-11 tipped the U.S. into a recession and expanded the deficit as recessions tend to do. But the GWB-era U.S. deficits peaked in 2004 and continued to decline even as the wars expanded. Both the Iraq and Afghanistan operations were paid for mostly out of current accounts.
How many hours of Fox News do you watch every day? You seem to operate in a fact free zone; Federal employment peaked in 1969 at 6.8M; it’s now about 4.1M (and NASA used to have more than 22k employees as recently as the 1990’s; its now at 17k. Most of the extra federal money these days goes to transfer payments like VA benefits, Social Security and Medicare – these will increase because of demographics (the baby boom generation is getting older and our wars keep growing VA obligations) They will also decline as these populations pass on. As for our current “high taxes” in the Eisenhower era, the top tax rate was 90& and as recently as 1980, it was 70% – we
The US internet infrastructure is in fact well behind several other developed nations some of which see it as a vital public service (e.g Estonia) though I don’t know how much is privatized.
As for the deficit and recessions – Seriously? The GWB era deficit peaked in FY2009 (which began in October 2008 – four months before Obama was sworn in ) at 9.8% of GDP and you seem to completely omit the Great Recession caused by the bursting of the GWB era credit budget in 2008, BTW, the Obama deficit is currently at around 3% of GDP which most economists think is a sustainable number over the long term.
Now I know Fox can be fun – but try an occasional excursion outside of the echo chamber to CNN or PBS – reality isn’t as bad as you seem to think.
That 1969 “federal employment” number includes a lot of military draftees as 1969 was the peak year of U.S. deployments to Vietnam. The military was, at that time, probably three quarters or more of total federal employment. Now it’s less than a third. There were 100,000 more troops in Vietnam that year than there are in the entire U.S. Army today. The military has shrunk hugely since Vietnam and the rest of the federal government has grown as have state and local governments.
The NASA comparison also supports, not refutes, my case. If NASA had 22,000 employees when it was getting 5% of the federal budget, the fact that it still has 17,000 when it’s getting a tenth of that should be all the evidence needed that NASA is seriously overstaffed.
Of course public sector unionism was in its early days in the 60’s. It’s had over a half century, now, to grow and exert its malignant influence. Many large cities in California and elsewhere, having scrimped on infrastructure maintenance and underfunded the generous pensions of their employees for decades, now find that they must freeze hiring or even reduce the ranks of city employees, including first-responders, to stave off bankruptcy. Raising taxes drives out businesses and reduces the tax base. Crumbling infrastructure doesn’t help.
Generally agree about the increasing percentage of government spending due to transfer payments. As the average age of Americans has increased by over a decade from the late 60’s until now and the 65-and-older population became the most rapidly growing demographic cohort, that was to be expected. The VA portion, though, is not mainly due to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but to Vietnam, the veterans of which still vastly outnumber those of Iraq and Afghanistan and who are now well into their peak medical services consumption years.
The ultra high maximum marginal tax rates of the 50’s and 60’s weren’t actually paid by anyone. It was also the golden age of loopholes. In the 50’s, government at all levels accounted for percentages of GDP in the mid to upper 20’s. Now, that percentage is in the mid to upper 30’s. During the first two years of the Obama administration, it exceeded 40%.
You are correct that the deficit for FY 2008 slightly exceeded that for FY 2004, which had been the previous peak deficit year of the GWB administration. The budgets of FY’s 2004 – 2007, during which interval the deficits steadily declined as the wars expanded, also occurred with Republican control of Congress. The Democrats retook both houses in 2006 so the “record Bush deficit” of FY 2008 is really the “Democratic Congress Warm-up Deficit” – practice for the quadrupling of the deficit in FY 2009 when both Congress and the White House were in Democratic hands. These Brobdingnagian deficits continued until Republicans retook the House in 2010. Since then, the deficits have come down once more, though the lowest “Obama deficit” is roughly equal to the two highest ones under GWB. Which party has control of Congress seems to have more to do with how profligate government spending is than which party controls the White House, but when the Democrats control both – as we have seen – it’s drunken sailor time.
I’m sure there are plenty of economists who think 3%-of-GDP deficits are “sustainable” over long periods; Paul Krugman, for one. I’m also sure that every one of said economists is an ideological lefty. Government spending beyond one’s means seems to be some sort of religious mandate on the left. The entire state of California and all of its major cities should be instructive about what happens when this is done over the long term without an ability to print money to cover the shortfalls. Perhaps instead of a balanced budget amendment, we could pass one that requires the Secretary of the Treasury to always be a Lannister.
As for Fox News, I do watch a bit, but not much. Given the number of really exceptionally hot newsreaders on Fox, I really should watch more. The last 25 minutes of Bret Baier’s show with the “panel” I catch maybe two or three times a week. My wife watches a bit more and we also watch a bit of randomly selected CNN, MSNBC and Big Three broadcast network stuff. We even look at Al Jazeera once in awhile. It’s always amusing when these reliable shills for the Democratic establishment try ignoring some story for as long as they can, then have to suddenly catch their poor habitual viewers up when the story – which Fox has been covering from the get-go – “breaks out” in some way that simply can’t be ignored. These futile attempts at “gatekeeping” by the legacy media when the entire damned wall is down are amusing, but kind of pitiable. But please do go on imagining that what you see on Democratic-Party-operatives-with-press-credentials media is in any substantive sense “reality.” The leftist “masses” need all the opiates they can get these days.
“duh”eagle lives in fact free land; see my response – since the GHWB era we have been woefully underinvesting – and not just in Democratic cities. Even now, NASA is not getting enough money to do the things we ask so projects like SLS stretch out over decades.
Unfortunately, I live in California where the facts of what actually happens when progressives get to run anything large and important are completely unavoidable on a daily basis. The facts are that most of California’s crumbling infrastructure was built decades ago when tax rates were a fraction of what they are now. That’s even more true of New York and other large Northeastern cities with even worse crumbling infrastructure problems. The sad fact is that one tends to get infrastructure at times of low taxes and government employment. It’s when taxes rise to cover bigger government payrolls, salaries and promised pension benefits that infrastructure starts to take it in the shorts.
Perhaps the fact that you identified SLS as an “infrastructure” project we need to spend even more on than the scandalous amount we already do will snap a few people – Mr. Spencer? – out of their sympathetic daze where your basically unsupportable contentions are concerned.
You convenient ignore the crippling distortions created by Prop 13. But thanks for playing.
And the fact that major infrastructure in this country is Federal (90/10, often, or similar) funds, controlled by a very right-wing Congress with the ‘starve the beast’ mentality. Bigger non-highway projects are funded uniquely; airports and god forbid rail find their own way, albeit with federal funds of some type.
A few years ago here in Florida we passed a constitutional amendment to create a rapid rail between Tampa, Orlando, and eventually Miami. Unfortunately at the same time we (well, they) elected Rick Scott as governor who has done everything he can to stall the project. Same as the much-needed additional connection between New Jersey and New York, killed by Mr. Christie.
Want an example of tax fear? I give you the gas tax, not raised in decades. A dime a gallon- much less than the fluctuation we’ve seen in recent months- is all that is required.
Won’t happen.
The reason mass transit projects are unpopular with everyone except leftist politicians is that nobody actually wants to ride on them if they’ve got any other choice. This hasn’t stopped Democrats from raiding the National Highway Trust Fund – which is supposed to be spent only on roads – for money to waste on such projects, including L.A.’s light rail system. Gov. Moonbeam is currently flogging a “high-speed rail” boodoggle that won’t be fast and will never have enough ridership to justify it’s $100 billion price tag. But Jerry’s hypnotized by that 90-10 federal split you mention.
We are, at most, a half-decade away from mass production of practical driverless cars. That is the future of transportation. There has never been a less sensible time to build more 19th century infrastructure.
Prop. 13 has been an all-purpose whipping boy for the statist left ever since it was passed over the objections of both the California state legislature and then-Gov. Jerry Brown – who was, at the time, on the first of his Destruction-of-California bookend administrations. Nothing upsets thieves quite so much as locking up one’s assets.
The only thing “crippled” by Prop. 13 was the ability of the state government to continue its Attila-like rampage through the wallets of the California middle class. Prop. 13 simply limited local property taxes to a maximum of 1% of assessed value per year. Property taxes still mostly rose, year-on-year, as the increasingly draconian land-use restrictions passed by the Democrat-dominated state legislature resulted in insufficient new construction and the artificial boosting of property values above the general rate of increase in the cost of living. The only dent in this rise was caused by the actual decline in property values that occurred starting in 2007-8 and lasted for a few years. Even then, a lot of jurisdictions kept property taxes high by deliberately not modifying assessed valuations to reflect the newly weak property market.
Through this entire period, Democrat-dominated legislative sessions have shied away from infrastructure investment under the malignant influence of the Green lobby. The government employee unions want all the money for themselves and they have, by and large, gotten just that… except for contributions to their largely fictional fat pensions. But that’s another story.
When Apple released the first iPhone, Palm (remember them? sorta like ULA?) responded with
“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” he said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”
Oh, dear. Mr. Colligan (CEO), where are you now, I wonder?
http://daringfireball.net/2…
He’s relaxing under the golden parachute he got when Dell bought out Palm, and consulting with startups at his leisure.
I love Space X, Sierre Nevada, Blue Origins, and Orbital Science. They are pushing hard to get real free market principles and concepts operating within the spatial utilization and operations.
Except for the bit where Orbital ATK is lobbying to buy and use surplus ICBM stages in launch vehicles. That effort is going backwards and not at all consistent with “free market principles”.
I disagree. The ICBM stages will be scrapped otherwise. Why waste a cheap and usable asset, but they need to have a plan what to do after those surplus stages are expended.
Exactly who are “they”? If “they” are an established launch provider, why would they _want_ a plan for what to do after the surplus runs out? They could just go back to selling their existing, high cost/high profit launch vehicles. The only change would be driving the newer, lower cost launch providers out of business, during the phase where the surplus rockets were being used.
I say scrap them. Disrupting the emerging reusable launch vehicle industry by dumping surplus ICBMs into the market isn’t worth it in the long run. Reusable liquid fueled launch vehicles have the potential to reduce launch costs by orders of magnitude. Solids can’t do that, even if they are surplus.
The Federal Government has always had garage sales for surplus. It is just rare when the surplus can have such enormous effects to an emerging market.
Surplus kicked amateur radio manufacturers in the butt after WW2.
and airplanes after ww1
In this case, surplus ICBMs aren’t like Jeeps which can be used by anyone. There are precious few US companies who have the expertise to properly inspect, refurbish (where necessary) and safely launch these things. Orbital ATK certainly has the knowledge. Other launch companies don’t have the same expertise with solids.
Also, solids are great for ICBMs, but not so great for launch vehicles. They either work (vibrating the payload more than liquid fueled engines), or they fail spectacularly, destroying the payload in the process. As evidence for this, there have been several “partial failures” in liquid stages where the payload still makes it into a useful orbit. But I can’t remember many “partial failures” of large solid stages.