The RD-180 Food Fight Just Got Crazier
Draft House bill would scramble Air Force’s rocket engine plan, SpaceNews
“The proposed restrictions essentially would forbid the Air Force from funding several recently announced co-investment deals with Orbital ATK, SpaceX and United Launch Alliance beyond this year. The Air Force doled out $317 million worth of contracts to help fund Orbital ATK’s development of a new solid-fueled launcher, SpaceX’s development a new upper-stage engine, and ULA’s development of Vulcan, a potentially reusable successor to the RD-180 powered Atlas 5 rocket.”
Why does the Air Force want to destroy the struggling U.S. space launch business?, Op Ed, Space News
“Dan Gouré is vice president of the Lexington Institute, an Arlington, Va-based think tank that receives money from Aerojet Rocketdyne, Boeing and Lockheed Martin. … Let’s tally up the Air Force’s recent moves. First, it insists it must depend on Russian rocket engines for at least another six years. Then it wants to take the high risk approach of launching important national security payloads aboard either the SpaceX system that has never been tried in such a mode or a new launch vehicle using a novel propulsion system. Finally, it wants to devastate what little remains of the U.S. rocket motor industrial base by selling off its stash of surplus Minuteman boosters.”
– McCain Calls B.S. On USAF RD-180 Data, earlier post
– Earlier RD-180 posts
Sooo .. which law says that AFRL IHPRPT/HBTD funds have to be spent at AJR ?
AFAIK, ULA haven’t chosen yet between the AJ1 (Kerosene/LOX) and the BE4 (Methane/LOX) for the Vulcan launch vehicle. This draft bill throws the BE4 under a bus. It also means the Vulcan will now much more closely resemble the Atlas albeit with detachable engines recovered in mid-air by helicopter.
Atlas already can’t compete with the reusable Falcon 9 on costs. A massively re-engineered Atlas that’s only partially reusable by 2019 doesn’t sound cost competitive with the Falcon 9 either.
So what does the bill hope to gain by putting its thumb on the scale in favor of Aerojet Rocketdyne?
The political largesse of Aerojet-Rocketdyne maybe?
Belatedly:
ULA’s roadmap is that the expendable version will fly by 2019. The air-recovered engine module isn’t intended to be developed until the mid-2020’s.
Thank you Paul451. I’m obliged. Things are worse than I thought for ULA.
Considering the last big KeroLox engine that AJR (or the former Rocketdyne) have manufacture was the RS-27. I have my doubts that AJR can developed a large Oxygen rich staged combustion KeroLox engine. Never mind redesigning the Atlas V core to fitted the AR-1. Which is a powerpoint image so far, with no hardware