How Much Do ULA Launches Really Cost?

1. Soon it won’t be SpaceX vs ULA. It will be SpaceX vs Blue Origin. And at that point it could go either way.

   1. Unless DOD forces Boeing/LockMart to spin off ULA to make it a real competitor.

2. She might also be talking about O-ATK new launcher. They say they can launch anything USAF has at a lower cost than anyone. They showed a image of starting to wind the filament.

   1. That’s what they’re saying. But, unfortunately, large SRBs cause significant vibrations when firing (remember the concerns about Ares I). I’d be curious what the vibration and acoustic environment is, inside the payload fairing, during flight of that new O-ATK launcher. I’m not a fan of large solids for various reasons, but for an unmanned launch they might be acceptable.

      1. The intermediate configuration could mitigate the vibrations compared to ares1 just by using fewer segments. Not sure what they plan to do about the big gem strapped 4 segment heavy though…

         1. You all crack me up on what you believe are the issues. You all will read whatever information you can glean and then write and article, post a blog or make comment that just shows your ignorance. I have bit my tongue too many times on these shock and awe articles and posts. Get your facts straight before spouting off!

            Ares I had a concern with Thrust Oscillation, based on one set of motor data from STS 9 … this was a low frequency acoustics internal to the motor that could have aligned with the natural frequency of the axial mode of the launch vehicle. I say could have … none of the other 50+ forcing function data showed a similar trend. In my opinion this was not in family data, but one that NASA couldn’t disprove either. This low frequency has nothing to do with higher vibration acoustics from the noise of thrust, whether that is SRB or RS-25s … this higher frequency vibration is what concerns electronic hardware and takes life out of the components NOT THRUST OSCILLATION! Learn your frequency spectra.

            I could do a whole dissertation on EELV history and costs (as I have worked both Atlas V and Delta IV), but I will refrain for brevity of this post!

            1. Corey makes the point that this is very complicated and “laymen” often confuse terms.
               How about we simplify this a bit. For anyone who wants a visual indication of how bad the thrust oscillations and/or vibrations were from the SRBs, take a look at any in-cockpit video from a space shuttle launch. Note what happens inside the cockpit after SRB separation.

            2. yeeeeah honestly I don’t cut Ares any slack they put thier fingers on the scales when picking that bird not cool man.

            3. I’m glad to see people with actual experience and/or data posting. Personal knowledge by folks actually working on some of these projects is invaluable.

      2. Video of the astronauts on Shuttle launch show a lot of shaking. They launched HST though. I wonder what them using a segment for the 2nd stage will do? 800,000lbs of thrust , 2 min. normal. They will have a 2 or 3X longer burn fuel. Might not shake as much. 1/2 or 1/3 thrust. Still a lot of thrust. I will watch and see how it turns out.

         1. The space shuttle had that huge external tank between the SRBs. The tank, and especially the liquids in the tank, helped to dampen the vibrations. On an inline luancher like Ares I or this new O-ATK launcher there isn’t as much to dampen the vibrations between the SRB and the payload. The devil is in the details, of course, but in general it’s a non-trivial problem to deal with.

            1. Can someone explain in laymen’s term why/ how burning solid fuel causes vibration?

            2. From MIT Technology Review:

               “The vibration that is produced by the burning of the solid rocket propellant in the first stage booster is called thrust oscillation. These vibrations – or oscillations – come in the form of waves, which travel up and down the length
               of the rocket like a musical note through an organ pipe. One of the biggest challenges in any rocket design is developing avionics (aviation electronics) that can function in this vibrating environment.”

               https://www.technologyrevie…

            3. I believe it’s due to the large pressurized volume inside the motor in which vibrations can resonate at lower frequency. The thrust chamber of a liquid fueled engine is much smaller.

            4. In other words, it’s like producing echos in a cathedral versus a closet.

            5. Thank you, all.

            6. Have you ever heard a pipe organ? Big long tubes that resonate? An SRB is essentially a very long tube with fuel burning at the center all along the length of the tube. That large space pretty much encourages vibrations.

            7. Another bit of knowledge, thanks: the pattern of fuel consumption/ oxidation. Center-out means no burning gasses have a clear path out.

            8. You are correct. A different configuration, but they have Ares-1X data. They may be wasting money and will fail. I doubt it. USAF has provided funds.

            9. I doubt they will fail. The military has a vested interest in maintaining the engineering and manufacturing infrastructure for large solids. Eventually, we’ll need to replace our fleet of ICBMs and we’ll need a manufacturer who is well versed in the state of the art.

               But, it doesn’t mean that large segmented solids are at all ideal for launch vehicles.

3. I think ULA’s costs are what is known as the contractor soaking the American taxpayer for everything they can get, and DOD collusion and capitulation to support them.

   From what I experienced, I think USA, the Shuttle contractor, was much the same with every effort made to keep prices high and service slow, and I think it is exactly the same malady that now effects SLS and Orion. There is zero reason for the contractors to do things efficiently and effectively.

   Its a cash cow for the contractors, their shareholders, and the government retirees who go on to become contractor managers. It is also the reason the NASA human space flight program is in the dismal situation it finds itself today.

   1. This article was about costs. What NASA and USA, the space shuttle contractor, did with regards to space shuttle costs was similar. What was often quoted as the “cost of a space shuttle launch” was the cost to add an additional flight to the manifest. It did *not* include any development costs or the “fixed costs” of things like maintaining the VAB, OPFs, MLPs, crawlers, and etc. That number varied, but in 2011 was reported to be about $450 million per mission.

      A true accounting of the space shuttle program costs ($196 billion) then dividing by the total number of space shuttle flights (135 or 133, depending on how you count) gives a per flight cost of about $1.45 to $1.47 billion per launch.

      So, you can see from the above example that NASA and USA simply didn’t account for about $1 billion dollars per shuttle launch when they touted that $450 million per launch number.

      1. This illustrates that you have to know what question you are asking when discussing costs. You are right when you take the total program cost, and divide by the number of flights, and you come up with $1.45B or so per flight. From an historical perspective, that was the cost. However, at the end of the program, or even in the middle of the program, all the development and infrastructure costs are already paid for. So, if the question was, “how much would it cost to launch another shuttle?”, then the $450M or so would have been right.

         1. And lets remind everyone that the basic development costs for Shuttle, the money spent between program approval in 1971, and the first flight ten years later, was less than $10 billion. Physical manufacture costs per Orbiter were about $3 billion each, which if you consider what the Orbiter was and how it compared to say a large warship, is very high (an Orbiter is not too much different in construction than an airliner, and a typical Boeing Jumbo is (well) under $500 million). So most of the money went into ridiculously high maintenance and operations costs, and there were few changes or improvements ever made in these two areas.

            1. Correct, which is why I don’t even like the $450M to add another flight number, since NASA often used that as “the cost of a shuttle flight”. If you took a typical year and divided the total space shuttle budget for the year by the number of flights that year, I believe that it was quite a bit more than $450M because that number would have included the “fixed costs” for that year. The $450M number does *not* include any fixed costs.

      2. And let’s add to the accounting being specific about year dollars. Taking whole budgets once operational and dividing by actual flights gives the nominal average dollars per flight. Adjusting any years budgets to current year dollars and then dividing by flights gives the average historical per flight costs in current year dollars, significantly more.

4. Good journalism by Berger as usual. If I can simplify things a little, all these discussions need to distinguish the contractors costs, from their price to the government, which is most of costs to the government, from budgets which reflect best the actual total costs to the government, like DoD.

   I’ve said often, with the few discussions I’ve been able to get with stakeholders here, the real savings to the government from making the DoD launches a total firm fixed price (no cost plus component) will come when multiple providers like SpaceX compete for these. In a ULA vs. anyone else scenario, total costs to DoD can increase with every SpaceX launch, as ULA (with DoD blessing) just turns around and increases costs elsewhere charged to DoD for their remaining contracted launches.

   The long game for DoD is multiple SpaceX like providers with ample private business, plus an Air Force and NRO budget plan that targets dropping year over year, at least on a per launch basis, and perhaps for a time with deflationary absolute yearly drops.

5. do these costs reflect the payments to ULA for the “readiness to launch”? A couple years ago the govt. paid ULA $800 million in “subsidies” just to maintain readiness even if they didn’t launch. I wonder if that was factored in to the cost per launch?

   1. The story says “unit cost”, so the $422 million is the cost of one launch in isolation. It wouldn’t include other, related things like the extra money you refer to.

      To be fair, that’s the forecast for 2020, so it has three years of inflation built in. It is the estimated average cost, so it includes some Delta IV heavy launches as well as smaller ones. And this sort of estimate tends to have some conservatism built-in: It’s likely to be an intentional over-estimate, so they Department of Defense won’t be underfunded if the costs go up by more than they expect.

      That said, $422 million is still far more than the commercial cost for the same launches (based on then numbers in the story) and the commercial cost if quite a bit higher than similar launch services from someone other than ULA.

      1. I don’t think that’s correct. I believe this was an attempt to calculate the fully burdened cost, and that includes the annual subsidy. Which is why the $422 per launch is so high.

         1. Well, “unit cost” is the term they used in the story. Last time I checked, “unit cost” means the cost of purchasing one additional unit (in this case, a launch.) If the authors calculated one thing and described as another, they are adding to the confusion.

   2. The ‘readiness to launch’ costs never bothered me much conceptually; I concede that there is a national need to launch on short notice. The lack of transparency on costs is different issue.

      1. I don’t think that’s what the funding was about. Launching on short notice implies an emergency or crisis, and getting something up on a few weeks notice. My understanding was that ULA got the money to make sure normal launch services were available on few year notice. That is, to make sure the government’s only domestic launch provider would not drop out or go out of business.

6. ULA’s ‘launch on need’ promise of a few weeks (if that is what it actually was) becomes rather suspect when you look at SpaceX with two operational launch pads (three soon, four in the mid-term) and, for purely commercial reasons, a commitment to a fortnightly launch cadence (albeit with horizontal payload integration at present). In these circumstances the only launch delays would be due to DoD requirements, and a responsive launch schedule would come at no extra cost. See also Blue’s plans…

7. Go to rocket builder.com, and this is what you see:

   Value is more than a price tag

   First reaction: this company is taking a defensive posture. They cannot or will not compete on price.

   I don’t compete on price, either. Doesn’t mean that I’m insensitive to price. It just means that some clients can get a lower price for what they think are the same services but really are not the same services.

   But I’m in the design business, one that every client, even those with no ability to recognize good design still know that there is such a thing as poor design. I can tell them over and over about maintenance costs or longer replacement costs, but some clients won’t listen. So they go someplace else.

   Mr. Bruno is living in a different world, one in which the product is the occupation of a particular orbit. That’s the only measure of success that matters. He can, and should, point out his reliability. But customers know that a delay of a month or two or six in the lifetime of some satellites isn’t really meaningful, especially if they are saving > $10M. Or more.

   1. It’s funny because they actually do put price tag on values (reliability, schedule certainty, orbit accuracy), you just need to build a launch, and the calculator will calculate the cost savings because of reliability, etc.

      1. True, of course.

      2. I haven’t played with their web page, but I’m surprised if it can estimate those savings with any sort of accuracy. I’d say the savings from reliability, lower schedule risk and delivery accuracy are highly customer-dependent.

         1. For Mr. Bruno to bray about ULA as he does tells me that he actually believes their own PR bullshit.

            ULA’s cost justification was derived by the same guy who wrote the Big Pharma script: “But we have special costs! And they are really, really big! Like super big!!”

            The military boys, for all their faults, are neither fools, nor do they ‘waste’ money (‘waste’ used in the sense of not spending money on things they do not value, though valuation by a bystander could be different).

            The military model is, at least broadly, relatively easy to understand: “We need X in order to combat Y”.

            And the Pentagon know they have a given number of dollars – a large number, yes, but not infinite – with which they are to keep the country safe.

            Support of ULA makes a lot of sense from the Pentagon’s viewpoint. Assured, reliable and fast access to space is consistent with their mission.

            And surely they are not unaware of the scandalous charges. I picture generals sitting around in posh offices bitching about ULA.

            But flashy web graphics won’t help. ULA’s days are coming to a close.

      3. Insurance coverage softens some of the customer risk too, right?

   2. Everyone here would agree with Tory and you, that value is more than a price tag. But ULA can only ride that horse so far before it falls over dead.

      Trust
      ULA said that reusing boosters isn’t cost effective. What they meant is that they make more money selling a new rocket with every launch. Elon is doing what Tory said isn’t possible. That means that either SpaceX is smarter than ULA, or ULA lied and knew they lied.

      Safety
      F9 may be almost as safe as Atlas was at this stage in its development, maybe not, but there is a dollar value you can put on safety for uncrewed launches. What is the customer’s cost of a launch mishap on F9 vs a safe flight on Atlas? How does that factor into actual business risk? How many mishaps a year would SpaceX need to suffer to do more damage to the industry than the high cost of Atlas lauches? I argue that, when you factor in insurance protection, the price of any successful Atlas launch to a company might be roughly the same as a failed Falcon launch and that F9 would have to blow up EVERY launch for the Atlas safety record to be worth the price.

      Experience
      Higher launch cadence made possible by lower price, combined with the number of engines that fly per launch, makes this claim less significant every year. Combine that with exclusive experience in new markets that couldn’t fly at the Atlas price tag. Combine that with experience at supersonic retro-propulsion, booster landing and refurbishment, Mars and lunar missions, etc. that will influence future value to customers heavily and Atlas is falling behind fast.

      The truth is that the SpaceX paradigm is gradually becoming more relevant than the Atlas paradigm. Soon it will be SpaceX that will carry the most value (if it doesn’t already) and Atlas will still have the higher price.

      When FH starts flying, it’ll fill a market that ULA can only fill with Delta Heavy and then all of these factors swing worse against ULA.

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