Putin-backed RD-180 Markup Scheme Unveiled
In murky Pentagon deal with Russia, big profit for a tiny Florida firm, reuters
“For months, a powerful U.S. senator has been pushing for details of a murky deal under which a Russian manufacturer supplies the rocket engines used to launch America’s spy satellites into space. At issue: how much the U.S. Air Force pays for the engines, how much the Russians receive, and whether members of the elite in President Vladimir Putin’s Russia are secretly profiting by inflating the price. Now, documents uncovered by Reuters provide some answers. A tiny Florida-based company, acting as a middleman in the deal, is marking up the price by millions of dollars per engine. That five-person company, RD Amross, is a joint venture of Russian engine maker NPO Energomash and a U.S. partner, aerospace giant United Technologies. According to internal company documents that lay out the contract, Amross stands to collect $93 million in cost mark-ups under its current multi-year deal to supply the RD-180 rocket engine.”
The word “Delta IV” is not once mentioned in that article.
Because even WITH all that graft, the Atlas V is still cheaper.
Yes but the point is the article presents the view that our national security space missions are completely dependent on the Atlas V / RD-180. That is blatantly false. The Delta IV could carry out the launch manifest in the event of an RD-180 supply disruption. That’s how the USAF meets the requirement of providing “assured access to space”.
Didn’t get all the way through the article yet. To busy laughing my ass off.
Spacex
Reading all that made my head hurt . But with all the players involved it’s nice to know ” It’s President Obama’s Fault ” for not catching this and correcting it . J/K ing.
Indeed, if he were half the President the Libtard-apologists believe, he would have somehow seen all this coming at least four years ago and suggested a program to develop a new US large hydrocarbon engine paid for by increasing NASA’s budget of a least a $billion/yr…
oh wait… he did.
So the solution is to throw more government money at the problem and hope it goes away? I really hope that does not happen this time.
It would seem that this is just capitalism. Charge what the market will bear. SpaceX is capitalism’s answer to that. I just hope the US continues work on home version of that class of engine.
How soon will Jeff have his little engine ready?? Can this Class of engine be used with a reusable rocket??
From Blue Origin:
The ULA/Blue Origin agreement allows for a four-year development process with full-scale testing in 2016 and first flight in 2019. The BE-4 will be available for use by ULA and Blue Origin for both companies’ next generation launch systems.
Two months ago I wrote in the thread Blue Origin and ULA:
“yales 2 months ago
ULA joins with BO. So, what does Blue Origin bring to the table?…
Yes, they have been building engines for a while. But what type of engines and for what purpose?
BO is building vertical take off and landing rockets and capsules.
They make throttle-able engines and advanced control avionics.
Could it be that ULA is not just planning to compete with Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, but to compete with Falcon 9-R and Falcon Heavy-R?
Buying a shortcut to salvation?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…”
That being said, the current ULA CEO said:
Bruno said reusable rockets’ time will come, but it’s not here yet.
“For the near-term, expendable (rocket flight) is going to be the most practical and cost-effective access to space,”
Boeing would be crazy to not be planning to compete with falcon R and falcon H R. You are right, of course they are. Isn’t Bruno’s short term just mean now? SpaceX has already shown them how. As I said almost a year ago Spacex has proved this is possible the rest is details. The race to stay up with Spacex has already started. Will the reusable Space age start December 16th or early next year?
I am not certain a front company that a) makes no product, b) provides no services, c) does not compete for “business”, d) provides no opportunity for gainful employment,
is a shining exemplar of capitalism. Certainly, charging what a FREE market will bear is a hallmark of capitalistic commerce. However, RD Amross was neither operating nor competing in a free market when it received non-competitive contracts from the DOD. Of course, the same could be said for ULA’s sole-source EELV core awards…however, at least ULA makes a product, provides a tangible service, and is a provider of gainful employment. Well, 3 out of 4 ain’t bad.
Excellent point: not exactly a ‘free market’.
I don’t know what free market is. Doesn’t someone always take control of a free market? The strong/smart/rich control the rest by manipulating the market over time. What’s the difference between Musk and Boeing’s SLS? Boeing is providing jobs, That is good. People need good jobs. What about the jobs that disappear when rich companies like SpaceX automate to make things cheaper. In the case of Spacex cheaper rockets will open markets. Its good for the market.
But seems to me that we do need job programs for people to survive.
Seems to me that free markets don’t always work and will not work, in the coming robotic age.
Boeing tried to maximumize profits by stopping growth. Musk tries to create markets, by promoting growth.
Isn’t it a case of intent? Shouldn’t Boeing be blamed for stifling growth and Musk praised for creating new markets?
That’s an interesting take on what is obviously an opaque process. It’s important to remember that ‘whatever the market will bear’ isn’t always best for the country– or, actually, the market.
This is NOT capitalism. Were it, we would have no insight into the cost structure underlying the price of the end item, we’d just have a price (in this case, $23.4M per engine) and would evaluate value against that price. When you buy shoes or a car or a tube of toothpaste, you have no idea how much profit is made by the manufacturer, retailer, middlemen, etc.
Really, this pass-through cost has little bearing on use of the RD-180; the key questions are, is it a good value at the available price, and what are the alternatives?
Manufacturers gotta make money, distributors gotta make money. All this Redscare 2.0 is tiring
And I am damn tired of the behavior of that narcissist Putin trying to revive a failed thug empire.
Rogozin Calls for Ban on U.S. Military Use of RD-180
WASHINGTON — Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who oversees the country’s space sector, said he would ban exports of Russian-made rocket engines used to launch U.S. military satellites.
The rocket engine in question is the RD-180, which is used to power the first stage of United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket, one of the U.S. military’s two main satellite launchers. The engine is built by NPO Energomash of Russia and sold to ULA by RD-Amross, a joint venture between Energomash and United Technologies Corp.
“Russia is ready to continue deliveries of RD-180 engines to the US only under the guarantee that they won’t be used in the interests of the Pentagon,”
Sort of oscillating between gouging us as the sole supplier to the (currently and temporary) monopoly military launch company, and threatening to cut off that supply.
The sooner we 86 them, the better.
Silly. The engines could be made in Uruguay- or Australia for all I care and the point would be the same. The US needs home-grown reliable systems. This isn’t complicated.
Very true about having its own systems, however I think you are more the exception than the rule and a large chunk of Americans still feel hostility toward Russia which makes it feel so personal that they are taking advantage (if the roles were reversed you think US companies wouldnt do the same, this is more my point) but that is neither here nor there
Its not so much Americans “still” feeling hostility over past bad acts by Russia, it is that Russia is still a continuous problem. Not the Russian people (I’m of Russian descent), no, its the terrible undemocratic Russian rulers.
World War 2 ended, and instead of a world that could heal and prosper, Soviet Russia was a murderous monster that crushed the freedom and dignity of much of the world for 50 years (including its own oppressed peoples) and forced the rest to live defending against the threat.
And now they are abusing their neighbors again in a disgusting (and futile) attempt to recreate what thankfully was rejected by its own people in 1990. So, we need to not fund their ill-behavior by buying their natural gas, oil, or rocket engines.
Aerojet-Rocketdyne is still waiting with its hands out for the government money “needed” to finish development of its next generation LOX/kerosene engine. If only those pesky start-ups would just fail, the US launch industry could go back to business as usual…
With the availability of the uber-expensive Boeing Delta IV, and low cost SpaceX’s Falcon 9s now, and after July, Falcon Heavys, screw the
SovietRussian engine.Much of this information was available before but Reuters has done a good job of bringing it together. Russian or American, one can’t blame a private company for making as much profit as it can. But it certainly supports the point made by Elon Musk that competition under the EELV program would reduce cost compared to procurement from a sole source.
But one can blame the Air Force for letting the taxpayer get ripped off.
Wouldn’t be the first time.
Look at their website .. just freakin’ hilarious .. talk about flybynight… lol
http://rdamross.com/home
WOW, 1990s Geocities level stuff right there
Corporate office:
http://info.legalzoom.com/D…
1600 N Atlantic Ave is the Resort on Cocoa Beach, and I don’t know that they have office spaces for rent. Very Strange.
Located directly on beautiful Cocoa Beach, yet, close enough to Orlando to truly have “the best of both worlds”. The Resort on Cocoa Beach is a premier destination on the Space Coast. We are located just minutes away from Port Canaveral with all major cruise ships. We offer modern and spacious two bedroom, fully equipped accommodations with an endless array of fun activities both at the Resort or just minutes away. Enjoy surfing, golfing, kayaking, parasailing, wave runners, deep sea fishing, and Kennedy Space Center just to name a few.
http://theresortoncocoabeac…
Who owns resort? If I made that kind of money I sure wouldn’t rent office space.
Seems to me Elon should produce the next Iron man movie starring his real life, Dr. No like toys.
Iron man saves the world and takes us to Mars despite political greed and corruption.
Wouldn’t take much to make a good entertaining informative movie from this S$%& lol
I wonder if he can act?
We have our complex villains
Sure John McCain would do a cameo
I would like to know how many other scams like this at the taxpayer’s expense are out there.
Someone should be punished for this but it probably won’t happen.
What would the punishment be for? It doesn’t appear that anything illegal happened.
If a hurricane hits and you are from another state and you grab your tools and go to that area to make some money. You may run into gouging laws. It can be illegal for a little guy to make a deal with a rich guy and his insurance money. Is this not gouging??? OOK for the big guys not the little guys I guess. Maybe some gouging laws should be applied here.
Musk tries to sell his car directly to the consumer to reduce the price. But the government in some states makes that illegal to protect their little rich boys allowing them to mark up the price of a Tesla car. Adding to the cost of an electric car to the end consumer???
Maybe there should be a law against gouging the American Tax payer????
Uh-huh. Let us know when a powerful US Senator investigates profiteering and corruption in a US defense contractor.
multiple realities here. Russian engines are way cheaper than American engines, already built and sitting in warehouses. SpaceX doesn’t sell engines and hasn’t flown their big bird. RDAMross was a pratt and whitney invention which still hasn’t been turned over to GenCorp as part of the rocketdyne sale. Rocketdyne just finished design and development of the J2X engine so it can be mothballed for ten years. Rocketdyne designed and built most of the major launch engines the US has used, but the owner, GenCorp, cant afford to design or build new ( or even older) engines without a partner to pick up the costs. The Aerojet portion of GenCorp, the ones that certified the AJ-26 as suitable for use, is woefully outdated.