USAF Blinks and SpaceX Wins EELV Concessions
United States and SpaceX Agree to Settlement, SpaceX
“The Air Force and SpaceX have reached agreement on a path forward for the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program that improves the competitive landscape and achieves mission assurance for national security space launches. Under the agreement, the Air Force will work collaboratively with SpaceX to complete the certification process in an efficient and expedient manner.”
Elon Musk: Guest-Starring on The Simpsons Was ‘Kind of Trippy’, BloombergBusinessWeek
Simpsons episode outtake with @ElonMusk and @torybruno pic.twitter.com/uofFJRsXGW
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) January 24, 2015
Except, soon the F9 (at least the first stage) won’t be “Expendable”. 😉
D’ohh!!
Well played sir!
I don’t see how this as a win for Spacex? AF agree to stop delaying the certification process? And the block buy stays in place? And Taxpayer still pays high prices for block buy, 4 billion dollars savings according to Bruno? How has anything changed?? AF and ULA having successfully delayed ULAs first competitior.
I see this as a consequence of a win by SpaceX. With their new Billion dollar investment they don’t need to pursue the DOD market with the same enthusiasm.
I see the suit dismissal as a loss for the taxpayers. For the reasons you mentioned.
Thanks didn’t think of that. I never liked the idea of SpaceX doing the DOD thing anyway for fear that they would turn to the dark side lol. Better for them to spend more of their time and effort on making us a multi planet species. As free as possible from public space.
Apparently Musk’s interests diverge from yours. There is, of course, nothing at all to even hint at the possibility of SpaceX, under Elon Musk, conducting itself as ULA does or as many defense contractors do. That behavior was not evidenced in the Commercial Crew competition nor was it evidenced in SpaceX’s successful bid to deliver cargo to the ISS. Your fearmongering is clearly misplaced.
I rather doubt all the details of the agreement are contained in the short story on SpaceRef.
He may be referring not to operating as defense contractors do, but maybe at the deeper level of not being part of the military machine. That is a legitimate stance. It has a spectrum of acceptable participation. One can wish to have no part of it at all. Or, recon only, or including military comm and weather, or actual weaponry.
I for example would work on recon – open skies are confidence builders which lowers tensions. I would not work on blinding lasers.
But possibly DSTARS was actually just referring to corporate inefficiency and pork, and not the moral component.
Both the moral side and the public space red tape issues.
I fear of Musk losing control of Spacex and Spacex turning into another big company at the government trough. Perhaps just replacing ULA
How do you propose that Musk will lose control of his private company?
Unlikely as careful as Musk seems to be but it did happen to Steve Jobs, a similar kind of disruptive CEO.
Apple went public in 1980. Jobs was fired in 1985. Jobs wasn’t the CEO when he was fired.
Again speaking by proxy, he may be referring to being so twined into red tape and process, so transparent to government scrutiny, so functionally merged with government personal at all levels, so dependent on external schedules, etc, that freedom is lost.
Dstars, sorry to speak for you.
Fear mongering lol
The comment about dark side was more or less a joke.
I would love Elon Musk to launch military SATs and take those profits from my taxes and use that money to go to Space/Mars,Geo. Whats the price. Expending extra time and money jumping through government hoops like the certification process. Best for spaceX to get away from public space as much as possible.
Isn’t Mr. Nobles correct?
Seems to me better for Mr. Musk to finance his Space program by expanding Markets in commercial space.
Recall you saying that you didn’t think this satellite plan of Musks had much chance of success. What do you think now Mr. Squared?
“Isn’t Mr. Nobles correct?”
How is anyone to know? I doubt anyone here knows exactly what SpaceX’s financial position is and what might be funded by that investment. After all, no one here is Elon Musk.
It’s unlikely that bringing in more money can hurt, and gaining contracts with the USAF to fly missions will certainly bring in more money and more flight experience. If SpaceX feels the need to pursue USAF contracts, it’s highly unlikely anyone here is in a position to question that.
It is also the highest “street cred” a launch company can get. Launching National Defense Sats means you have reached the apex.
Better yet, certification to launch the most expensive sats while waiting years to actually do so gives SpaceX much of the “street cred” for several years (while ULA maintains its block buy) without the short term risk of losing one of those expensive satellites in a launch accident.
Before the announcement of the block buy there was going to be 14 additional launches to be competively bid on. After the announcement that number dropped to 7 launches with hints of only 3 launches. That is when SpaceX filed suit. Now apparently the certification will be fast tracked and 14? launches back on the table?
But from where are those 14 launches going to come? Not from the existing ULA contract per the press release, and USAF doesn’t seem to have the budget for new missions any time soon, with F-35 eating everybody’s lunch.
Congress will hem and haw and the DOD will claim that without sats X Y Z the Nation is at risk and pass the pork please while you fund more sats.
This looks like a clear short term loss for SpaceX.
The AF and SpaceX will continue to work on certification. OK, maybe faster by a few months? The main benefit for SpacEx of a streamlined cert process is the FH. The F9 replaces the Atlas base models, while the FH replaces all other Atlas and Delta versions.
AF will bid out some more cores. From the current 8 to original 14? Are these cores magically needed now?
The Big Enchilada, the 36 cores of the block buy, stay with ULA.
Long term ULA disappears after the block buy because of noncompetitiveness, but that is years down the road.
Where are the details of the settlement exclusively spelled out? It sure doesn’t seem as if the short SpaceX statement is very detailed.
It’s difficult to say it’s a loss with out knowing all the details and without knowing what Musk’s goals were for SpaceX action
Agree Mr. Squared we don’t know yet what Spacex won in this deal yet. Note the question marks in my first statement.
Since we don’t know, that’s why we are in a position to ask questions?
We are working from limited info. All conclusions are tentative. I speak from what I see, but open to change. If we are limited to comment on matters of perfect knowledge, these would be skimpy posts, both main and comments.
I agree that the meat of the statement seems to concede the status quo.
However, change has taken place in recent months that appears to itself be a change to the status quo, so that confirming the status quo now serves to solidify those changes.
The changes I have in mind include strong and repeated public statements to the effect that the USAF wants and supports competition. The USAF is now investigating itself as to why certification has taken so long. There were already statements about an expanded number of cores up for bid.
All of these could reasonably be attributed to the suit and to general public agitation by SpaceX and its supporters (such as Senator McCain).
I would say that our amiable host has transposed his title: “SpaceX Blinks, Gets Near-Worthless Concessions”
There’s a lot more to this story. It’s like the big guys got in a room and sought some sort of face-saving deal. “OK, Elon, I’ve got a billion lawyers and we are not gonna budge. But you are a PITA. What’s it gonna take?”
There was something in those agreements that keeps the likelihood of Elon ever winning near impossible. It is yet to be revealed.
And instead of seeing it through SpaceX is paid off. Fat cats rule. Good to know the USAFs retirement plan is safe. 🙂
https://m.youtube.com/watch…
My friend @torybruno gave his reasons why the block deal was good in 6 tweets about 12:20 Saturday.
He was very nice, very smooth, puts a nice polish on the load of crap. He needs more followers. Maybe some of you guys should follow him so he doesn’t get lonely, ask him a few questions to keep him sharp. lol
He responded to a few of my questions directly. It was fun.
***Warning the acct is still not certified ***
My guess is that the USAF sat down with SpaceX and said here are the mass requirements for the block buy missions, see you can’t lift them with Falcon 9.
More than half of all Atlas launches are for the versions that the F9 will carry. The rest are FH compatible. Since the FH will fly midyear and the three flights for cert will be complete by next year, there is NOTHING spacex can’t carry. Look at the launch manifest for ULA for the next 2 years. It is Falcon 9 compatible for most flights,
So, the vertical integration issue has been resolved then?
The rockets are built horizontal, then a hammerhead crane on top of support structure hoists payloads (and second stage and interstage?) vertically and mounted.
Thanks.
The RSS on the left is history, the FSS on the right is adding 2 levels, and then the crane goes back on top.
UPDATE:
It appears that SpaceX will not remove the RSS nor add the extra levels to the FSS for the time being.
As Musk explains wrt Tesla, he’s production limited. It’s likely the same w/SpaceX. So giving up launches over the next few years, while ensuring his position for the future seems a smart trade. Letting ULA know he will fight, not upsetting/embarrassing the future customer and avoiding the legal/political morass of hard feelings and legal costs?
That’s just typical Elon. He’s focused in a way that no bureaucracy (like NASA, DOD or Boeing) can understand.
Sensible perspective.
I think it was very, very hard for him to pass up 36 cores. He is giving up something like more than $3.5 billion dollars.
Plus, it would pay for a fleet of rockets – with the feds buying new and then SpaceX inheriting 36 reusable cores to resell.
Plus, he was extremely frustrated and angry about what he sees as DOD slow-walking the certification for the F9 – it just cost him $200 million dollars in a lost contract.
The problem is, his legal justification for breaking the ULA Big Buy was extremely thin (even if it would save us taxpayers billions of dollars), and quite likely to bust in this arbitration process.
So, being a realist, he traded the Big Buy for accelerating the cert process (which will be needed for the FH cert process over the next 2 years). ULA is just as dead (but will roll around in its death throes for some extra years), but SpaceX is also taking a big, big hit.
Supposedly there will be more payload for him to bid on, but lets seem ’em.
SpaceX’s record of meeting launch commitments needs to improve. The DSCOVR has been delayed numerous times not because of the payload. The latest is a 1 week delay to Feb 8.