USAF Willing To Take Risks To Cut Launch Costs
Air Force sets up competition for rocket launches, Washington Post
“It’s obvious that the current prices we’re paying are just too high,” Richard McKinney, deputy undersecretary of the Air Force for space programs, said in an inter- view last month at the Pentagon. … The Air Force says it’s willing to take more risk with the lower-cost missions, giving newcomers the opportunity “to gain experience operating with government pay- loads,” Vicki Stein, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.”
So we can put yet another perfectly good NASA Earth Science payload into the ocean when it launches on an unqualified launch vehicle.
Great.
Launching DSCOVR is an excellent payload for these higher risk flights. That poor satellite has been stuck on the ground for over a decade, waiting for a ride which many never expected to materialize. Even if the launcher has only a 50% chance of success, it’s a huge improvement over the alternative which is to sit on the ground forever.
Goresat isn’t going to get a launch, no matter what they rename it to.
Define “unqualified.” Place into context of “risk.”
This can work if, and only if the Air Force treats the rocket vendor commercially. That is, if a rocket fails, don’t buy another until the vendor fixes the problems and proves it.
I can see the Air Force falling back to that reliable Soyuz if they can’t get a cheap and reliable US model.
Is this likely to be genuine, or is it more likely a negotiating tactic to try to get ULA to drop their prices by a small amount?
No, its not. Here’s the story – ULA is in a protected category – needed for national security. This both helps and hurts.
AF is wary of this for many. many reasons. So they’d like to broaden the field, in the hopes of eventually getting another few ULA’s. You see, the intent was to have 2-3 suppliers that alternated holding 60% of the market of DoD/NASA/other launchers.
From this standpoint, the EELV program was an abysmal failure (boy, that’ll P.O. many, because its too true). It was too much like CELV and not “evolved” enough.
But its too easy to “monkey wrench” this, and the AF knows it. Putting together surplus parts of ICBMs (e.g. Minotaur, or even Athena) can never achieve this goal (because the components themselves aren’t “evolved”). “Rocket back” done by the usual suspects will be “change of scoped” back to uselessness by a contractor that won’t take the development risks necessary because they’ll rely on “same old, same old” to insure program execution while ignoring the point of the exercise.
Whats an AF to do then? Well, encourage congress indirectly to keep more players in the game – e.g. “commercial space” – for longer. Why? So that when the inevitable downselect’s come – they reposition into something appropriate for DoD use.
The Air Force commissioned the Aerospace Corporation study under Jay Penn which concluded that the primary obstacle to greater space utilization was launch cost, something that was once clear to NASA but that it has apparently forgotten.
As also happened with before Shuttle. Never let practical matters get in the way of your program needs.
For purposes of discussion , I recall Elon Musk saying when comparing his yet-to-fly Falcon 9 Heavy to the Delta IV Heavy ( both vehicles using the three common core booster approach ) , that the Falcon outperformed the Delta something like 6-to1 costwise per pound to orbit. An LEO launch straight east of Canaveral: Falcon 9 Heavy carries over double the net payload for 1/3rd the cost ! If the rebranded Aries 1 ever flies as ” Liberty ” it certainly would take liberties with the taxpayer’s wallet at costs estimated near $ 1 BILLION per ignition…10 to 12 X the cost of a Falcon 9-H.
Maybe the Air Force procurement people are doing the right kind of thinking for a change here. What a revelation. I lived long enough to at least hear as much.
Falcon 9 Heavy is still scheduled for a trial flight before the end of this year.
With respect, SpaceX has been historically optimistic on when it will fly new hardware. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a push back to the first half of 2013.
It would be nice if they put more than a mass simulator on it *sigh*.
“before the end of this year”
Translation from SpaceX language (or basically space business language – SpaceX is not first, not last and not biggest offender in this departament): in 2016. Maybe.
If this succeeds, I suspect that the final launch costs to USAF will most likely be for a contracted minimum number of launches over a not-too-long time period, as opposed to it being the new off-the-shelf purchased product price, in which case it will be of no value to NASA, since they won’t have the money to do anywhere near as many launches over a comparable time period.
Steve
While launch cost is an impediment, it is not THE impediment. Launch costs today are 20-40% of total space system life cycle costs. If you could cut those costs by 50% across the board, you could increase the number of missions by 10-20% assuming a constant “space pie” or slightly more with dynamic scoring. As launch costs are budgeted separately from mission costs, I would argue that if launch costs go down 10-20%, you might see DoD or Congress pocket that money.
And I’m doubting launch costs will (in the long run) drop 50%. Remember that EELV’s goal was 25% and they seem to have missed the mark by a bit. When is the last time you saw the price of anything complex drop by 50% for the same service?
A more reasonable assumption (assuming reliability and throw weight are equal) is 25%, which means an anemic 5-10% cut in mission costs … something we wouldn’t even notice in a yearly flight rate of 5-10 missions a year.
EELV is a sole source monopoly, so there’s no incentive to cut costs. Bad example.
If Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy put up a string of flights, ULA might get more competitive, but that’s a couple years min. down the road. More likely 4 to 5 years.
You bring up a good point and the key word is IF Falcon 9 puts up a sting of flights. SpaceX talks a great point but at some point they have to execute.
The fact is SpaceX can’t make the rates they are projecting, they can’t build engines fast enough for what they are projecting.
Once they start launching and can meet ULAs success rate, then they can talk.