Why Not Use Old Missiles To Launch New Satellites?
Orbital presses U.S. lawmakers to end ban on retired missiles, Reuters
“Orbital ATK is pressing U.S. lawmakers to end a 20-year ban on using decommissioned intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) for launching commercial satellites and the effort has raised concern among companies that have invested millions of dollars in potential rival rockets. Orbital Vice President Barron Beneski said in an interview on Friday that the company was pushing Washington to get the ban lifted as part of the National Defense Authorization Act that sets defense policy for fiscal 2017, which begins Oct. 1. The missiles were idled by nuclear disarmament treaties between the United States and Russia in the 1990s. Virgin Galactic and other space startups said in interviews last week they worry that lifting the ban would give Orbital an unfair competitive advantage if it was allowed to use surplus government rocket motors in its commercial launch vehicles.”
Keith’s note: I know some companies are going to whine and complain about this. But why not use existing hardware that would otherwise be destroyed or left outside to rot – especially when it has already been paid for and now costs a lot of money to store? Every company that whines and complains has its own swarm of lobbyists trying to seek some advantage for the home team. The only caveat I would offer is that since the U.S. government paid for these rockets that they be offered – at the same cost – to any launch provider that wants to buy them. That not only levels the playing field but offers some of these start-ups a chance to jump ahead in terms of experience and capability. Of course this suggestion would simply change who is whining.
Dumping excess boosters on market would short-circuit commercial space renaissance, Op Ed, George Whitesides, Virgin Galactic
“Converting ICBM’s to launchers was a bad idea when it was brought up the last three times, and it’s an even worse idea now. Two decades of consistent, bipartisan space policy have sparked billions in private investment in a robust domestic commercial space industry. The current Space Transportation Policy, released by the White House in 2013, commits the government to “encouraging … a viable … and competitive U.S. commercial space transportation industry” while avoiding actions that might “discourage, or compete with U.S. commercial space transportation companies.”
Keith’s update: Let the whining begin. How much tax money was poured into Spaceport America so as to give Virgin Galactic a dirt cheap place to operate? And then there’s the deal XCOR got in Texas, ULA’s subsidies, etc. What is ironic about all of this is that Orbital used to complain about this idea when it thought that used ICBMs would allow other companies to compete with Taurus and Pegasus. When it comes to special favors and commercial space, where you stand depends on where you sit (or launch).
Having companies buy them at their original government purchase price isn’t entirely fair, as these will be NOS — new old stock, as they say in the parts business.
And with varying vintages, the price should reflect variable discounts because there’s a reliability question for using old technology, even if it has been stored correctly.
But in general, it’s the same principle as when I buy a new-old-stock tool from eBay. If the item is completely serviceable and no longer made, well, let the market determine.
Silent auction? eBay? Craigslist?
This is deja vu like the ongoing effort to limit U.S. satellite launches on Indian rockets. Back in the 1990s Orbital Sciences was adamantly opposed to allowing these decommissioned missiles to be used as space launch vehicles, complaining they harmed the company’s plans for Taurus and Pegasus. Orbital reversed their stance after they won contracts to convert and launch the missiles/rockets for the military.
When this debate was held in the 90s, the compromise reached allowed the rockets to be used for government missions but not commercial ones. They would otherwise have been destroyed to comply with treaties. Russia’s interpretation of the same treaties allowed them to convert multiple ICBM models into commercial satellite launchers.
Surely the Air Force Space Command could find a use for them . ( I admit I don’t live in the real world . )
It’s very expensive to destroy them, so launching them makes sense. Launch one every month to train launch/range crews, test range tech improvements, support missile defense targeting, and carry educational and military research payloads.
Might make for a hell of a fireworks display every July 4th to set off a dozen or more!
That’s about the only sound idea here
They should be excessed and sold at auction like any surplus propery, but I think it is counterproductive in the long run since the development of competitive and sustainable new designs is more important and for the most part liquid propulsion is superior for launch vehicles as opposed to missiles.
You want to AUCTION ICBMs ? Maybe set up a fair in Dubai or someplace
That’s a good point although ITAR items can only be exported with a government license. Re-using the motors also undermines new companies that are manufacturing launch vehicles.
Those “new companies” can buy an old ICBM or two if they desire to get some of the action.
The alternative view is that access to this technology may give the purchasers fodder for innovation.
If they’re useful and someone wants to build the ground support necessary for launching them, let the best bidder win. As the second article points out, it’s only been of limited use in Russia, so the likelihood of upending the commercial market seems low.
I wonder how many customers would go for it given Orbital’s last experiment with old hardware?
Maybe someone’s worried about the deterrent reputation of our current missile forces if the launch success rate isn’t 100%.
I heard the same concern from an Air Force officer at a rideshare conference some years ago. A launch failure of one of these missiles would call into question the reliability of the remaining missile fleet, potentially undermining the deterrence factor. The pentagon prefers not to test fire these missiles in public.
Absolute nonsense – several times a year, they randomly take a missile out of a silo and test fire it out of Vandenburg towards the South Pacific. The failure of an old missile stored for years would have no consequence and even if 5 to 10% of the hundreds of active ICBMs failed, the rest would still leave any enemy a glowing ruin
A test shot from Vandenburg probably does not have a publicly disclosed impact target. Any performance shortfall of the missile in missing the intended impact point would not be public knowledge. Failure to reach orbit would be a public disclosure of the missile’s lack of performance.
Selling ICBMs that would otherwise be destroyed to companies that would use them for launch is just a bad idea that won’t go away. The seeming fairness of offering these to any US buyer moves the conversation to the buyer’s demand side of the discussion when the whole problem is the supply side of the matter. The US government would essentially be adding supply, competing with companies that already offer launches, giving an advantage only to that unique company circumstance that knows how to refurbish and launch these specific systems. This specifically gives an unfair advantage to a company with links to who made the rockets in the first place.
In a healthy market, used cars or used aircraft could be sold by the government with no effect on the used car or the used aircraft market. After all, there exists a used car and used aircraft market, and it’s mostly private. This is not the case here, where most launch is still government launch, where not just anyone can drive away that specific “ICBM” like anyone might drive away a car they did not build.
Alternately, if you put the offer out there, and five different companies each wanted a dozen, and the bidding went up, then we’d have reason to say the market is getting more “real”, and the sale might make sense. Now when just one company shows up with a little cash, asking for a lot of other consideration, that would just confirm this should never have gone ahead at all, and the bait and switch is coming. The first customer they’ll look for too – the US government. After all, they’d say to the DoD – you wouldn’t want those rockets to go to waste right! And the price – it will be high!
Yes, of course Orbital/ATK would be the only company able to bid on these. They (or a former company, now part of Orb/ATK) built most of these in the first place. They already got (handsomely) paid once, to build them. They have a lot of corporate knowledge and infrastructure to take advantage of this. Now they want to get paid again, to compete with new companies. I say, find some other reason or use for these old missiles.
Keith,
This policy has been in place since the Clinton Administration, and in law since 1998. Until recently Orbital and ATK were separate companies, and ATK was violently against this idea because Minuteman motors compete with new solid motors in vehicles like Athena and Taurus and such. Last year they merged. Now they love it.
Your notion that they can be made available to anyone is flawed. Orbital has been paid a lot of money for nearly two decades to build a capability to turn ICBM motors into launch vehicles. Only one other company, Coleman Aerospace within L3, has this capability, and they use it to make targets for missile defense. I don’t think these can be used as strap-on boosters, and no one else really uses solids. Therefore, the USG has paid one company to develop the infrastructure to benefit from these. Making them equally available to everyone is not “fair”.
Remember: DOD (and NASA) can buy launch services using them now. So the federal government can benefit from their prior investment as a customer. That is the current policy. It’s just that Orbital-ATK can’t use those rockets themselves, or sell them to others, because that impacts the private demand for commercial launches.
What I don’t know is whether Orbital wants to use these for anything other than just Minotaurs, i.e. do they want to use them as components in their EELV replacement, or as solid boosters for
Antares. Or something else.
DISCLOSURE: I don’t work for any of the primary antagonists on this issue. But I do oppose the change to law and policy.
The government should put these engines out for bid like other government surplus. If the market sees value to buying them, then they can bid. If they are not interested, then they won’t bid That should stop the whining since everyone has a chance to bid on them.
The notion that the ‘market’ somehow rightly arbitrates anything and everything is simply baffling.
Nah just sell these to the highest bidder. There shoild be some newly wealthy buyers in middle East or such. It’ll be just fine
So after nearly twenty years of almost no US commercial launches, companies like Virgin Galactic, SpaceX and Blue Origin – not to mention Firefly and others – start investing on the assumption that stable government policy can be relied upon when developing a business plan. Doing this would destroy investor confidence and call into question federal policies that are starting to have some success. Why not use Orion more to service ISS and destroy the commercial crew companies? Why stop at excess ICBMs, maybe the federal government has satellites in storage like DMSP that could be auctioned off to destroy the commercial market for satellite buses and components too. This is a great idea if you want to discourage truly commercial new space companies from entering the small satellite launch business which, right now, is dominated by Orbital ATK with extremely expensive systems.
Keith, the US Government royally worked over the US commercial launch industry back in the 1970s and 1980s when the space shuttle was sold as the US Space Transportation System (STS was even the TLA used for launch numbers!). STS would have provided launch services for NASA, DoD, and the US commercial space industry (e.g. communications satellites). STS was an overt attempt by the US Government to effectively put the rest of the US commercial launch industry completely out of business.
While selling “surplus” ICBM stages to commercial launch providers isn’t quite the same as the space shuttle program, it does have a similar, chilling, effect on investors. Private investors *do not* want to compete with the US Government. That is not a fight they can *ever* win.
I have mixed feeling on this. It seems a shame to waste billions of dollars of existing vehicles when they could be repurposed.
SeaLaunch did pretty well repurposing old Soviet Zenit ICBMs I think they were, until a few blew up. Hopefully these might not meet the same fate.
Then at the same time, you don’t want to undercut the just now developing commercial launch services market (SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, and others).
What to do? How about only allowing a limited number of these per year to be used? Say space it out over the next 15 to 20 years (if the vehicles will still be viable after that long in storage).
As a taxpayer, I’d just hate to see these expensive vehicles just be thrown away like trash when they could be used.
Surely there is some solution to this issue that allows everyone to be a winner.
I hear North Korea might be interested in these….if the price is right… 😉