Hearing on Russian Engines
Hearing: Assuring National Security Space: Investing in American industry to end reliance on Russian rocket engines
Keith’s note: The House Armed Services Committee is holding a hearing Friday with quite a cast of characters – Tory Bruno, Rob Meyerson, Julie Van Kleeck, Frank Culbertson, Jeff Thornburg, Katrina McFarland, John Hyten, Samuel Greaves, and, to round out the fun, Mike Griffin. This hearing ought to be a classic example of the old Washington adage “where you stand depends on where you sit”.
You can catch the live tweeting stream from this morning’s hearing that was posted on Twitter by @NASAWatch by following tweets with the #RD180 hashtag
SpaceX Prepared Testimony by Jeffrey Thornburg
“Continued reliance by U.S. launch providers on risky foreign supply chains for major subsystemsincluding propulsionhas materially weakened the U.S. industrial base. Now, however, private industry is investing internal funds to restore America’s leading edge in rocket technology. As a matter of industrial policy, it makes little sense to extend reliance on foreign sources of key subsystems when American technology can step in today.”
United Launch Alliance Discusses Future Innovations While Maintaining Industry Leading Reliability and Capability
“To end use of the RD-180 engine and make commercial investments in a new engine and system that will meet our national launch requirements, ULA needs the ability to compete into the next decade,” said Bruno. “The House has correctly addressed concern over the RD-180 engine by allowing ULA to use engines already on contract while prohibiting additional purchases, which reflects the original intent of the FY15 National Defense Authorization Act.”
Keith You left out Jeff Thornburg Senior Director of Propulsion Engineering Space Exploration Technologies Corporation on the 1 panel. I know DR Michael D. Griffin on the 2 panel not be 100% truefull about the Constellation program and won’t be any help for the SLS+Orion either. PS Huntsville Times web site like censor any truefull facts about SLS lift 2 load any current or future rocket like Falcon Heavy i wrote comment about it and deleted my comments 2 times+block access. When Mike Griffin and Daniel Dumbacher wrote opinion story about SLS claim 130 metric ton lift NASA cancel that option for Upper stage upgrade booster and only have enough Shuttle engine last 4 Launchs that the truth.
Purpose of the House Hearing is to grill ULA to abandon Vulcan Rocket project and plug Aerojet AR-1 Rocket Engine into the Atlas V Rocket as a RD-180 Rocket Engine replacement.
Then the new SpaceX raptor rocket will be that much farther ahead, and ULA will be toast.
I don’t think Mr. Bruno can save ULA without a reusable engine that can be reused as many times as raptor.
And methane fuel is that ticket right???
If ULA is toast, what heavy launch vehicle would backup the Falcon Heavy?
SLS lolol
Oh hale the mighty rocket
While ULA gets Vulcan certified why couldn’t SLS be falcon Heavies backup.
It will be ready by 2019 right?
And since it is Boeing, it needs no certification flights right?
And it sure can lift whatever DoD wants.
It will be ready like they say right?
http://m.youtube.com/watch?…
http://m.youtube.com/watch?…
Considering the cost of the Delta IV and then looking at the capabilities, that’s almost looking reasonable. Maybe they could do multiple payloads…
Only reasonable if Boeing does launch when they say and doesn’t delay and milk it for more years.
The old sows milk is sweet!
Well with EUS maybe you could loft a NRO bird plus a planetary probe,but now you have taken a payload from the commercial side
DIV
Cheers
The problem is that Bruno has said that the Delta IV medium is closing down. He said that when that occurs the D4 Heavy current cost $400-600 million will skyrocket to $800 million to ONE BILLION dollars per launch. If launches are open to competition as is directed as phase 3 by the DoD, then ULA will be competing with a $1 billion launcher against a $150 million Falcon Heavy with double the payload capacity (with SpX planning to further cut costs with re-usability by a factor of 10)
In any event, we would be no worse off then we are now. Currently nothing backs up the Delta 4 Heavy. The FH as the only heavy at least has the merits of being massively less expensive.
Unless propped up, I don’t see any way for ULA to survive. ULA claims that only major commercial business will enable their survival. Vulcan in the early 2020s will be smothered at birth by Indian, Russian, Chinese, French, Ukrainian, and US competitors who will slice and dice them and hand them their behind on a platter. And LM and Boeing don’t seem particularly enthused with peeing down the rat-hole.
An elegant assessment…
Classy, I’m not!
I just don’t see the Air Force abandoning ULA. A second provider will always be there. That’s not to say ULA as defined by their current monopoly revenue stream won’t be toast, but they will likely be around in some form at some lower revenue level. Even if half as much funding gets less than half the current number of launches from ULA, the Air Force will still award them launches.
Knowing how the government thinks, what they value, SpaceX will be blamed for higher costs of DoD launches. You can hand over half the current budget to SpaceX (eventually) and get slightly more than half the launches ULA would have done. But when you cut the ULA manifest, and their revenue drops, their inefficiency will result in needing MORE budget to get the other half of the launches. So DoD voices will blame SpaceX for having made the DoD “budget needs” go UP.
Look for legal hurdles ahead too, as the Air Force insists on propping up Rocketdyne. They will get VERY imaginative to do so, in ways that are hard to predict, except for how predictable whatever happens will be once taking into context that Air Force is going to prop up Rocketdyne and their own propulsion people at any cost. This will be affected by SLS outcomes over on the NASA side as well, as the fate of SLS is to prop up Rocketdyne if no one else does.
Yeah, with the EELV “assured access” requirement (ignored up to now both at the heavy payload end and US engine production) some form of ULA will be propped up.
Its amusing in a painful way that the only vendor (SpX) who can fly on their their own dime, with a deep customer contracted backlog, and are also the cheapest, will be, as you say, accused of driving prices upwards and government intervention deeper.
The bitter taste of irony.
You could recover the RS-68 but this sounds like its years down the road and how reusable would the RS-68 be? A Delta heavy with SSME’s on the other hand and recovered(?) what say the cost engineers to that?
Boeing will be dropping them in the Atlantic on SLS stages in just a couple years.
OK, I kept a straight face up to dropping.
My blog writes about AF building RS-25 and swapping with NASA for the SSME’s AF receives 16 SSME’s and NASA receives 16 new build RS-25
The Delta IV Heavy launch rate was only 1 every year or two. You still are losing backup to those vehicles that carry more than a Falcon 9. In reality, since the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are similar vehicles, you really need an alternate source of similar launch vehicles since a design problem with a Falcon 9 could take out the entire US launch capability without an alternate source.
In my opinion, altho I would rather eat a bag of maggots, I would not block the contracted, but not paid for RD-180s. We should import and stockpile them.
Whether we do or don’t, we should to the maximum extent possible, stop using Atlas Vs in the x0x and x1x configs. There are at least a dozen DoD flights scheduled for those ahead. Whichever of those flights for which an F9 can be made available should be re-manifested. It takes 2-4 years to get D4 mediums ordered and built, so get on the stick for for any that F9s can’t be located. Averaging the costs of F9s and D4 Meds may be same as an Atlas V, but pay nevertheless.
Compel ULA to either sell off the Atlas or partner with Aerojet to re-engine them with AR-1s which appear to be almost PlugnPlay with the RD-180, and AR says will be certified by 2019.
Get the BE/Vulcan project on the rails.
See what Orbital-ATK can do with solids.
In 2017/2018 the FH should be certified.
With some creative juggling (much simplified if the RD-180s are allowed to be delivered) and particularly telling ULA NOT to shut down the D4 Medium line, but INCREASE production, we should be able to keep DoD in the air.
Provide objective evidence that ULA would be “toast.” Alas, you don’t have that evidence.
For any company to survive in the next 30 years they are going to have to,
Launch and land and re-launch
Sooner, not later
It’s that simple
https://vimeo.com/125746164
SpaceX funk you up
That’s not evidence. That’s opinion, and a highly biased opinion at that.
Evidence (observables) necessarily exist in either the present or past tense.
So by definition, there can exist no future tense evidence and thus your question to DTARS – requiring future evidence – is ill-posed.
All DTARS can offer in response to your question is his projection – what you call opinion – based on the prevailing market forces for the foreseeable future and this he has done.
The only saving grace for old-space launch business models is that some governments
(EU, China and Russia) may allocate launch business to protected species suppliers as a lifeline to their industrial base.
All other launch service consumers are seeking cost-effective solutions and now Uncle Sam wants a slice and not before time.
ULA is no longer a protected species.
Yale Simkin
So when and how does Jeff pickup the remains of ULA???
After ULA goes belly up. So Bezos can just pick the facilities he wants without the standing army. It is unclear if Bezos needs the Decatur assembly facility. it might be cheaper to start a new smaller & more efficient facility.
I can’t see much that would really attract him other than launch sites and maybe manufacturing facilities. Not sure if the Centaur would be available.
I propose Ariane 7 ! Built in America using a Adeline recovery system to recover SSME’s
http://yellowdragonblog.com…
Just a note sir,
I am not a SpaceX fan.
I am a fan of affordable Space flight, I could care less who creates machines that make it possible to exploit future space resources.
This is all for fun. It means nothing and changes nothing. No need to strafe and napalm every comment.
If ULA doesn’t go for Vulcan but just swaps out the RD-180 for AR-1, then they won’t improve the Atlas’s performance (or cost). If they don’t improve Atlas’s performance, they can’t retire the Delta (Heavy). If they can’t retire the Delta, they’ll stay as expensive as they are (having to maintain seldom-used facilities). The Vulcan path ought to lower costs in addition to replacing the RD-180.
My first thought when I read that name list was, “They should invite Gwen Shotwell!” That would make the solution easy. She appears to be prominently not invited. So whatever they come up with will be replaced by SpaceX products (and whoever arrives after who can compete at that price point) anyway. So that makes the whole hearing a waste of hot air that should find itself right at home in the House.
I think Jeff Thornburg should be able to answer the more detailed SpaceX engine questions better then Shotwell, who is better at the Big Picture.
My point was that the Merlin is a good engine and SpaceX may at this time a market leader (and may soon be THE market leader). They should be represented at something like that.
The BE-4 development is definitely not behind Raptor; if anything, it’s ahead. SpaceX still doesn’t have test stand for Raptor (they can do component-level testing at Stennis), but Blue has a massive test stand in Van Horn for testing BE-4.
Pork – ULA can talk jobs. In different states for the engine and the launch vehicle.
I assume the Atlas 5 will need new electronics. Possibly new fuel tanks and pumps. Not much left so ULA may as well design a modern launch vehicle.
I suspect that ULA and Blue Origin are paying for Vulcan’s development.
Of course, that $1 billion/year ULA gets just to spray Rustoleum on their gantries probably pays for a lot of that engine.
Well, they did not have Orb-ATK at the last hearing. May have been for engines only though. That Liberty would have the performance. Don’t know about price. Use a Castor for the upper stage. I have researched the cost of Shuttle SRM and Castor and a launcher would be the same current cost as F9 with no reuse. Very few scrubs. The General said he could do it with all solids. Ought to be a good hearing and it is Web cast live. I like the simplicity of solids. Another simple way is pressure fed engines. History of low cost engines use pressure feed. Like the one of long ago Sea Dragon(not SpaceX). Built in a shipyard and kerosene fueled and then towed to launch point and LOX added and sink to point upright and fire. Biggest rocket ever proposed.
I am not sure if DoD would use an Ariane as upper stage for NSS flights. Infinitely better source then Russian hardware, but I think they are looking for all-American. Unless your were referring to swapping the upper stage with a US solid. It wasn’t clear to me.
It looks to me he meant use a Castor (US-built solid motor) in place of the Ariane derivative upper stage.
Yeah, I was thinking that, so I asked him. You read him correctly. Solids have real possibilities (except for human flight and some environmental issues.)
Sorry. A little shorthand to use Liberty. I think they will use a a Castor 120, which I have found the cost of. I have a ATK ’12 catalog and they list different launchers with different number of Shuttle SRB segments for the mission that is needed, with a Castor 120 2nd stage. They may use the USA TGV rockets 30,000lb thrust restartable LOX-kerosene engine for the 2nd stage because of the restarts needed and because at one time they said they would go to liquid 2nd stage. But I am probably wrong and none of my guesses will be right from what they say at the hearing. Adding the cost of what people said the Shuttle SRB cost and what ATK said the Castor 120 cost is about 25 million. Double that for all the other costs. So 50 million is my educated guess. ATK said they could even do just one launch a year. They said they could have one ready to go rapidly like they did the Castor 120. Which was about a year. Wishful thinking on my part I am sure. There is commonality with SLS SRB another plus that Congress will like.
I agree that ATK/Orbital have some serious capabilities for building solid launchers. They have much to leverage with. They have the potential to be a competitor to ULA and SpX.
I also like your mention of Sea Dragon. What an outrageous rocket! I was at at Saturn V launch, and that would look small compared to a Sea Dragon!
CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE
http://i.imgur.com/MmSL2E2.png
What is nice about your solids idea is that they are easy to cluster. It shouldn’t be hard to get a D4 Heavy or Falcon Heavy equivalent. I wonder why the general opposition to solids by DoD?
They would need a suitable launch pad.
Ariane could build here……
Airbus was planning on building tankers here
My current idea is this, Air Force orders RS-25 enough for 4 SLS launches.NASA and AF swap these for the 16 SSME’s. SSME’s are retrieved from EELV with the proposed Ariane Adeline system which AF develops and is sold to everyone.Run SSME with a 5 % Methane gel. http://yellowdragonblog.com…
I might add the air Force wants any bids that were submitted on the 23rd to include a launch vehicle as well as an Engine so my SSME EELV would be Ariane as well? Ariane would have to bid the launcher and Adeline SSME recovery system as an American built system
I thought Boeing was the great commercial airline builder. They can’t even turn a profit building jets?
Good thing they have SLS cost plus to prop them up.
http://www.forbes.com/sites…
The Forbes piece was spot-on. But BA’s management and anti-worker stance simply reflects the position of the politically-right in this country; Scott Walker stands as another example.
In America we tend to feel that ‘might makes right’, We are wrong.
Boeing and Scott Walker are not “anti-worker” they are anti-union. I know the Left likes to pretend the two are the same, but they’re not.
That’s just for the 787. I would assume that profits from other jets are paying for the 787 negative profits.
Mr Bruno twitted to me a month ago the BE-4 is not exclusive to them, and at a congressional hearing he stated that he would be happy to take government money for Vulcan R&D, so this means Blue Origins may very well have put in a bid last Tuesday but under the Air Force RFP that engine must be sold to anyone interested.So the ULA board is just waiting to see the results of the bid to go ahead with Vulcan with say a 40% match of ULA funding.
A Delta Heavy with a Human rated ICPS and recoverable SSME’s would be a human rated vehicle, and SLS with CBC with a recoverable SSME system reduces costs for SLS(?) With SSME/RS-25 flying on both EELV and SLS this might reduce unit costs
I think the real question that has to be asked, is, with all of the money that goes into DOD rocketry and space launch-numbers I’ve seen are more than go into all of the other space programs of the world combined, why does the US have to try to ‘save money’ by using second hand Russian engines. Why don’t we keep US aerospace preeminent and do the job of designing and building ourselves?
because all the money going into those launches passes directly into the pockets of the top level management. Development costs money, that would mean lower profits, lower dividends, and lower share prices. It’s cheaper to butter up several congresman with nice donations than develop a complete new domestic engine.
Very good hearing. Facts were good. Except for one. I disagree that there is not a another heavy launch system available for USAF. The Ares-1 could be used.NASA has everything needed to launch it. They can stack it, transport it and launch it from the multi-use launch pad. NASA will use the SRB segments on SLS? What do you think they will do when they use what they have.? Make more. A launch order takes 2 years. O-ATK should be able to provide them by then. If a new 2nd stage is not available, use a Centaur. I think there are certain models already built. Not secure enough? Security payloads were launched by NASA on the Shuttle. Already have one test flight in Ares-1X. USAF can use that flight to help certify NASA or USAF to launch USAF payloads. USAF should order one like they are doing for SpaceX Falcon Heavy. Put Cubesats on it like they are on that flight. There was a lot of worry that there would be a gap and only have one provider. This would fix that. Law says no new launch system? Not new, old, existing, only one launch a year is needed. SpaceX could afford it, I don’t know about ULA. This would be a chance to get something for all the money spent on Ares-1. Everyone should like this. Maybe even Obama since it is national security. If some don’t want NASA or USAF to launch it then get O-ATK or ULA.
When they asked blue if a methane engine ever flew in space, He answered No?
Didn’t the Russians have a methane engine developed half a century ago?
Not that far back, they did some work on them in the 1990s but nothing ever came of it.
I Thought was funny that SpaceX was very hush hush about saying methane is used because it’s
best choice for reusable engines.
Blue said reusable quickly “reusability is where we want to go”?
You would think “reusable” rockets” is/are dirty word/s or something.
No one said
Reusable rockets are likely more dependable for assured access to space?
Shouldn’t that point been made clear and out there so our law makers spend our money better.
Isn’t choice to spend money on one fuel type or the other important??
the way you keep saying methane is the best choice makes me curious. have you ever tried to design an engine? with methane? JVK was right when she said methane is attractive for space exploration where you might be interested in making your return fuel and in landers which is why NASA contracted Aerojet to build a ~10K methane engine that was successfully tested about 8 years ago as a derivative of the original back to the moon program. but those applications are ablative chambers. to do a very large engine for a booster you need to do regen cooling for a long duration. definitely if you want to re-use the entire thing. Methane loses that battle in spades to RP due to transport properties and to H2 for the same reason but also its not as cold as cryo H2. so in short for this application it has all the problems of handling cryo including tank weight but none of the cooling capability of H2 or even room temp RP. that’s why all those smart guys in the 60’s with huge budgets to study every and any part of the periodic table didn’t pursue methane much. can spacex or blue come up with solutions? maybe but i suspect it will be hard and it will involve unfavorable trade offs.
This would change a lot of assumptions
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW…
For launch methane is no different than lox in temperature so no issues, actual simpler than lh2 or kero since simple bulkhead separation is all that’s needed, Plus its 7 times as dense as LH2 and does not embrittle metals. Plus the fuel lines can be purged with cheap and safe nitrogen gas. plus it allows commonality of engines between stages. Plus it doesn’t coke the engines.
For long duration it’s great because it can be passively cooled instead of the active cools h2 requires.
The past ignoring methane is not relevant. The fuel choices then made sense for those particular circumstances.
“so in short for this application it has all the problems of handling cryo including tank weight but none of the cooling capability of H2 or even room temp RP.”
Huh? I was told that methane actually has TWICE the cooling capability of RP-1…
re-use is not ever going to be as simple as airliner re-use. you need to achieve two things to be re-useable. you have to first design the engine to have a long enough life span to survive however many full duration burns you plan to use it for. and that number will have to be limited, and then it has be designed to survive the reentry and landing thermal and dynamic environment. that means adding weight. that means decreasing performance and payload. its not just a matter of nobody ever wanted to waste their time on it before because they were getting rich off the US gov’t. and oh by the way RS25s were originally designed to fly 25+ missions with minimal to zero refurbishment. turns out they were nearly completely refurbing every flight until near the end of the program they stretched it to 3 flights. and that’s by far the most benign landing environment you will ever see in a “re-useable” vehicle…
The shuttle engines were vastly complex, at the the absolute limit of pressures and stress, exotic in design, and used the highly destructive and frigid liq h2
The Merlin uses far more forgiving fuel in a relaxed design and Is the picture of simplicity. Engines have run thru dozens of full cycles. They are designed not to need refurbishment between flights. Just refuel and fly. Spacex says the engines have indefinite life with only the highest stressed parts needing swap-out after 10s of flights.
You seem to think that spaceX hasn’t thought about and figured out the thermal and mechanical stresses involved in dozens of re-uses. Really??
They are spending umpteen millions of dollars on a rapid re-use system and are going to discover too late what everybody on the Internet knows already, that their design is deficient? Really??
At the same time, I can think of rocket engines that can be used repeatedly with _zero_ maintenance between firings. Cassini’s main engine, an R-4D, is probably up to a hundred firings since launch (18 years ago.) Admittedly, that’s a lower thrust engine, using MMH/NTO and the burns have been shorter. But, in principle, there is no reason for a re-use of a rocket to be all that difficult. I suspect the problem is extreme optimization: If performance has to be 100%, and even 98.5% will do, you will have problems with re-use and maintenance.
The RS-25s are a bad example. They were overly optimistic about material science for those. What about the F-1s and the J-2s that, quoth NASA, have turned out to be almost indestructible even without NASA people trying to make them such?
Raptor, for one, is not going to have a hot-hydrogen turbopump.
I think you made my point-its time that the US did what it took to catch up and maintain the lead. Too often we are outsourcing hi tech and the US is losing the ability to produce for itself. This by the way is at the expense of US jobs, manufacturing capability and expertise. I am afraid that SpaceMunkie is correct and the military-industrial complex is selling out their country for the sake of corporated profits.
I thought it was interesting that all the companies agreed that the government should spend money on engine development and were prepared to give up their intellectual rights for that money.
SUGAR DADDY GIVE GIVE
BORROW FROM CHINA, WE DONT CARE GIVE GIVE!
Beware of the dark side Luke!
ooops meant to reply to you, witnesses stated if 100% government funded then the government owns IP
The first panel stated that 100% funded projects would be government owned there was some hedging about public private funding The news here would be that The RS-25 is government owned. I had asked Major Britton this question two weeks ago for inclusion into the AF RFP Q & A This document unfortunately is in the bidders library and can not be disclosed
SpaceX would be very wise not to take a penny from uncle Sam on the development of Raptor if that is possible.
And I don’t think they would be smart to sell they engines either. A customer could blow them up and ruin their brand.was
It is friggin’ PAINFUL to listen to Chairman Mike Rogers ask the distinguished panel of rocket scientists/engineers questions about…well, rockets. I don’t know if it is his “good ole boy” Alabama accent and affect, but i would be very surprised if this southern gentleman has ever completed a single physics or advanced mathematics course in the history of his education. I am sure the congressman is an intelligent politician, and a good man. But damn damn if he doesn’t come across as sounding DUMB AS A STUMP, when it comes to technical and scientific issues, of the type being addressed in this meeting. Every time he asked a question, I think I did a Face Palm.
The US did not give up on kerosene engines. SpaceX has been involved with them for 14 years or so.
Some quotes from SpaceX from the Hearing above:
Our Merlin 1D engine .. has flown to space more than any other boost-phase rocket engine involved in the EELV Program today, including the Russian RD-180 used on the Atlas V and the RS-68 and RS68A used on the Delta IV. … It also bears noting that SpaceX currently produces more liquid rocket engines than any other private company in the world. …
Those who decry the deterioration of the American rocket engine industrial base … seem to overlook or discount SpaceX in their assessments.
… Today SpaceX is the world’s largest launch services provider, measured by missions under contract….
In fact, Falcon 9 will exceed the Delta IV family in flights to orbit by the end of next year. And, the Merlin 1D engine has already surpassed the Russian RD-180 in terms of flight heritage. …
The Merlin rocket engine … is the only new American hydrocarbon rocket engine to be successfully developed and flown in the past 40 years. To date, SpaceX has flown more than 180 Merlin engines on its missions, representing significantly greater flight heritage than any other rocket engine flying on U.S. launch vehicles today, including more than the engines on Atlas and Delta combined.
… SpaceX has aggressively developed next-generation rocket technology and is the world’s most prolific private producer of liquid-fuel rocket engines
… We develop all of our engines in-house and in the United States. The company is currently on its fourth generation of booster engines, which have included the Merlin 1A, the Merlin 1B, the Merlin 1C, …the Merlin 1D… (and) the Kestrel. …
SpaceX has successfully developed the 9 rocket engines…in the past 13 years. The … Merlin 1D .. has more flight heritage than the first stage engines on the Atlas V and Delta IV combined,
SpaceX gets more powerful by the day!
I believe his comments mean to say that the US had given up on kerosene engines, and, with the exception of SpaceX, is still apparently not interested in designing kerosene engines. It’s highly unlikely that anyone has overlooked SpaceX’s work with kerosene engines.
“the US had given up on kerosene engines, and, with the exception of SpaceX, is still apparently not interested in designing kerosene engines”
That’s not true, the Congressmen are pushing really, really hard for AR-1. 😉 And we all know that the Congressmen represent the people, right? 😀