GAO Report on EELV New Entrants Guide
GAO Releases Report on Launch Services New Entrant Certification Guide, SpaceRef Business
The GAO found that “while potential new entrants stated that they are generally satisfied with the Air Force’s efforts to implement the Guide, they identified several challenges to certification, as well as perceived advantages afforded to the incumbent launch provider.”
Marc’s note: The guide was designed for new entrants in the EELV marketplace including: SpaceX Falcon 9 and Heavy, Orbital Antares and ATK Liberty II.
As expected, SpaceX seems to be in the lead among these four companies on the road to certification for EELV-class missions.
The report says that the Falcon 9 is currently planned to get certification by the end of this year and the Falcon Heavy by the end of 2015.
Nearly all the big Air Force and NRO payloads are considered Class A, the least risk-tolerant, and requiring a vehicle certified as Category 3 in terms of reliability. The report says Category 3 certification requires between 2 and 14 successful consecutive flights. The number depends on the level of government technical review and oversight. Here, COTS gives SpaceX a big advantage with Falcon 9. Not only do they get lots of launches through COTS, but NASA has also been doing a lot of reviews and oversight as a part of COTS, and it sounds like the Air Force and NRO will consider this a factor, allowing them to achieve Category 3 certification earlier. Falcon Heavy is considered a separate launch vehicle that has to be certified separately, so it won’t benefit from the Falon 9 launches. It may, however, benefit from the NASA oversight and reviews of Falcon 9 in COTS since most of that work applies to Falcon Heavy too.
The report identifies another challenge for new entrants: the Air Force and NRO aren’t willing to be flexible on launch sites. They say they want to keep launching from the same sites for national security reasons (keeping secret satellites secret). Since the two launch pads SpaceX is currently using or developing are at Canaveral and Vandenberg, this doesn’t seem to be any problem for SpaceX, but will be a challenge for the other competitors that will have to build or refit pads at one or both of these Air Force bases.
The one challenge identified in the report that could really be a pain for SpaceX is the vertical payload integration requirement. The report says the Air Force refuses consider horizontal integration, no matter how much it would reduce costs. They say their payloads are designed for vertical integration only. SpaceX has always wanted to do horizontal integration as a way to keep costs and complexity down. They might have to do a major, and expensive, overhaul of their pad and ground operations if they need to do horizontal integration.
I can’t think of a reason why USAF has to do vertical integration. If they designed new payloads and reworked existing payloads for horizontal integration they could save the tax payers a great deal of money every year. I have to wonder if they’ve always stuck with it simply because the Soviets/Russians have done horizontal integration from day one. And horizontal doesn’t tie up a pad for so long.