“By Thursday, the ULA had lost its first legal skirmish, as a judge approved an injunction against buying Russian engines on ground the purchases violate Russian sanctions. ”
Russian sanctions? Are these the Russian sanction recently imposed by Obama?
“Now, with Vladimir Putin carving up Ukraine and facing sanctions, the use of Russian hardware is a mark of Cain. That’s a big problem for ULA, which uses Russian engines in some of its rockets.
“On the surface it appears there’s a good probability of some sanctions violation,” Musk said this week. “This deserves to have a spotlight on it. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
He’s talking about an engine called the RD-180. Its very existence was a mark of the rosy post-Cold War environment.”
Why it sure might!
Wow the left hand of this administration has no idea what the further left hand of this administration is doing.
This is incredible incompetence………….everything we’ve come to expect from years of government service. [MIB paraphrase]
The ULA has been playing corruption-based bullshit political hardball for years. They forced SpaceX to launch the Falcon 1 from Kwajalein, which caused very severe corrosion issues that resulted in the loss of one Falcon 1 and almost destroyed SpaceX as a company. Then they used their cozy government/military connections to make it more difficult for SpaceX to get into the EELV launch business. Then they did the same to get a massive bulk buy pushed through before SpaceX was able to enter bidding.
If they want to live by those political hijinks then by god they can die by them too.
How long do you think RD-180 injunction will last?
When is the next shipment due?
“How long do you think RD-180 injunction will last?”
Hard to say because the depths of stupidity of the Obama administration ahve yet to be plumbed.
However keep this in mind:
If Putin didn’t think of this before, he now has been given extra leverage:
even if we lift the sanction, who says Putin will allow the engines to be sold?
He’s thought of it before. There were rumblings in the Russian press about cutting off RD-180 shipments several months ago, long before the Crimean “Anschluss” took place. The Russians don’t really do “business,” they do “leverage.” As soon as a “deal” is signed, the Russians are looking to chisel and push for more and to hold you up for ransom. It’s who they are and how they roll. Gas deals, the RD-180 deal – the Russians just look for an opportunity to jerk their “business partners” around when it will maximally benefit them.
The RD-180 issue might be the biggest threat to ULA at the moment. They claim to have a 2 year supply in inventory, so that’s a buffer, but not enough to fulfill their block-buy obligations (or, for that matter, the launch availability 1 billion per year fee they get).
Without the RD-180 (or a suitable replacement), the Atlas 5 is no more. That’d leave ULA with just Delta IV (and its heavy version). This could be problematic for Boeing and Sierra Nevada Corporation, because of the two ULA vehicles only Atlas 5 is built to be “human rated” and that’s what they are planning to use for CST-100 and Dreamchaser.
I see that Congress is proposing a law that would require a US version of the RD-180. That might not be as easy as they think; we do have the plans, but… I’ve heard (unsure if this is factual) that they don’t include the alloy composition and processing to give the needed properties needed to run the engine O2 rich, which is one of they keys to its efficiency. I would like to think that the USA could figure out how to do this… but it’s not a given.
Also, haven’t ULA claimed in the past that they already have a US RD-180 production option set up and ready to go?
Aviation Week reported a few weeks ago that it would cost a billion dollars to get RD-180 production underway in the US. Of course, the working assumption is that taxpayers will pick up the tab for ULA’s benefit. Why we should do that is beyond me. If ULA needs the engine, they should pay for it.
$1 billion? Why that happens to match the yearly “launch assurance” subsidy that ULA receives. So there should be no need for additional funding if ULA actually spends it wisely.
If ULA needs the engine, they should pay for it.
They should at least pay for most of it. SpaceX built at least the first two versions of the Merlin entirely on their own dime. The 1-C and current 1-D version may have benefitted to some minor degree from COTS development money, but I don’t think that’s where most of it went.
Seems to me Congress could fix this RD-180 problem by simply mandating that some or all of that $1 billion/year “launch capability” money Arizona CJ mentions above be used to create either a U.S.-based production capability for the RD-180 or a functionally equivalent LOX-RP-1 engine of American design that has the same interfaces as an RD-180.
There have been published estimates that it would take four or five years and more than a billion dollars to replicate or replace the RD-180 in the U.S. Me, personally, I’d give ULA two years, max, to do the job, that being how long they allege their buffer stock of engines will last. If they don’t think they can do it in that timeframe, then they cease getting their fat, no-work-required subsidy, ’cause, hey!, no launch capability, no launch capability money, right?
Half of that money should go back into the general fund and the rest – or less – should go to whomever bids lowest on doing the job in 24 months under a COTS-like contract, not FAR. Given a billion dollars, 24 months and a free hand, is there anyone who thinks SpaceX couldn’t do this – aside from the usual motley crew of ULA apologists?
SpaceX might not choose to bid, being busy with Raptor and all, but I’m not sure Elon wouldn’t be willing to put Raptor aside for awhile for purposes of further burnishing the SpaceX legend and sticking it to the aerospace legacies one more time. SpaceX might well not be the sole bidders, either, nor even necessarily the winners even if they should decide to jump in. Seems like Aerojet-Rocketdyne probably has enough legacy design work lying around in various archives to have a pretty good leg up on an assignment like this even before spending significant money on clean-sheet-of-paper development.
“Given a billion dollars, 24 months and a free hand, is there anyone who thinks SpaceX couldn’t do this”
Depends on whether or not they go through NASA. Using NASA facilities and staff will slow the pace of development.
Guess we could watch the Raptor development to see if this is true.
Fair point. On the other hand, SpaceX seems to be rapidly acquiring most-favored-nation status at Stennis.
!@#$%! software just ate my first attempt…
Don’t be too hard on ULA here. The original A5 and D4 developments were done with Lockmart and Boeing corporate cash, on the promise of a larger USG market than has ever materialized. The ongoing USG subsidies pay to maintain a considerably larger-then-actually-used ULA production/launch capacity (2 dozen cores a year?) for emergency national security reasons.
Yeah, we had some back-and-forth about that on another thread here recently. Since Elon has thoughtfully gone and built a modest little garage-shop operation in Hawthorne that will be turning out 40 cores a year pretty soon, you’d think ULA would be grateful to have the oh-so-expensive solo burden of having to maintain America’s never-used surge capacity lifted from its back (Atlas V shrugs?). But noooooo! They’re all whiny and pissy and, like, cut it out, dude! Go awayyyy!
Boeing and Lockheed each received money during the EELV R&D phase but they did have some of their own money in the game.
ULA is basically a DoD/NASA launcher, they don’t do much commercial, so
the feds may as well pay all the costs, one way or another.
That would seem to be inevitable given that the U.S. gov’t. is likely to be the only future purchaser of products incorporating the RD-180 knock-off or equivalent. But there are proven ways to keep the costs down even if Uncle Sugar is picking up the tab. One way is to compete the RD-180 monkey-copy/replacement program. If it’s given to ULA as a cost-plus to-do, it’ll take forever and break the bank. If it’s given to any of the aerospace legacies as a cost-plus to-do it’ll take forever and break the bank. Therefore, it should be competed in a COTS-like fashion based on milestone payments for progress and not the perverse-incentives-ridden, take-longer-and-get-paid-more FAR. So, yeah, the feds should pay all the costs – but one way, not another. And ULA’s billion-a-year subsidy needs to go away. Also, who knows, maybe Orbital would be interested in an RD-180 knock-off/replacement for Antares?
it’s possible I guess to compete an RD-180 but it’s a big engine and not a lot of companies have that capability.
It’s a big engine, but rocket engines are not, by aerospace standards, particularly big components.
Not necessarily so – Orbital has been looking at the RD-180 as a possible replacement engine for their Antares booster, once the current supply of rebuilt NK-33 (AJ-26) runs out.
And I have some reason to believe that Antares may have been surprisingly cheap to develop, likely much closer to SpaceX costs than to legacy dinospace. Given a new engine supply, Orbital might well find some commercial business.
Although the proposed ATK merger does call into question whether they’re likely to try seriously for commercial business. Not ATK’s strong suit.
Yeah, Orbital’s interest in the RD-180 – at least pre-sanctions – has been widely reported. That’s why I said what I did.
You might well be right about Orbital’s costs for Antares, at least to some extent. Maybe not enough, though. The first stage tankage is made in Ukraine (!) and the engines, of course, are straight off the shelf of the Leonid Brezhnev Army-Navy Store. Orbital have long been the scrapyard scroungers of aerospace. Except for the original Pegasus, I think all of their birds have been cobbled together from retired ICBM motors. Antares just raised this talent for recycling goods to a new level and extended it to liquid fuel boosters.
All of that said, Orbital’s contract with NASA is still for $1.9 billion for eight CRS missions while SpaceX’s is for $1.6 billion for 12 missions. Not eactly comparable payment arrangements, which argues that their costs – even after all of that Com-bloc dumpster-diving – are still probably higher than SpaceX’s by a good bit. Also, the Antares isn’t remotely in the payload class of a Falcon 9.
Regardless of what re-engining solution Orbital finally decides on – if it decides on one at all and doesn’t just drop Antares because a re-engined version would not be competitive in its launch capability category – their costs are likely to rise. That’s even more true if, in addition to the engines, they have to alt-source the Ukrainian bits as well the engine(s). The plant that makes these parts is in the area of Ukraine that seems most likely to be the next forcible addition to the Russian Federation. Gotta figure enhanced sanctions would put that supplier off-limits too.
Arghh! Meant to agree with you about commercial not being ATK’s strong suit. Their aerospace and defense division, which just hooked up with Orbital, sold to the U.S. and allied militaries and to other legacy aerospace majors. Their entire client list probably fits on one side of an 8-1/2 x 11. Not exactly Proctor & Gamble. Maybe Orbital can clue them in about how actual business with people who neither wear uniforms to work nor are people who sell exclusively to people who do actually works. Orbital has built a lot of comsats and their people have at least met people outside the military-industrial complex. They know them not to be mythical beasts.
The reason why ULA is a US government launch provider is their prices are so high that no one else wants to use them.
Why is Delta IV not “human rated”?
Considering that Delta IV Heavy is going to be used to launch the first flight test of Orion – admittedly, unmanned – that’s a damned good question, rickl.
the Structural design margins in the booster are a bit low,
amongst others.
So, not easily fixable. Sucks, but good to know. Thanks for the info.
now, structural design margins aren’t “Laws of Nature”, they are at the end of
the day, policy decisions. Shuttle flew with inadequate margins and some
300 waivers every time.
however, it’s a huge bureaucratic fight to win.
Shuttle flew with inadequate margins and some 300 waivers every time.
Nope. It had the standard 1.4 FoS used by structural engineers in many other applications, not just aerospace. Further, the models err’d heavily on the side of conservatism. The exception was self-inflicted debris strikes caused by placing the orbiter along side the tank rather on top. None of the alternative or future designs discussed in this thread do the same thing, which makes your comment irrelevant as well as wrong.
No, they’re not.
the “human rating” criteria and mind-numbingly complex. For example, it’s been reported that getting the Delta IV’s upper stage engine human rated would require 200 changes.
There are also a lot of sensor requirements in order to detect a failure in time to trigger a launch abort system.
In fact, it’s such a complex and demanding process that the last time an astronaut road a “human rated” vehicle was in 1976, the last Apollo flight. Shuttle was never human rated. And, for that matter, Apollo wouldn’t meet today’s human rating standards.
Another issue is that human rating Delta IV medium (no SRBs or extra cores) wouldn’t be of much use; it doesn’t have the ability to lift the Boeing CST-100 or Dreamchaser – both are too heavy for the single core version with no boosters. You’d need the solid booster version, or the heavy (3 cores) and human-rating those would be even harder.
Even suckier, but also good to know. Looks like fixing the problem dn-guy pointed out would make the problems you point out even worse. Thanks for the info.
I hate to be greedy, but what do you know of the details of those 200 or so changes needed to make the Delta IV human-rateable? The Atlas V second stage, which seems to be human-rated, or at least getting there, uses either one or two RL-10A engines. The Delta IV second stage uses a single RL-10B-2. Doing some wikipedia digging, the only RL-10A-series engine still shown as being in production is the RL-10A-4-2. It’s shown as being used on Centaur V1 and V2 stages. I gather these are the one- and two-engine versions of the Atlas V second stage. The mass of this engine is given as 167 kg. The mass of the RL-10B-2 for the Delta IV second stage is given as 277 kg. Much heavier for some reason. The A-4-2 shows an expansion ratio of 84:1. The B-2 has a ratio of 250:1. Is this difference because of engine bell geometry? Does that also explain the mass difference in these two engines? Why the big differences? I always thought the optimum bell geometry for vacuum performance of a given engine fell in a fairly narrow range of options. Why the big difference between Atlas and Delta second stages? How does this impact – if at all – the relative human-rateability of the affected stages? Any help you can provide on these matters would be greatly appreciated. Enquiring minds want to know.
First, let me loudly proclaim that I am not an expert on this (or spaceflight in general), so take anything I say with skepticism.
I also have a highly imperfect memory, so add more skepticism. 🙂
Okay… going from memory here (always risky!) it was the RS-69, not the Rl-10, that required in the area of 200 changes. The RL-10 would be easier, but would still need some work, plus there were other issues such as structural margins that dn-guy reported, and further, there’s the G-loading issue; if I recall, Delta-IV has accelerations of 5+G near stage burnout, and NASA dictates 3G max for human rating (thus ruling out Apollo, Gemini, and Mercury on those grounds alone…. Shuttle too, as it pulled slightly more than 3G near MECO).
As I recall, a further but related issue was the redesign of some manifolds to accommodate the needed sensors.
So, Delta IV would require some major changes, including engine modifications (that would reduce efficiency) plus structural changes that would add mass. What this really means is you’d need a human-rated Delta IV Heavy to launch Dream Chaser or CST-100, unless unmanned. (or unless common sense somehow gained control and many of the human rating diktats were roundfiled).
Also, if you’d like to peruse some of the general human rating requirements, you might find NASA’s guidelines on the matter interesting;
Okay, regarding the differences between RL-10 versions… I’ll refer you to the first and second sentences of this post before continuing… and add that I’d never heard of this issue until you post. But, let me see if I can give it a whirl;
First, look at the versions side by side, http://www.spaceandtech.com/spacedata/engines/rl10_specs.shtml
That chart gives us some clues. The mass difference is accompanied by a higher thrust, and also a very high ISP of 464. But that expansion ratio of 250 is an eye opener. I know they have an extendable nozzle, and I can only guess here that the high ISP is due in part to high chamber pressure coupled with a massively over-expanded nozzle. You couldn’t do that in atmosphere (flow instabilities) but you can in vacuum, and overexpanded nozzles are more efficient But, to make it work, that big nozzle would need to be very light.
CJ
Dick
B Version RL-10 is way heavier then the A version for the same reason
it also has a higher Isp.
the B version has an extendable nozzle with a complex set of gears and
screws.
it gives you a nice Isp boost but it weighs more.
Thanks to all who took time to further my education. Muchas gracias, amigos.
I wasn’t going to mention the EDS/ abort system, because I don’t view it as a show-stopper.
You can get that by heisting the EDS and avionics from the atlas.
heck, it would make a ton of sense to put one common avionics suite on the
EELV. far cheaper, and make it really robust so, you don’t have single point failures
or common mode failure.
now as for the RL-10, that shouldn’t be a show-stopper. NASA flew the Saturn 1 with 6 RL-10s and NASA looked real hard at using the RL-10 for the Apollo SPS.
The big problem is cost and the structural margins on the core booster.
Anything can be man rated if you are willing to write checks. Big checks.
Two potential reasons — it may not have failure onset detection needed for an abort, and with the current upper stage it may have too high a loft on the trajectory to eliminate all black zones, due to excessive gees at some points of ascent. At least those were the issues ten years ago during the Orbital Space Plane days.
On page 8 “Key findings”
On page 26 it gives the structural requirment changes to human rate.
That 40% margin requirement hasn’t made sense in decades. It’s not the driving issue.
“I see that Congress is proposing a law that would require a US version of the RD-180. That might not be as easy as they think; we do have the plans, but… I’ve heard (unsure if this is factual) that they don’t include the alloy composition and processing to give the needed properties needed to run the engine O2 rich, which is one of they keys to its efficiency. I would like to think that the USA could figure out how to do this… but it’s not a given. ”
Funny….in the 1940’s 50’s and 60’s the Russians used to reverse engineer/copy our hardware (e.g. the Tu-4 which was a copy of our B-29).
Now we are in the position, put there by our government, to copy theirs. Very sad.
Also, wouldn’t copying their engine violate some sort of “copyright” law?
The hard part isn’t copying the engine, it’s figuring out the metallurgy.
Oxygen Rich Staged combustion is kind of like an acetylene torch. The torch is tuned to stochiometric conditions to warm up the metal and then you hit the oxygen gas boost
and the free oxygen eats the metal. Think about it. The Russians came up with some process to make metal resistant the same environment as a cutting torch.
They have rights to produce the engine. What they don’t have is the metallurgical skills. They have drawings, but there apparently some secret herbs and spices that the Russians haven’t provided.
I’ve seen a lot of references to these mysterious Russian alloys and heat treating methods or whatever it is that allegedly makes the RD-180 able to run oxygen-rich. I think the interesting question is just how long is this “Reardon-ski Metal” good for in service? I’m guessing long enough to get a rocket off the ground and three minutes into flight, but I wouldn’t give you long odds that at the end of that three minutes an RD-180, even if it could somehow be recovered, would be in any shape to fly again. The service lives of Russian fighter jet engines are known to be broadly inferior to Western designs. Hard to imagine the Russians refraining from using “magic alloys” in their war machines if such really existed. Personally, I think it’s a load of codswallop peddled by the Russians as a FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) exercise aimed at keeping we idiot Yanks from even trying to gin up a domestic production line for RD-180’s. Up to now, it seems to have worked.
The oxygen-resisance isn’t provided by the alloy, but by a surface coating. The Russians wouldn’t give up that particular secret, which is why Aerojet went with the NK engines instead of the RD engines. There is a key difference. The NK engines operate just below a threshold pressure at which 700 F oxygen starts to eat their stainless steel, and the steel requires no coating. The RD operates above that threshold, and do require the coating.
On a different matter, back in the 80’s some people at NASA/MSFC estimated the cost of a new rocket engine for the Advanced Launch System. They took an estimate of $750 million from General Dynamics, doubled it for contractor cost overrun, then doubled it again to account for their program management. So it would have been $3 billion back in 1898-89 (NASA always spends at least what they estimate). I doubt if they could do it for that today, and they certainly couldn’t do it in time to keep the Atlas alive as a viable launch vehicle.
Interesting. What I don’t find particularly credible is that figuring out the assay and crystallographic microstructure of said coating should be any kind of remotely insoluble problem. If the damned aerospace majors can’t figure out the coating, show it to some machine tool manufacturers and see what they can make of it. Most machining cutters are coated with various secret recipes of unobtanium these days. I don’t get what the problem is – other than an obvious reluctance on the part of the usual suspects to spend a single dime they deem to be unnecessary, of course.
The composition of the coating should indeed be possible to figure out. The precise method to apply it so it reliably sticks to the innards of pump drive turbines, that may not be so easy, or at least so I have heard.
If the people you’re hearing that from are ULA employees, I’d be more inclined to believe that’s company party line talking than actual difficulty. People who don’t actually want to solve a problem tend to talk up the difficulty. I don’t think reverse-engineering some Russian metal treatment process is a significant show-stopper, at least if placed in the hands of people who actualy want to find a solution. It certainly shouldn’t cost nine or ten figures to figure out.
Can’t say where I saw that. (Literally – I can’t recall where I read it. It was an anonymous comment to one of these discussions a few years back.) But given what I know of such matters, it’s far more plausible than most of the misinfo going around about why oxy-rich staged combustion isn’t a solved problem in the US.
Given that EELV turned into a low-volume government-only dead end, I wouldn’t blame the ULA partners for not wanting to invest a billion more of their shareholders’ money in US RD-180 production. The politics of RD-180 is ultimately a problem for USG; they (we, sigh) should pay if US production is deemed in the national interest.
At that point, though, the engines should be available for any US or non-export-restricted company that wants to buy them. If ULA wants to keep Orbital from using US RD-180 for Antares, yeah, then their only option is to pay for and own the production plant themselves.
We’ll have to agree to disagree about the intrinsic difficulty of mastering the metal treatment issues involved. As to the rest, I quite agree. If ULA wants to keep the RD-180 exclusive to themselves, they can pay the whole tab. If the gov’t. picks up the tab then the results go to all takers on a no-favoritism basis – like the results of pretty much all other taxpayer-funded research.
I’m not sure if people see the delicious long term implications here.
Consider that the writing is already on the wall for the ULA’s launchers. There’s no way they can compete against F9, FH, and especially the reusable versions of both. But that’s still a few years in the future before that obsolescence hits home. Moreover, there’s no easy way for the ULA to dramatically lower costs without building a new vehicle from a clean sheet design. For one they need to stop using the $40 mil RL-10 in the upper stage, that’s a huge cost sink. If they want to try reusability they need to seek new engines and new designs. All of which is a multi-year and, for ULA, multi-billion dollar prospect. If they were sane they’d be starting it now, but they are too comfortable and not scared yet.
Now here come the sanctions, which potentially hits ULA where they are weakest: the Atlas V. The launcher they need to fly the most in order to turn a profit, but one they won’t be able to fly at all if their RD-180’s dry up. And if the sanctions stick then ULA is forced to pursue a route of developing an RD-180 replacement. This is a multi-year billion plus dollar project, since it’s a fairly advanced engine and not many folks in the US have experience with high performance LOX/Kero engines these days (except SpaceX).
And what if ULA succeeds? Well, nothing, several years down the road they’ll be back at square one. And, most critically, they’ll still have an obsolete launcher while SpaceX is eating their business, except they’ll have spent huge amounts just maintaining the status quo.
If it works it’ll be a genius business move for Musk, ULA will spend years working on keeping their existing launchers running instead of building new, competitive launchers.
It will be cheaper for ULA to buy a couple new regulations, regulators, judges, andor politicians.
So, that will at least be attempted first.
It would be even cheaper to hire a hitman. One .50 Caliber bullet from a mile away?
Heck, the number of suspects would run down the side of the DoJ building.
Hey, I like watching Jerry Bruckheimer procedurals too, but you might want to cut back just a wee tad.
For one they need to stop using the $40 mil RL-10 in the upper stage, that’s a huge cost sink.
Well, they have been working with XCOR to solve that problem.
This is a multi-year billion plus dollar project, since it’s a fairly advanced engine and not many folks in the US have experience with high performance LOX/Kero engines these days (except SpaceX)
SpaceX has never done a staged-combustion engine. They may have to simply accept a simpler engine, with less performance.
From what I have read in the literature it is easier to do LOX/Methane staged combustion than LOX/Kerosene. It is not like the US has never done a staged combustion engine. The SSME was staged combustion but the thing is it used LOX/LH2. LOX/Methane supposedly is between those two with less chances of coking and polymerization than LOX/Kerosene. Not to mention that it is cryogenic.
No one with sense would have trusted Russian sole-source parts for a strategic asset. In some respects, Orbital’s decision to use the NK-33 engine is even more remarkable. The RD-180 was at least in current production. That Orbital went this route shows pretty clearly they saw COTS as a nice opportunity to take money off the gov’t. for a few more years (same calculation Boeing made before getting into Commercial Crew) and then ISS would be gone, those idiots at SpaceX would be stuck with a lot of scratch-built toys they had no market for and Orbital would have banked a nice chunk of change with another of their junkyard rockets. They didn’t care if they couldn’t put on a second act; they didn’t think there would be any second act, period. Playimg business-as-usual checkers while Elon was playing chess.
Dick Eagleson said; No one with sense would have trusted Russian sole-source parts for a strategic asset.
True. But, theoretically, we didn’t. Theoretically.
Pratt&Whitney funded and participated in the design and development, by NPR Energomash (Who made the RD-170) via a joint venture company owned by the two firms, RD AMROSS, of the RD-180 (Which they wanted to sell to Lockheed), in a deal which included licensing for US production, and, of course, plans (to which they were entitled, due to jointly owning it). They did get the engineering plans and design data. So, therefor, theoretically, so far, so good.
They then certified to the DOD that they could produce the engine in the US, and would do so by 2008, thus meeting the “second source” requirement. Theoretically.
But… What they didn’t get is the recipes and procedures for the alloys and coatings. It’s akin to buying a recipe for a cake and just taking the ingredients list. Amongst other things, this renders their claims of being able to produce the engine in the US false.
That brings us back to your common sense point; what they did is utterly inexplicable to me.
What I want to know is why they did it. Surely, in the 90’s, and as the funding partner, if they’d insisted (as was their right given the licensing) on all the needed plans, they’d have gotten them? And indeed, unless they were intentionally committing enormous fraud (the claimed capacity to domestically produce) why on earth didn’t they get what they needed? And as for Lockheed, did they just take Pratt and Whitney’s word for it regarding US production capability?
This makes no sense to me, at all.
Perhaps they did try and the Russians did their angry bear act and the suits at Boeing meekly backed down and never brought the subject up again. There was a lot of pretty dodgy stuff going on at Boeing in the 90’s. That USAF tanker Charlie Foxtrot even got a couple of them jailed, as I recall. Not a corproate culture that would cavil much at merely lying to the government.
Keep in mind that the late-90’s contract for RD-180 engines is for 100 engines (about half flown so far) for a hair under $10m each. Even assuming a modest markup to the final customer ULA, that’s a screaming bargain compared to prices for roughly comparable US-produced engines. Spending a billion to set up US production in order to double-triple your per-unit costs is a REALLY hard decision for a US stockholder company to defend economically.
US RD-180 production, if it happens, will happen for USG policy reasons. And thus far, USG has declined to pay for it.
@ Dick Eagleson; I agree that the Russians might have said “nyet” to sharing that tech, maybe, but that’s not quite the issue. The problem is that P&W, as an equal partner in RD AMROSS, has no excuse whatsoever for not dealing with this issue early on. Remember, they claimed all along that US production was their goal, and they can’t very well do that without the needed info. BTW, IMHO, Boeing wasn’t involved in this at all; it was Pratt & Whitney and Lockheed.
@ Henry Vanderbilt
Totally agreed on the price issue; for an engine that size, that’s a great price.
The problem I have is fraud. P&W and Lockheed declared that they had the ability to produce the engine in the US, and intended to do so by 2008 (with no billion-dollar price tag). The problem is that this simply wasn’t true; they didn’t have all the info needed to do so (hence the current billion-dollar price tag ).
Remember, they claimed that they were going to do US production. They made that claim in response to issues over sourcing. Yet, they never had the ability, and knew it.
I’d very much like to be proven wrong on this (I happen to like both Lockheed and P&W) but I can’t see an explanation other than outright fraud.
I don’t question that Boeing got a bargain. I question their judgement in imagining that a signed contract with Russians means anything. Their judgement about the wisdom of outsourcing is hardly exclusive to procuring bits for the Atlas V either. The Dreamliner has been a Grade AAA Extra Large cluster foxtrot pretty much from the get-go because of outsourcing problems. If they’d been able to build that beast on their original schedule, Airbus would probably be pushing up daisies by now.
Arizona CJ,
You make a compelling case for major misfeasance on the part of Lockheed and P&W.
$40 million RL-10? I’d heard $5m each a while back, rapidly heading toward north of $10m, but not $40m. Got a source for that?
I don’t understand why people think ULA can’t compete. ULA plus their engine suppliers have about 5000 employees. SpaceX has about 4000. ULA spreads that across about a dozen launches a year. SpaceX about three or four. Yes, ULA gets air force launch support contracts — just like SpaceX is getting NASA ISS support contracts.
There was a time when it was reasonable to think SpaceX had changed the game on cost — back when they had 1200 people. Now, it is harder to believe.
If SpaceX gets reusable happening, all the other non-government-subsidies launch providers are toast.
Are you serious? Are you incapable of doing math?
The ULA block buy works out to $1 million per year per employee at 12 launches a year. Are all ULA employees millionaires? Where’s the money going?
Meanwhile, SpaceX isn’t just a launch services company, they are also an orbital pressurized cargo delivery company, which is a much higher margin business than launch. SpaceX somehow managed to develop 3+ launch vehicles, 5 new rocket engines, an iss cargo delivery spacecraft, a manned spacecraft, AND reusability with fewer employees than ULA/aerojet-rocketdyne? WTF are they doing at ULA?
ULA has a very big vendor base, it’s not just engines, but avionics, and materials.
ULA runs a lot of paperwork and QA all the way up and down the supply chain,
certifying bolts, rivets, sheet metal and works to make sure it’s all x-rayed, tested,
and documented.
Yeah, that’s one of the problems. The whole legacy aerospace industry kind of resembles that old joke about how the Irish get through tough times – they take in each other’s washing. There’s a multi-layer hierarchy of sub-contractors, all of whom have big QA departments to check everything before it get shipped upstream and to double-check stuff coming in the door from downstream. Elon cut this Gordian knot by eliminating as much of the supply chain as he could as early as he could. The best way to get quality parts is to be the boss of the guys making them.
ULA gets a billion dollars a year in exchange for allegedly maintaining “launch capabilities” that seem, to be charitable, fairly nebulous. Said capabilities notably do not include the ability to second-source the RD-180. I call that a free gift from the American taxpayer for no services rendered. SpaceX’s government money has all been for milestone-based development work and actual cargo delivery services to ISS; a lot of real services for a lot less than ULA is getting for doing nothing.
As for ULA’s launch rate, it has varied a lot. Since the 2002 debut of the Atlas V and Delta IV under their pre-ULA developers Boeing and Lockheed-Martin, respectively, and continuing on through ULA’s formation in 2006 to the present, the average number of missions per year for ULA and its ancestor companies has been 11, with a minimum of 6 (2005) and a maximum of 16 (2009). From 2002 through 2005, most of Boeing’s missions were Atlas II’s; most of LockMart’s were Delta II’s. Even after formation of ULA, It took until 2009 for Atlas V and Delta IV missions, combined, to equal the number of Delta II’s being launched. Since 2010, most ULA launches have been Atlas V’s and Delta IV’s. ULA has not actually managed to do a dozen launches a year since 2009, but their manifest for 2014 shows 14 launches scheduled of which four have actually been accomplished to-date. Perhaps a bit over-generous of me, but I included all 14 intended ULA launches for 2014 (including a pair of Delta II’s they’ve apparently had in cold storage somewhere) in computing that average annual launch figure of 11 for years 2002 – 2014 inclusive.
SpaceX, while well behind ULA’s historical average launch rate, is ramping up smartly. Their most recent four launches took place in just over six months. They’ve got another coming up in a week just 22 days after their last flight op from the same pad. That’s three days’ faster pad turnaround than Arianespace has ever managed with the Ariane 5 and 25 days faster than ULA has ever managed with the Atlas V. With one-per-month or better manifested through year’s end and into next year, SpaceX may fall a bit short of matching ULA this year, but the short turnaround time between the CRS-3 and Orbcomm missions should probably be taken as a token of what’s to come from SpaceX in terms of flight ops tempo in the near future. Next year, SpaceX will probably beat ULA in total mission ops.
Apples and oranges. ULA purchases a lot of their critical components from traditional aerospace vendors; SpaceX does most of theirs in-house. ULA’s numbers should include a LOT of component subcontractor employees beyond the engine makers for the numbers to be comparable. (Oh, and SpaceX is planning for a big increase in launch numbers soon, on the other side of that mismatch.)
At the time Boeing and Lockmart were designing their boosters, it was a sensible decision to rely on the traditional component vendors. It saved a considerable amount of up-front development cost in getting USAF-approved space-qualified parts. Their major cost comparison at the time was Shuttle, after all, not a tough mark to beat.
Now, it’s a problem – SpaceX can undercut the trad gov-qualified component vendor prices by a LOT, but ULA can’t just ditch those quals and roll their own without violating gov procurement rules.
ULA is aware of this problem, and is working it, but it’s unclear whether they’ll have the time and money needed to do enough about it in time.
Yeah, that’s what hapens when some young whippersnapper comes along and up-ends your whole dagnabbed business model.
Sure is!
I look forward to living long enough to see some young whippersnapper comes along and up-end SpaceX’s whole dagnabbed business model in turn. At that point, we’ll all have won – with the prize being a solar system’s worth of resources.
Here’s hoping.
I still can’t reconcile the billion dollar price and six to seven years to develop a US RD-180 with ULA’s past claims in a way that does not involve the word “fraud”. For example, the head of ULA testified earlier this year, and said,
“What we have done to protect against that concern is that we have over two years of safety stock inventory in the US. We also have another product (Delta IV) that is fully compliant and ready to support any of the missions,” noted Mr. Gass.
“We could also co-produce that engine (RD-180). We bought all the blueprints and specifications, translated them from Russian to English, brought them into the country and demonstrated we can build that exact engine. ”
They could not possibly be unaware that without the metalurgical processes needed, they do not have the ability.
So I have to ask, is there any plausible explanation whatsoever for the current situation that isn’t massive fraud?
Key point: Lack of the metallurgical technique, or coating technique, or Baba Yaga’s magical anti-oxidation spell, or whatever, is a rumor, not an established fact. It’s a very widespread and persistent rumor, yes, but keeping track of the difference between rumor and fact in this business is one of the things I do. I’ve been following this one carefully for a long time, and I’d be *extremely* interested in pinning down the actual facts of this matter, and so far I have to say: Still rumor (albeit a very plausible one.)
Also, it’s not a billion and five years to “develop a US RD-180”, it’s a billion and five years (cited in AvWeek, FWIW) to set up a US production line for RD-180. “..demonstrated we can build that exact engine” refers to benchtop production of some key pump components, and could well be true – IF those components would have actually stood up to hot oxy-rich gas as well as the Russian originals. (Or at least well enough to reliably fly the missions.) No way to know on the available data.
Who pays the billion is the obvious reason no such production has been set up so far. As I’ve pointed out, ULA would (rightly) be in trouble with their stockholders if they spent a billion of the stockholders’ money to effectively double or triple ULA’s per-RD-180 cost. The problem is a political one; the ball is in government’s court.
BTW, to legally prove fraud, you’d need to prove those components WOULDN’T stand up to the combustion conditions. Absent the data to do that (or pockets deep enough to pay for the test program to do that) a careful person might want to explicitly label any fraud accusations as “in my opinion”. I mean, in the unlikely event ULA made an issue of it, a court would probably find that it was merely an expression of (legally protected) opinion from context. Probably.
@ Henry Vanderbilt
Excellent points.
Regarding the metallurgy, that’s an especially good point. Personally, I’d sat that in light of that issue, the congressional hearings on the engine issue ought to include a few questions on this particular matter.
However, regarding the “demonstrated we can build that exact engine”, I can’t accept that building a few components fits the definition of demonstrating building an engine. For example, if I build an alternator, the cylinder head, and the intake manifold of a car engine, I have demonstrated the ability to build those components. I most certainly have not demonstrated the ability to build the engine. Even if I put my parts in an existing engine and they work perfectly, I still haven’t demonstrated the ability to build said engine. Oh, I could say I had, but it wouldn’t actually be true, would it?
I also find it a bit hard to fathom how, if they really do have all the data and procedures needed, setting up the production line would take that long and cost so much? As for trouble with the stockholders (Lockheed and Boeing) why would that be an issue now, but not when they announced that they were going to do this by 2008?
I tried to be careful in my wording regarding any accusations of ULA, not out of personal fear, but out of concern regarding causing headaches for our host, Rand. That’s why I posed the fraud issue as a question rather than a statement. But, that’s also what I was actually thinking; I was asking whether there are explanations other than fraud. You’ve demonstrated that there are such plausible explanations. Whether all are true or not is as yet undetermined, but they surely point to the correct avenues of inquiry.
Good point – you indeed posed that as a question, which is an appropriately cautious way to address such issues. Let the warning stand for others, then: Statements of opinion clearly labeled as such are pretty much unambiguously protected against suits for libel/slander in the US.
Things like obvious rhetorical hyperbole couched as a nominal statement of fact (IE, “XYZ is a scrofulous toad”) on highly politicized matters is generally protected too – except, as our estimable host has discovered, when someone in the chain fails to see the obviousness. Then it can get complicated.
My advice to all: Whenever possible, word things so that even the obtuse can’t miss that it’s a statement of opinion, not an assertion of fact.
Good point – you indeed posed that as a question, which is an appropriately cautious way to address such issues. Let the warning stand for others, then: Statements of opinion clearly labeled as such are pretty much unambiguously protected against suits for libel/slander in the US.
A wise suggestion, in light of the overly-litigious nature of the country.
Therefor, I’ll add that *in my opinion* I am, and I have always been, an opinionated loudmouth. — saying it that way makes it less likely, though no guarantee, that I won’t sue myself for libel, because in this country, anyone can sue anyone for anything. (Though, as a general rule, I do try to refrain from suing myself over minor matters) 🙂
If the government did, as you hypothesize, sign off on a few parts being a demonstrated ability to build an engine, then I couldn’t blame ULA for that. That’d make a very good question for the hearings.
“saying it that way makes it less likely, though no guarantee, that I won’t sue myself for libel, because in this country, anyone can sue anyone for anything. (Though, as a general rule, I do try to refrain from suing myself over minor matters)”
RE the demonstration of ability to build RD-180’s, my impression is that was a matter of satisfying a contract clause. If the government in its wisdom at the time decided they were going to let ULA off the hook easy and sign off on a somewhat nominal demonstration, well, it’d be a very bad thing for contractors (for business in general) if the government could now say “things have changed – we’re rescinding that years-old signoff; you have to go back and do it over.”
As for it costing a billion and taking five years to set up production? I too suspect it could be done quicker and cheaper. My guess though would be that those numbers are based on having the usual suspects do the job under the usual procurement rules – at which point a billion and five years might well turn out to be optimistic.
When we get a new administration (presumably Republican; the Democrats have no real political or institutional interest in rendering the government more efficient or saving the taxpayers’ money), a compete clean-sheet-of-paper rewrite of gov’t. procurement regs would be a major cost-saving, budget-balancing initiative. If, as seems to be the case, procurement regs multiply the cost of anything they’re applied to by a factor of five to ten, then there’s major gold to be mined by burning them all to the ground, sifting the ashes for nails and building something else in their place.
FWIW, the rule of thumb I learned was that cost-plus contracting under the FARS was good for an inherent multiplier of 2-3x over pure commercial fixed-price.
Various Federal bureaucracies seem to add their own multipliers on top of that. The ones I’m familiar with are old-line NASA which on major projects seems to be good for an additional 5x, and USAF major projects at an additional 1.5-2x.
FARS reform would be a good thing, but institutional reform is also needed. I’m not holding my breath on either regardless of which party is in power, mind – both had a hand in shaping the current system.
My vague recollection from the eighties was that when we were doing a development cost estimate we’d add about a 40% government “wrap” to account for NASA/AF oversight.
If SpaceX can successfully reuse first stage boosters, then that’s a huge cost savings that ULA simply cannot compete against with their current rockets. The only way to be a serious competitor against the SpaceX reusable model is to be even more ambitious than SpaceX.
If I were in the boardroom of ULA, I’d be urging a serious look at the SABRE engine for a VTOL SSTO.
I realize that the well-nigh impenetrable briar patch of federal procurement regs was developed to keep the government (and, by extension, the taxpayers) from being ripped off by allegedly rapacious contractors. But it seems long since to have succumbed to a combination of regulatory capture and Topsy-like growth such that the system now constitutes an institutionalized rip-off of the taxpayers far worse than whatever the contractors might have done on their own.
As for the contractors, cost-plus is a great excuse for bidding ignorantly on things you have no idea how to deliver just to keep the federal money coming in. Who needs to cheat the government through deliberate mendacity when the government pretty much insists you cheat it by the structure of its own regulations! If all government contracting was done on a COTS-like basis – especially contracting for R&D work – it would force would-be contractors to seriously consider both known and unknown unknowns in structuring the agreements and carrying them out.
As things stand, contractors can promise nearly anything up-front, then simply proceed in as disjointed or wasteful a fashion as they like, secure in the knowledge that there’s an infinite pile of government cash to cushion them from any stumbles and failures along the way. In the 50’s era of slide rules and Marchant calculators, the U.S. seemed to develop a new fighter plane a year, more or less. Now, in an era of CFD, CAD/CAM and FEA we take decades to develop one. The tools have improved hugely, but the government procurement apparatus has metastasized and proliferated even faster, more than soaking up the gains from technological advance. This needs to stop. Now!
“By Thursday, the ULA had lost its first legal skirmish, as a judge approved an injunction against buying Russian engines on ground the purchases violate Russian sanctions. ”
Russian sanctions? Are these the Russian sanction recently imposed by Obama?
“Now, with Vladimir Putin carving up Ukraine and facing sanctions, the use of Russian hardware is a mark of Cain. That’s a big problem for ULA, which uses Russian engines in some of its rockets.
“On the surface it appears there’s a good probability of some sanctions violation,” Musk said this week. “This deserves to have a spotlight on it. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
He’s talking about an engine called the RD-180. Its very existence was a mark of the rosy post-Cold War environment.”
Why it sure might!
Wow the left hand of this administration has no idea what the further left hand of this administration is doing.
This is incredible incompetence………….everything we’ve come to expect from years of government service. [MIB paraphrase]
The ULA has been playing corruption-based bullshit political hardball for years. They forced SpaceX to launch the Falcon 1 from Kwajalein, which caused very severe corrosion issues that resulted in the loss of one Falcon 1 and almost destroyed SpaceX as a company. Then they used their cozy government/military connections to make it more difficult for SpaceX to get into the EELV launch business. Then they did the same to get a massive bulk buy pushed through before SpaceX was able to enter bidding.
If they want to live by those political hijinks then by god they can die by them too.
How long do you think RD-180 injunction will last?
When is the next shipment due?
“How long do you think RD-180 injunction will last?”
Hard to say because the depths of stupidity of the Obama administration ahve yet to be plumbed.
However keep this in mind:
If Putin didn’t think of this before, he now has been given extra leverage:
even if we lift the sanction, who says Putin will allow the engines to be sold?
He’s thought of it before. There were rumblings in the Russian press about cutting off RD-180 shipments several months ago, long before the Crimean “Anschluss” took place. The Russians don’t really do “business,” they do “leverage.” As soon as a “deal” is signed, the Russians are looking to chisel and push for more and to hold you up for ransom. It’s who they are and how they roll. Gas deals, the RD-180 deal – the Russians just look for an opportunity to jerk their “business partners” around when it will maximally benefit them.
The RD-180 issue might be the biggest threat to ULA at the moment. They claim to have a 2 year supply in inventory, so that’s a buffer, but not enough to fulfill their block-buy obligations (or, for that matter, the launch availability 1 billion per year fee they get).
Without the RD-180 (or a suitable replacement), the Atlas 5 is no more. That’d leave ULA with just Delta IV (and its heavy version). This could be problematic for Boeing and Sierra Nevada Corporation, because of the two ULA vehicles only Atlas 5 is built to be “human rated” and that’s what they are planning to use for CST-100 and Dreamchaser.
I see that Congress is proposing a law that would require a US version of the RD-180. That might not be as easy as they think; we do have the plans, but… I’ve heard (unsure if this is factual) that they don’t include the alloy composition and processing to give the needed properties needed to run the engine O2 rich, which is one of they keys to its efficiency. I would like to think that the USA could figure out how to do this… but it’s not a given.
Also, haven’t ULA claimed in the past that they already have a US RD-180 production option set up and ready to go?
Aviation Week reported a few weeks ago that it would cost a billion dollars to get RD-180 production underway in the US. Of course, the working assumption is that taxpayers will pick up the tab for ULA’s benefit. Why we should do that is beyond me. If ULA needs the engine, they should pay for it.
$1 billion? Why that happens to match the yearly “launch assurance” subsidy that ULA receives. So there should be no need for additional funding if ULA actually spends it wisely.
If ULA needs the engine, they should pay for it.
They should at least pay for most of it. SpaceX built at least the first two versions of the Merlin entirely on their own dime. The 1-C and current 1-D version may have benefitted to some minor degree from COTS development money, but I don’t think that’s where most of it went.
Seems to me Congress could fix this RD-180 problem by simply mandating that some or all of that $1 billion/year “launch capability” money Arizona CJ mentions above be used to create either a U.S.-based production capability for the RD-180 or a functionally equivalent LOX-RP-1 engine of American design that has the same interfaces as an RD-180.
There have been published estimates that it would take four or five years and more than a billion dollars to replicate or replace the RD-180 in the U.S. Me, personally, I’d give ULA two years, max, to do the job, that being how long they allege their buffer stock of engines will last. If they don’t think they can do it in that timeframe, then they cease getting their fat, no-work-required subsidy, ’cause, hey!, no launch capability, no launch capability money, right?
Half of that money should go back into the general fund and the rest – or less – should go to whomever bids lowest on doing the job in 24 months under a COTS-like contract, not FAR. Given a billion dollars, 24 months and a free hand, is there anyone who thinks SpaceX couldn’t do this – aside from the usual motley crew of ULA apologists?
SpaceX might not choose to bid, being busy with Raptor and all, but I’m not sure Elon wouldn’t be willing to put Raptor aside for awhile for purposes of further burnishing the SpaceX legend and sticking it to the aerospace legacies one more time. SpaceX might well not be the sole bidders, either, nor even necessarily the winners even if they should decide to jump in. Seems like Aerojet-Rocketdyne probably has enough legacy design work lying around in various archives to have a pretty good leg up on an assignment like this even before spending significant money on clean-sheet-of-paper development.
“Given a billion dollars, 24 months and a free hand, is there anyone who thinks SpaceX couldn’t do this”
Depends on whether or not they go through NASA. Using NASA facilities and staff will slow the pace of development.
Guess we could watch the Raptor development to see if this is true.
Fair point. On the other hand, SpaceX seems to be rapidly acquiring most-favored-nation status at Stennis.
!@#$%! software just ate my first attempt…
Don’t be too hard on ULA here. The original A5 and D4 developments were done with Lockmart and Boeing corporate cash, on the promise of a larger USG market than has ever materialized. The ongoing USG subsidies pay to maintain a considerably larger-then-actually-used ULA production/launch capacity (2 dozen cores a year?) for emergency national security reasons.
Yeah, we had some back-and-forth about that on another thread here recently. Since Elon has thoughtfully gone and built a modest little garage-shop operation in Hawthorne that will be turning out 40 cores a year pretty soon, you’d think ULA would be grateful to have the oh-so-expensive solo burden of having to maintain America’s never-used surge capacity lifted from its back (Atlas V shrugs?). But noooooo! They’re all whiny and pissy and, like, cut it out, dude! Go awayyyy!
Boeing and Lockheed each received money during the EELV R&D phase but they did have some of their own money in the game.
ULA is basically a DoD/NASA launcher, they don’t do much commercial, so
the feds may as well pay all the costs, one way or another.
That would seem to be inevitable given that the U.S. gov’t. is likely to be the only future purchaser of products incorporating the RD-180 knock-off or equivalent. But there are proven ways to keep the costs down even if Uncle Sugar is picking up the tab. One way is to compete the RD-180 monkey-copy/replacement program. If it’s given to ULA as a cost-plus to-do, it’ll take forever and break the bank. If it’s given to any of the aerospace legacies as a cost-plus to-do it’ll take forever and break the bank. Therefore, it should be competed in a COTS-like fashion based on milestone payments for progress and not the perverse-incentives-ridden, take-longer-and-get-paid-more FAR. So, yeah, the feds should pay all the costs – but one way, not another. And ULA’s billion-a-year subsidy needs to go away. Also, who knows, maybe Orbital would be interested in an RD-180 knock-off/replacement for Antares?
it’s possible I guess to compete an RD-180 but it’s a big engine and not a lot of companies have that capability.
It’s a big engine, but rocket engines are not, by aerospace standards, particularly big components.
Not necessarily so – Orbital has been looking at the RD-180 as a possible replacement engine for their Antares booster, once the current supply of rebuilt NK-33 (AJ-26) runs out.
And I have some reason to believe that Antares may have been surprisingly cheap to develop, likely much closer to SpaceX costs than to legacy dinospace. Given a new engine supply, Orbital might well find some commercial business.
Although the proposed ATK merger does call into question whether they’re likely to try seriously for commercial business. Not ATK’s strong suit.
Yeah, Orbital’s interest in the RD-180 – at least pre-sanctions – has been widely reported. That’s why I said what I did.
You might well be right about Orbital’s costs for Antares, at least to some extent. Maybe not enough, though. The first stage tankage is made in Ukraine (!) and the engines, of course, are straight off the shelf of the Leonid Brezhnev Army-Navy Store. Orbital have long been the scrapyard scroungers of aerospace. Except for the original Pegasus, I think all of their birds have been cobbled together from retired ICBM motors. Antares just raised this talent for recycling goods to a new level and extended it to liquid fuel boosters.
All of that said, Orbital’s contract with NASA is still for $1.9 billion for eight CRS missions while SpaceX’s is for $1.6 billion for 12 missions. Not eactly comparable payment arrangements, which argues that their costs – even after all of that Com-bloc dumpster-diving – are still probably higher than SpaceX’s by a good bit. Also, the Antares isn’t remotely in the payload class of a Falcon 9.
Regardless of what re-engining solution Orbital finally decides on – if it decides on one at all and doesn’t just drop Antares because a re-engined version would not be competitive in its launch capability category – their costs are likely to rise. That’s even more true if, in addition to the engines, they have to alt-source the Ukrainian bits as well the engine(s). The plant that makes these parts is in the area of Ukraine that seems most likely to be the next forcible addition to the Russian Federation. Gotta figure enhanced sanctions would put that supplier off-limits too.
Arghh! Meant to agree with you about commercial not being ATK’s strong suit. Their aerospace and defense division, which just hooked up with Orbital, sold to the U.S. and allied militaries and to other legacy aerospace majors. Their entire client list probably fits on one side of an 8-1/2 x 11. Not exactly Proctor & Gamble. Maybe Orbital can clue them in about how actual business with people who neither wear uniforms to work nor are people who sell exclusively to people who do actually works. Orbital has built a lot of comsats and their people have at least met people outside the military-industrial complex. They know them not to be mythical beasts.
The reason why ULA is a US government launch provider is their prices are so high that no one else wants to use them.
Why is Delta IV not “human rated”?
Considering that Delta IV Heavy is going to be used to launch the first flight test of Orion – admittedly, unmanned – that’s a damned good question, rickl.
the Structural design margins in the booster are a bit low,
amongst others.
So, not easily fixable. Sucks, but good to know. Thanks for the info.
now, structural design margins aren’t “Laws of Nature”, they are at the end of
the day, policy decisions. Shuttle flew with inadequate margins and some
300 waivers every time.
however, it’s a huge bureaucratic fight to win.
Shuttle flew with inadequate margins and some 300 waivers every time.
Nope. It had the standard 1.4 FoS used by structural engineers in many other applications, not just aerospace. Further, the models err’d heavily on the side of conservatism. The exception was self-inflicted debris strikes caused by placing the orbiter along side the tank rather on top. None of the alternative or future designs discussed in this thread do the same thing, which makes your comment irrelevant as well as wrong.
No, they’re not.
the “human rating” criteria and mind-numbingly complex. For example, it’s been reported that getting the Delta IV’s upper stage engine human rated would require 200 changes.
There are also a lot of sensor requirements in order to detect a failure in time to trigger a launch abort system.
In fact, it’s such a complex and demanding process that the last time an astronaut road a “human rated” vehicle was in 1976, the last Apollo flight. Shuttle was never human rated. And, for that matter, Apollo wouldn’t meet today’s human rating standards.
Another issue is that human rating Delta IV medium (no SRBs or extra cores) wouldn’t be of much use; it doesn’t have the ability to lift the Boeing CST-100 or Dreamchaser – both are too heavy for the single core version with no boosters. You’d need the solid booster version, or the heavy (3 cores) and human-rating those would be even harder.
Even suckier, but also good to know. Looks like fixing the problem dn-guy pointed out would make the problems you point out even worse. Thanks for the info.
I hate to be greedy, but what do you know of the details of those 200 or so changes needed to make the Delta IV human-rateable? The Atlas V second stage, which seems to be human-rated, or at least getting there, uses either one or two RL-10A engines. The Delta IV second stage uses a single RL-10B-2. Doing some wikipedia digging, the only RL-10A-series engine still shown as being in production is the RL-10A-4-2. It’s shown as being used on Centaur V1 and V2 stages. I gather these are the one- and two-engine versions of the Atlas V second stage. The mass of this engine is given as 167 kg. The mass of the RL-10B-2 for the Delta IV second stage is given as 277 kg. Much heavier for some reason. The A-4-2 shows an expansion ratio of 84:1. The B-2 has a ratio of 250:1. Is this difference because of engine bell geometry? Does that also explain the mass difference in these two engines? Why the big differences? I always thought the optimum bell geometry for vacuum performance of a given engine fell in a fairly narrow range of options. Why the big difference between Atlas and Delta second stages? How does this impact – if at all – the relative human-rateability of the affected stages? Any help you can provide on these matters would be greatly appreciated. Enquiring minds want to know.
First, let me loudly proclaim that I am not an expert on this (or spaceflight in general), so take anything I say with skepticism.
I also have a highly imperfect memory, so add more skepticism. 🙂
Okay… going from memory here (always risky!) it was the RS-69, not the Rl-10, that required in the area of 200 changes. The RL-10 would be easier, but would still need some work, plus there were other issues such as structural margins that dn-guy reported, and further, there’s the G-loading issue; if I recall, Delta-IV has accelerations of 5+G near stage burnout, and NASA dictates 3G max for human rating (thus ruling out Apollo, Gemini, and Mercury on those grounds alone…. Shuttle too, as it pulled slightly more than 3G near MECO).
The best I can do on specifics regarding the engine issue is this post at NSF,
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=14446.msg318877#msg318877
As I recall, a further but related issue was the redesign of some manifolds to accommodate the needed sensors.
So, Delta IV would require some major changes, including engine modifications (that would reduce efficiency) plus structural changes that would add mass. What this really means is you’d need a human-rated Delta IV Heavy to launch Dream Chaser or CST-100, unless unmanned. (or unless common sense somehow gained control and many of the human rating diktats were roundfiled).
Also, if you’d like to peruse some of the general human rating requirements, you might find NASA’s guidelines on the matter interesting;
http://nodis3.gsfc.nasa.gov/displayDir.cfm?Internal_ID=N_PR_8705_002B_&page_name=main
Okay, regarding the differences between RL-10 versions… I’ll refer you to the first and second sentences of this post before continuing… and add that I’d never heard of this issue until you post. But, let me see if I can give it a whirl;
First, look at the versions side by side,
http://www.spaceandtech.com/spacedata/engines/rl10_specs.shtml
That chart gives us some clues. The mass difference is accompanied by a higher thrust, and also a very high ISP of 464. But that expansion ratio of 250 is an eye opener. I know they have an extendable nozzle, and I can only guess here that the high ISP is due in part to high chamber pressure coupled with a massively over-expanded nozzle. You couldn’t do that in atmosphere (flow instabilities) but you can in vacuum, and overexpanded nozzles are more efficient But, to make it work, that big nozzle would need to be very light.
CJ
Dick
B Version RL-10 is way heavier then the A version for the same reason
it also has a higher Isp.
http://www.astronautix.com/graphics/r/rl10b2a.jpg
the B version has an extendable nozzle with a complex set of gears and
screws.
it gives you a nice Isp boost but it weighs more.
Thanks to all who took time to further my education. Muchas gracias, amigos.
I wasn’t going to mention the EDS/ abort system, because I don’t view it as a show-stopper.
You can get that by heisting the EDS and avionics from the atlas.
heck, it would make a ton of sense to put one common avionics suite on the
EELV. far cheaper, and make it really robust so, you don’t have single point failures
or common mode failure.
now as for the RL-10, that shouldn’t be a show-stopper. NASA flew the Saturn 1 with 6 RL-10s and NASA looked real hard at using the RL-10 for the Apollo SPS.
The big problem is cost and the structural margins on the core booster.
Anything can be man rated if you are willing to write checks. Big checks.
Two potential reasons — it may not have failure onset detection needed for an abort, and with the current upper stage it may have too high a loft on the trajectory to eliminate all black zones, due to excessive gees at some points of ascent. At least those were the issues ten years ago during the Orbital Space Plane days.
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/377875main_081109%20Human%20Rated%20Delta%20IV.pdf
On page 8 “Key findings”
On page 26 it gives the structural requirment changes to human rate.
That 40% margin requirement hasn’t made sense in decades. It’s not the driving issue.
“I see that Congress is proposing a law that would require a US version of the RD-180. That might not be as easy as they think; we do have the plans, but… I’ve heard (unsure if this is factual) that they don’t include the alloy composition and processing to give the needed properties needed to run the engine O2 rich, which is one of they keys to its efficiency. I would like to think that the USA could figure out how to do this… but it’s not a given. ”
Funny….in the 1940’s 50’s and 60’s the Russians used to reverse engineer/copy our hardware (e.g. the Tu-4 which was a copy of our B-29).
Now we are in the position, put there by our government, to copy theirs. Very sad.
Also, wouldn’t copying their engine violate some sort of “copyright” law?
The hard part isn’t copying the engine, it’s figuring out the metallurgy.
Oxygen Rich Staged combustion is kind of like an acetylene torch. The torch is tuned to stochiometric conditions to warm up the metal and then you hit the oxygen gas boost
and the free oxygen eats the metal. Think about it. The Russians came up with some process to make metal resistant the same environment as a cutting torch.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxy-fuel_welding_and_cutting#The_role_of_oxygen
They have rights to produce the engine. What they don’t have is the metallurgical skills. They have drawings, but there apparently some secret herbs and spices that the Russians haven’t provided.
I’ve seen a lot of references to these mysterious Russian alloys and heat treating methods or whatever it is that allegedly makes the RD-180 able to run oxygen-rich. I think the interesting question is just how long is this “Reardon-ski Metal” good for in service? I’m guessing long enough to get a rocket off the ground and three minutes into flight, but I wouldn’t give you long odds that at the end of that three minutes an RD-180, even if it could somehow be recovered, would be in any shape to fly again. The service lives of Russian fighter jet engines are known to be broadly inferior to Western designs. Hard to imagine the Russians refraining from using “magic alloys” in their war machines if such really existed. Personally, I think it’s a load of codswallop peddled by the Russians as a FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) exercise aimed at keeping we idiot Yanks from even trying to gin up a domestic production line for RD-180’s. Up to now, it seems to have worked.
The oxygen-resisance isn’t provided by the alloy, but by a surface coating. The Russians wouldn’t give up that particular secret, which is why Aerojet went with the NK engines instead of the RD engines. There is a key difference. The NK engines operate just below a threshold pressure at which 700 F oxygen starts to eat their stainless steel, and the steel requires no coating. The RD operates above that threshold, and do require the coating.
On a different matter, back in the 80’s some people at NASA/MSFC estimated the cost of a new rocket engine for the Advanced Launch System. They took an estimate of $750 million from General Dynamics, doubled it for contractor cost overrun, then doubled it again to account for their program management. So it would have been $3 billion back in 1898-89 (NASA always spends at least what they estimate). I doubt if they could do it for that today, and they certainly couldn’t do it in time to keep the Atlas alive as a viable launch vehicle.
Interesting. What I don’t find particularly credible is that figuring out the assay and crystallographic microstructure of said coating should be any kind of remotely insoluble problem. If the damned aerospace majors can’t figure out the coating, show it to some machine tool manufacturers and see what they can make of it. Most machining cutters are coated with various secret recipes of unobtanium these days. I don’t get what the problem is – other than an obvious reluctance on the part of the usual suspects to spend a single dime they deem to be unnecessary, of course.
The composition of the coating should indeed be possible to figure out. The precise method to apply it so it reliably sticks to the innards of pump drive turbines, that may not be so easy, or at least so I have heard.
If the people you’re hearing that from are ULA employees, I’d be more inclined to believe that’s company party line talking than actual difficulty. People who don’t actually want to solve a problem tend to talk up the difficulty. I don’t think reverse-engineering some Russian metal treatment process is a significant show-stopper, at least if placed in the hands of people who actualy want to find a solution. It certainly shouldn’t cost nine or ten figures to figure out.
Can’t say where I saw that. (Literally – I can’t recall where I read it. It was an anonymous comment to one of these discussions a few years back.) But given what I know of such matters, it’s far more plausible than most of the misinfo going around about why oxy-rich staged combustion isn’t a solved problem in the US.
Given that EELV turned into a low-volume government-only dead end, I wouldn’t blame the ULA partners for not wanting to invest a billion more of their shareholders’ money in US RD-180 production. The politics of RD-180 is ultimately a problem for USG; they (we, sigh) should pay if US production is deemed in the national interest.
At that point, though, the engines should be available for any US or non-export-restricted company that wants to buy them. If ULA wants to keep Orbital from using US RD-180 for Antares, yeah, then their only option is to pay for and own the production plant themselves.
We’ll have to agree to disagree about the intrinsic difficulty of mastering the metal treatment issues involved. As to the rest, I quite agree. If ULA wants to keep the RD-180 exclusive to themselves, they can pay the whole tab. If the gov’t. picks up the tab then the results go to all takers on a no-favoritism basis – like the results of pretty much all other taxpayer-funded research.
I’m not sure if people see the delicious long term implications here.
Consider that the writing is already on the wall for the ULA’s launchers. There’s no way they can compete against F9, FH, and especially the reusable versions of both. But that’s still a few years in the future before that obsolescence hits home. Moreover, there’s no easy way for the ULA to dramatically lower costs without building a new vehicle from a clean sheet design. For one they need to stop using the $40 mil RL-10 in the upper stage, that’s a huge cost sink. If they want to try reusability they need to seek new engines and new designs. All of which is a multi-year and, for ULA, multi-billion dollar prospect. If they were sane they’d be starting it now, but they are too comfortable and not scared yet.
Now here come the sanctions, which potentially hits ULA where they are weakest: the Atlas V. The launcher they need to fly the most in order to turn a profit, but one they won’t be able to fly at all if their RD-180’s dry up. And if the sanctions stick then ULA is forced to pursue a route of developing an RD-180 replacement. This is a multi-year billion plus dollar project, since it’s a fairly advanced engine and not many folks in the US have experience with high performance LOX/Kero engines these days (except SpaceX).
And what if ULA succeeds? Well, nothing, several years down the road they’ll be back at square one. And, most critically, they’ll still have an obsolete launcher while SpaceX is eating their business, except they’ll have spent huge amounts just maintaining the status quo.
If it works it’ll be a genius business move for Musk, ULA will spend years working on keeping their existing launchers running instead of building new, competitive launchers.
It will be cheaper for ULA to buy a couple new regulations, regulators, judges, andor politicians.
So, that will at least be attempted first.
It would be even cheaper to hire a hitman. One .50 Caliber bullet from a mile away?
Heck, the number of suspects would run down the side of the DoJ building.
Hey, I like watching Jerry Bruckheimer procedurals too, but you might want to cut back just a wee tad.
For one they need to stop using the $40 mil RL-10 in the upper stage, that’s a huge cost sink.
Well, they have been working with XCOR to solve that problem.
This is a multi-year billion plus dollar project, since it’s a fairly advanced engine and not many folks in the US have experience with high performance LOX/Kero engines these days (except SpaceX)
SpaceX has never done a staged-combustion engine. They may have to simply accept a simpler engine, with less performance.
From what I have read in the literature it is easier to do LOX/Methane staged combustion than LOX/Kerosene. It is not like the US has never done a staged combustion engine. The SSME was staged combustion but the thing is it used LOX/LH2. LOX/Methane supposedly is between those two with less chances of coking and polymerization than LOX/Kerosene. Not to mention that it is cryogenic.
No one with sense would have trusted Russian sole-source parts for a strategic asset. In some respects, Orbital’s decision to use the NK-33 engine is even more remarkable. The RD-180 was at least in current production. That Orbital went this route shows pretty clearly they saw COTS as a nice opportunity to take money off the gov’t. for a few more years (same calculation Boeing made before getting into Commercial Crew) and then ISS would be gone, those idiots at SpaceX would be stuck with a lot of scratch-built toys they had no market for and Orbital would have banked a nice chunk of change with another of their junkyard rockets. They didn’t care if they couldn’t put on a second act; they didn’t think there would be any second act, period. Playimg business-as-usual checkers while Elon was playing chess.
Dick Eagleson said;
No one with sense would have trusted Russian sole-source parts for a strategic asset.
True. But, theoretically, we didn’t. Theoretically.
Pratt&Whitney funded and participated in the design and development, by NPR Energomash (Who made the RD-170) via a joint venture company owned by the two firms, RD AMROSS, of the RD-180 (Which they wanted to sell to Lockheed), in a deal which included licensing for US production, and, of course, plans (to which they were entitled, due to jointly owning it). They did get the engineering plans and design data. So, therefor, theoretically, so far, so good.
They then certified to the DOD that they could produce the engine in the US, and would do so by 2008, thus meeting the “second source” requirement. Theoretically.
But… What they didn’t get is the recipes and procedures for the alloys and coatings. It’s akin to buying a recipe for a cake and just taking the ingredients list. Amongst other things, this renders their claims of being able to produce the engine in the US false.
That brings us back to your common sense point; what they did is utterly inexplicable to me.
What I want to know is why they did it. Surely, in the 90’s, and as the funding partner, if they’d insisted (as was their right given the licensing) on all the needed plans, they’d have gotten them? And indeed, unless they were intentionally committing enormous fraud (the claimed capacity to domestically produce) why on earth didn’t they get what they needed? And as for Lockheed, did they just take Pratt and Whitney’s word for it regarding US production capability?
This makes no sense to me, at all.
Perhaps they did try and the Russians did their angry bear act and the suits at Boeing meekly backed down and never brought the subject up again. There was a lot of pretty dodgy stuff going on at Boeing in the 90’s. That USAF tanker Charlie Foxtrot even got a couple of them jailed, as I recall. Not a corproate culture that would cavil much at merely lying to the government.
Keep in mind that the late-90’s contract for RD-180 engines is for 100 engines (about half flown so far) for a hair under $10m each. Even assuming a modest markup to the final customer ULA, that’s a screaming bargain compared to prices for roughly comparable US-produced engines. Spending a billion to set up US production in order to double-triple your per-unit costs is a REALLY hard decision for a US stockholder company to defend economically.
US RD-180 production, if it happens, will happen for USG policy reasons. And thus far, USG has declined to pay for it.
@ Dick Eagleson; I agree that the Russians might have said “nyet” to sharing that tech, maybe, but that’s not quite the issue. The problem is that P&W, as an equal partner in RD AMROSS, has no excuse whatsoever for not dealing with this issue early on. Remember, they claimed all along that US production was their goal, and they can’t very well do that without the needed info. BTW, IMHO, Boeing wasn’t involved in this at all; it was Pratt & Whitney and Lockheed.
@ Henry Vanderbilt
Totally agreed on the price issue; for an engine that size, that’s a great price.
The problem I have is fraud. P&W and Lockheed declared that they had the ability to produce the engine in the US, and intended to do so by 2008 (with no billion-dollar price tag). The problem is that this simply wasn’t true; they didn’t have all the info needed to do so (hence the current billion-dollar price tag ).
Remember, they claimed that they were going to do US production. They made that claim in response to issues over sourcing. Yet, they never had the ability, and knew it.
I’d very much like to be proven wrong on this (I happen to like both Lockheed and P&W) but I can’t see an explanation other than outright fraud.
I don’t question that Boeing got a bargain. I question their judgement in imagining that a signed contract with Russians means anything. Their judgement about the wisdom of outsourcing is hardly exclusive to procuring bits for the Atlas V either. The Dreamliner has been a Grade AAA Extra Large cluster foxtrot pretty much from the get-go because of outsourcing problems. If they’d been able to build that beast on their original schedule, Airbus would probably be pushing up daisies by now.
Arizona CJ,
You make a compelling case for major misfeasance on the part of Lockheed and P&W.
$40 million RL-10? I’d heard $5m each a while back, rapidly heading toward north of $10m, but not $40m. Got a source for that?
I don’t understand why people think ULA can’t compete. ULA plus their engine suppliers have about 5000 employees. SpaceX has about 4000. ULA spreads that across about a dozen launches a year. SpaceX about three or four. Yes, ULA gets air force launch support contracts — just like SpaceX is getting NASA ISS support contracts.
There was a time when it was reasonable to think SpaceX had changed the game on cost — back when they had 1200 people. Now, it is harder to believe.
If SpaceX gets reusable happening, all the other non-government-subsidies launch providers are toast.
Are you serious? Are you incapable of doing math?
The ULA block buy works out to $1 million per year per employee at 12 launches a year. Are all ULA employees millionaires? Where’s the money going?
Meanwhile, SpaceX isn’t just a launch services company, they are also an orbital pressurized cargo delivery company, which is a much higher margin business than launch. SpaceX somehow managed to develop 3+ launch vehicles, 5 new rocket engines, an iss cargo delivery spacecraft, a manned spacecraft, AND reusability with fewer employees than ULA/aerojet-rocketdyne? WTF are they doing at ULA?
ULA has a very big vendor base, it’s not just engines, but avionics, and materials.
ULA runs a lot of paperwork and QA all the way up and down the supply chain,
certifying bolts, rivets, sheet metal and works to make sure it’s all x-rayed, tested,
and documented.
Yeah, that’s one of the problems. The whole legacy aerospace industry kind of resembles that old joke about how the Irish get through tough times – they take in each other’s washing. There’s a multi-layer hierarchy of sub-contractors, all of whom have big QA departments to check everything before it get shipped upstream and to double-check stuff coming in the door from downstream. Elon cut this Gordian knot by eliminating as much of the supply chain as he could as early as he could. The best way to get quality parts is to be the boss of the guys making them.
ULA gets a billion dollars a year in exchange for allegedly maintaining “launch capabilities” that seem, to be charitable, fairly nebulous. Said capabilities notably do not include the ability to second-source the RD-180. I call that a free gift from the American taxpayer for no services rendered. SpaceX’s government money has all been for milestone-based development work and actual cargo delivery services to ISS; a lot of real services for a lot less than ULA is getting for doing nothing.
As for ULA’s launch rate, it has varied a lot. Since the 2002 debut of the Atlas V and Delta IV under their pre-ULA developers Boeing and Lockheed-Martin, respectively, and continuing on through ULA’s formation in 2006 to the present, the average number of missions per year for ULA and its ancestor companies has been 11, with a minimum of 6 (2005) and a maximum of 16 (2009). From 2002 through 2005, most of Boeing’s missions were Atlas II’s; most of LockMart’s were Delta II’s. Even after formation of ULA, It took until 2009 for Atlas V and Delta IV missions, combined, to equal the number of Delta II’s being launched. Since 2010, most ULA launches have been Atlas V’s and Delta IV’s. ULA has not actually managed to do a dozen launches a year since 2009, but their manifest for 2014 shows 14 launches scheduled of which four have actually been accomplished to-date. Perhaps a bit over-generous of me, but I included all 14 intended ULA launches for 2014 (including a pair of Delta II’s they’ve apparently had in cold storage somewhere) in computing that average annual launch figure of 11 for years 2002 – 2014 inclusive.
SpaceX, while well behind ULA’s historical average launch rate, is ramping up smartly. Their most recent four launches took place in just over six months. They’ve got another coming up in a week just 22 days after their last flight op from the same pad. That’s three days’ faster pad turnaround than Arianespace has ever managed with the Ariane 5 and 25 days faster than ULA has ever managed with the Atlas V. With one-per-month or better manifested through year’s end and into next year, SpaceX may fall a bit short of matching ULA this year, but the short turnaround time between the CRS-3 and Orbcomm missions should probably be taken as a token of what’s to come from SpaceX in terms of flight ops tempo in the near future. Next year, SpaceX will probably beat ULA in total mission ops.
Apples and oranges. ULA purchases a lot of their critical components from traditional aerospace vendors; SpaceX does most of theirs in-house. ULA’s numbers should include a LOT of component subcontractor employees beyond the engine makers for the numbers to be comparable. (Oh, and SpaceX is planning for a big increase in launch numbers soon, on the other side of that mismatch.)
At the time Boeing and Lockmart were designing their boosters, it was a sensible decision to rely on the traditional component vendors. It saved a considerable amount of up-front development cost in getting USAF-approved space-qualified parts. Their major cost comparison at the time was Shuttle, after all, not a tough mark to beat.
Now, it’s a problem – SpaceX can undercut the trad gov-qualified component vendor prices by a LOT, but ULA can’t just ditch those quals and roll their own without violating gov procurement rules.
ULA is aware of this problem, and is working it, but it’s unclear whether they’ll have the time and money needed to do enough about it in time.
Yeah, that’s what hapens when some young whippersnapper comes along and up-ends your whole dagnabbed business model.
Sure is!
I look forward to living long enough to see some young whippersnapper comes along and up-end SpaceX’s whole dagnabbed business model in turn. At that point, we’ll all have won – with the prize being a solar system’s worth of resources.
Here’s hoping.
I still can’t reconcile the billion dollar price and six to seven years to develop a US RD-180 with ULA’s past claims in a way that does not involve the word “fraud”. For example, the head of ULA testified earlier this year, and said,
“What we have done to protect against that concern is that we have over two years of safety stock inventory in the US. We also have another product (Delta IV) that is fully compliant and ready to support any of the missions,” noted Mr. Gass.
“We could also co-produce that engine (RD-180). We bought all the blueprints and specifications, translated them from Russian to English, brought them into the country and demonstrated we can build that exact engine. ”
They could not possibly be unaware that without the metalurgical processes needed, they do not have the ability.
So I have to ask, is there any plausible explanation whatsoever for the current situation that isn’t massive fraud?
Key point: Lack of the metallurgical technique, or coating technique, or Baba Yaga’s magical anti-oxidation spell, or whatever, is a rumor, not an established fact. It’s a very widespread and persistent rumor, yes, but keeping track of the difference between rumor and fact in this business is one of the things I do. I’ve been following this one carefully for a long time, and I’d be *extremely* interested in pinning down the actual facts of this matter, and so far I have to say: Still rumor (albeit a very plausible one.)
Also, it’s not a billion and five years to “develop a US RD-180”, it’s a billion and five years (cited in AvWeek, FWIW) to set up a US production line for RD-180. “..demonstrated we can build that exact engine” refers to benchtop production of some key pump components, and could well be true – IF those components would have actually stood up to hot oxy-rich gas as well as the Russian originals. (Or at least well enough to reliably fly the missions.) No way to know on the available data.
Who pays the billion is the obvious reason no such production has been set up so far. As I’ve pointed out, ULA would (rightly) be in trouble with their stockholders if they spent a billion of the stockholders’ money to effectively double or triple ULA’s per-RD-180 cost. The problem is a political one; the ball is in government’s court.
BTW, to legally prove fraud, you’d need to prove those components WOULDN’T stand up to the combustion conditions. Absent the data to do that (or pockets deep enough to pay for the test program to do that) a careful person might want to explicitly label any fraud accusations as “in my opinion”. I mean, in the unlikely event ULA made an issue of it, a court would probably find that it was merely an expression of (legally protected) opinion from context. Probably.
@ Henry Vanderbilt
Excellent points.
Regarding the metallurgy, that’s an especially good point. Personally, I’d sat that in light of that issue, the congressional hearings on the engine issue ought to include a few questions on this particular matter.
However, regarding the “demonstrated we can build that exact engine”, I can’t accept that building a few components fits the definition of demonstrating building an engine. For example, if I build an alternator, the cylinder head, and the intake manifold of a car engine, I have demonstrated the ability to build those components. I most certainly have not demonstrated the ability to build the engine. Even if I put my parts in an existing engine and they work perfectly, I still haven’t demonstrated the ability to build said engine. Oh, I could say I had, but it wouldn’t actually be true, would it?
I also find it a bit hard to fathom how, if they really do have all the data and procedures needed, setting up the production line would take that long and cost so much? As for trouble with the stockholders (Lockheed and Boeing) why would that be an issue now, but not when they announced that they were going to do this by 2008?
I tried to be careful in my wording regarding any accusations of ULA, not out of personal fear, but out of concern regarding causing headaches for our host, Rand. That’s why I posed the fraud issue as a question rather than a statement. But, that’s also what I was actually thinking; I was asking whether there are explanations other than fraud. You’ve demonstrated that there are such plausible explanations. Whether all are true or not is as yet undetermined, but they surely point to the correct avenues of inquiry.
Good point – you indeed posed that as a question, which is an appropriately cautious way to address such issues. Let the warning stand for others, then: Statements of opinion clearly labeled as such are pretty much unambiguously protected against suits for libel/slander in the US.
Things like obvious rhetorical hyperbole couched as a nominal statement of fact (IE, “XYZ is a scrofulous toad”) on highly politicized matters is generally protected too – except, as our estimable host has discovered, when someone in the chain fails to see the obviousness. Then it can get complicated.
My advice to all: Whenever possible, word things so that even the obtuse can’t miss that it’s a statement of opinion, not an assertion of fact.
Good point – you indeed posed that as a question, which is an appropriately cautious way to address such issues. Let the warning stand for others, then: Statements of opinion clearly labeled as such are pretty much unambiguously protected against suits for libel/slander in the US.
A wise suggestion, in light of the overly-litigious nature of the country.
Therefor, I’ll add that *in my opinion* I am, and I have always been, an opinionated loudmouth. — saying it that way makes it less likely, though no guarantee, that I won’t sue myself for libel, because in this country, anyone can sue anyone for anything. (Though, as a general rule, I do try to refrain from suing myself over minor matters) 🙂
If the government did, as you hypothesize, sign off on a few parts being a demonstrated ability to build an engine, then I couldn’t blame ULA for that. That’d make a very good question for the hearings.
“saying it that way makes it less likely, though no guarantee, that I won’t sue myself for libel, because in this country, anyone can sue anyone for anything. (Though, as a general rule, I do try to refrain from suing myself over minor matters)”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-9qZ4Zs6Ys
RE the demonstration of ability to build RD-180’s, my impression is that was a matter of satisfying a contract clause. If the government in its wisdom at the time decided they were going to let ULA off the hook easy and sign off on a somewhat nominal demonstration, well, it’d be a very bad thing for contractors (for business in general) if the government could now say “things have changed – we’re rescinding that years-old signoff; you have to go back and do it over.”
As for it costing a billion and taking five years to set up production? I too suspect it could be done quicker and cheaper. My guess though would be that those numbers are based on having the usual suspects do the job under the usual procurement rules – at which point a billion and five years might well turn out to be optimistic.
When we get a new administration (presumably Republican; the Democrats have no real political or institutional interest in rendering the government more efficient or saving the taxpayers’ money), a compete clean-sheet-of-paper rewrite of gov’t. procurement regs would be a major cost-saving, budget-balancing initiative. If, as seems to be the case, procurement regs multiply the cost of anything they’re applied to by a factor of five to ten, then there’s major gold to be mined by burning them all to the ground, sifting the ashes for nails and building something else in their place.
FWIW, the rule of thumb I learned was that cost-plus contracting under the FARS was good for an inherent multiplier of 2-3x over pure commercial fixed-price.
Various Federal bureaucracies seem to add their own multipliers on top of that. The ones I’m familiar with are old-line NASA which on major projects seems to be good for an additional 5x, and USAF major projects at an additional 1.5-2x.
FARS reform would be a good thing, but institutional reform is also needed. I’m not holding my breath on either regardless of which party is in power, mind – both had a hand in shaping the current system.
My vague recollection from the eighties was that when we were doing a development cost estimate we’d add about a 40% government “wrap” to account for NASA/AF oversight.
If SpaceX can successfully reuse first stage boosters, then that’s a huge cost savings that ULA simply cannot compete against with their current rockets. The only way to be a serious competitor against the SpaceX reusable model is to be even more ambitious than SpaceX.
If I were in the boardroom of ULA, I’d be urging a serious look at the SABRE engine for a VTOL SSTO.
I realize that the well-nigh impenetrable briar patch of federal procurement regs was developed to keep the government (and, by extension, the taxpayers) from being ripped off by allegedly rapacious contractors. But it seems long since to have succumbed to a combination of regulatory capture and Topsy-like growth such that the system now constitutes an institutionalized rip-off of the taxpayers far worse than whatever the contractors might have done on their own.
As for the contractors, cost-plus is a great excuse for bidding ignorantly on things you have no idea how to deliver just to keep the federal money coming in. Who needs to cheat the government through deliberate mendacity when the government pretty much insists you cheat it by the structure of its own regulations! If all government contracting was done on a COTS-like basis – especially contracting for R&D work – it would force would-be contractors to seriously consider both known and unknown unknowns in structuring the agreements and carrying them out.
As things stand, contractors can promise nearly anything up-front, then simply proceed in as disjointed or wasteful a fashion as they like, secure in the knowledge that there’s an infinite pile of government cash to cushion them from any stumbles and failures along the way. In the 50’s era of slide rules and Marchant calculators, the U.S. seemed to develop a new fighter plane a year, more or less. Now, in an era of CFD, CAD/CAM and FEA we take decades to develop one. The tools have improved hugely, but the government procurement apparatus has metastasized and proliferated even faster, more than soaking up the gains from technological advance. This needs to stop. Now!