18 thoughts on “The MH17 Shootdown And Spaceflight”
Well, I think Putin’s position got a lot worse. The Ukrainian story here is that the Russian separatists were the only ones in the area with the gear to shoot down an airliner flying at altitude and that this gear was sophisticated enough that the local talent couldn’t have done it on their own – they would have needed a trained Russian operator in the loop.
And news reports are saying that there were a lot of HIV researchers on the plane (heading to a conference in Australia). I think Russia will gain the animosity of both a considerable portion of the West and most of Africa as a result.
I suppose it could still have been a false-flag operation by one of the other involved parties. We’ll just have to see what happens.
The real question is will HAL allow itself to be used as a booster?
Again, Obama lives up to his feckless reputation. I suspect the left came up with ‘lead from behind’ since they like to redefine words like lead. Although it should have been the right since the phrase is drifting into the consciousness of those that have none.
I don’t see a problem that a little careful wording won’t solve. For example, the next trenchant of the half a billion a year we give the Russians in return for access to ISS (that space station we paid for 95% of) can simply be relabeled as a marksmanship award.
The RD-180 for the Atlas 5? Can’t be a problem; after all, we pay ULA a billion a year for “assured access to space”. But, if for some inexplicable and utterly unforeseeable reason the RD-180 is suddenly unavailable, the issue can be solved by simply putting the Atlas5 on the pad and having the Air Force range crew paint a building number on it (that way, it’s not expected to go anywhere).
What a lot of people do not see here is that until the US withdraws its forces from Afghanistan they are still logistically constrained in there. AFAIK the US has two supply routes. One is via Pakistan, which has its own security problems to deal with, and the other one is across Russia into Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan. The Pakistan route has been closed once before when the US attacked forces doing hostile fire from inside Pakistan territory.
The US is supposed to withdraw most of the troops until the end of this year. After that happens the situation may change a lot.
“The US is supposed to withdraw most of the troops until the end of this year. After that happens the situation may change a lot.”
Yup. (Not that I agree with pulling the troops out but we are over a bucket on this issue and a few others.)
It’s not a crisis if you place a really big order with SpaceX and tell ULA to get started on making Delta IV’s at a decent rate like they’re paid to do.
It’s amazing just how expensive each launch in the ULA block buy is, once you factor in the “assured access” subsidies. $16 billion for 36 cores, 16 of which are Atlas Vs, and 4 of which (12 cores) are Delta IV heavies (leaving 8 other Delta IV launches).
Let’s assume that the Atlas V is significantly less expensive than the Delta IV, let’s call it half the price to be charitable. Let’s also assume that the D4H adds some significant overhead, let’s call it a 30% premium over the sum of the naive core costs. Now, these are very favorable numbers for the Atlas V, using these estimates the total cost of all 16 launches (vs 12 total DIV launches) would be a mere 1/4 of the total block buy cost, and the Delta IV’s costs would swamp the block buy costs by a margin of 3 to 1 in total. Yet even with those favorable figures the Atlas V still comes out costing $250 million, the Delta IV half a billion, and D4H launches come in at a whopping $2 billion a piece (remember the good ol’ days of the inexpensive Titan IV?).
And if you do a straight split of costs per core of the block buy you get an enormous $440 for the Atlas and the Delta, with the D4H coming in at $1.3 billion (again, crazy expensive compared to historical rockets).
That’s how much the “assurance guarantee” subsidies add to the costs. But it makes you wonder how lazy and corrupt ULA has to be such that even $440 a core isn’t enough for them to actually bother to provide “assured launches”. They insist on eating their cake and having it too, being able to charge nearly half a billion dollars for a fundamentally $100 million launch vehicle and getting the DoD to foot the bill on any supply chain problems the ULA runs into. Yet somehow these asses have the temerity to defend this extremely broken system of fleecing the American taxpayer.
Well said.
My take; I wonder how ULA’s books will look if the Feds say “No more engines for the Atlas V? No problem… we’ll take Delta 4 cores at a one-for-one swap.” In other words, making them deliver on the “guaranteed access” they’ve been charging a billion a year for.
My guess at the actual deal that’ll be reached is slightly different; The RD-180 costs 10 million, which is about 4% of the actual cost they seem to be getting for an Atlas V launch from DOD. So, they’ll simply, and quite magnanimously, give a refund of 4% for every core they can’t find an engine for.
$440[e6] a core
Idly curious, I looked up the price of airliners. The most expensive one I found, the A380, comes in at $420e6 a copy; the pricier 747s are about $50e6 less. In fact, the range of prices for launch vehicles, small to big, generally coincides with that for airliners. Really Big Rockets don’t have airliner equivalents and I decline to speculate what an SLS-equavelent would look like or cost.
You Americans must be fantastically wealthy to afford ULA prices when SpaceX offers far lower prices!
No, we’re like my ex-wife: a fantastically stupid shopper with a huge credit limit. And now, a debt to match.
There’s a lot that doesn’t add up here. Each side is blaming the other, the AP reports the bodies weren’t fresh but decomposing, the SAM theory’s sole source is President Obama, the pilot diverted into the warzone, and this is the second jet Malaysia Airlines has lost this year under mysterious circumstances.
Also, any missile battery capable of a SAM launch to 30k feet is capable of distinguishing a civilian transponder.
Janes had an interesting description of the Buk system. In a normal battery (TELAR, acquisition radar, command post vehicles), the acquisition radar would certainly be able to tell a 777 at altitude from an An-26. But the TELAR can operate in an autonomous mode using its engagement radar for search, and I’d question just how much height-finding or other discrimination capability it has.
Anyway, there’s a lot we don’t yet know about this terrible event.
It is also the 3rd accident they had with a Boeing 777-200ER. The first accident was when the airplane had a faulty accelerometer and the pilot had to do an emergency landing of the plane in Perth.
the AP reports the bodies weren’t fresh but decomposing,
No, it’s the AP reporting a claim by an interested party (a “pro-rebel website” which had interviewed a “pro-Russian rebel commander” who claimed something in turn which he hadn’t witnessed either).
The more I think about it, the more potential ramifications I see;
If we assume that our relations with the Russians worsen;
No more RD-180, so no more Atlas 5.
No more Atlas 5 means 2 of the three commercial crew competitors are out of the game.
Commercial crew may be a moot point anyway; the Russians might well decide that it’d be useful to humiliate the US by creating a debacle in space; they withdraw from ISS with little to no notice (they’d probably offer our station crew a ride down, but that’s it) and we’re treated to a scene of the US being unable to save ISS, or do anything at all as the uncontrollable station’s orbit decays, and the world is fixated on the slow motion disaster and endless games of “where will it come down?”
Well, I think Putin’s position got a lot worse. The Ukrainian story here is that the Russian separatists were the only ones in the area with the gear to shoot down an airliner flying at altitude and that this gear was sophisticated enough that the local talent couldn’t have done it on their own – they would have needed a trained Russian operator in the loop.
And news reports are saying that there were a lot of HIV researchers on the plane (heading to a conference in Australia). I think Russia will gain the animosity of both a considerable portion of the West and most of Africa as a result.
I suppose it could still have been a false-flag operation by one of the other involved parties. We’ll just have to see what happens.
The real question is will HAL allow itself to be used as a booster?
Again, Obama lives up to his feckless reputation. I suspect the left came up with ‘lead from behind’ since they like to redefine words like lead. Although it should have been the right since the phrase is drifting into the consciousness of those that have none.
A real leader. See video.
I don’t see a problem that a little careful wording won’t solve. For example, the next trenchant of the half a billion a year we give the Russians in return for access to ISS (that space station we paid for 95% of) can simply be relabeled as a marksmanship award.
The RD-180 for the Atlas 5? Can’t be a problem; after all, we pay ULA a billion a year for “assured access to space”. But, if for some inexplicable and utterly unforeseeable reason the RD-180 is suddenly unavailable, the issue can be solved by simply putting the Atlas5 on the pad and having the Air Force range crew paint a building number on it (that way, it’s not expected to go anywhere).
What a lot of people do not see here is that until the US withdraws its forces from Afghanistan they are still logistically constrained in there. AFAIK the US has two supply routes. One is via Pakistan, which has its own security problems to deal with, and the other one is across Russia into Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan. The Pakistan route has been closed once before when the US attacked forces doing hostile fire from inside Pakistan territory.
The US is supposed to withdraw most of the troops until the end of this year. After that happens the situation may change a lot.
“The US is supposed to withdraw most of the troops until the end of this year. After that happens the situation may change a lot.”
Yup. (Not that I agree with pulling the troops out but we are over a bucket on this issue and a few others.)
It’s not a crisis if you place a really big order with SpaceX and tell ULA to get started on making Delta IV’s at a decent rate like they’re paid to do.
It’s amazing just how expensive each launch in the ULA block buy is, once you factor in the “assured access” subsidies. $16 billion for 36 cores, 16 of which are Atlas Vs, and 4 of which (12 cores) are Delta IV heavies (leaving 8 other Delta IV launches).
Let’s assume that the Atlas V is significantly less expensive than the Delta IV, let’s call it half the price to be charitable. Let’s also assume that the D4H adds some significant overhead, let’s call it a 30% premium over the sum of the naive core costs. Now, these are very favorable numbers for the Atlas V, using these estimates the total cost of all 16 launches (vs 12 total DIV launches) would be a mere 1/4 of the total block buy cost, and the Delta IV’s costs would swamp the block buy costs by a margin of 3 to 1 in total. Yet even with those favorable figures the Atlas V still comes out costing $250 million, the Delta IV half a billion, and D4H launches come in at a whopping $2 billion a piece (remember the good ol’ days of the inexpensive Titan IV?).
And if you do a straight split of costs per core of the block buy you get an enormous $440 for the Atlas and the Delta, with the D4H coming in at $1.3 billion (again, crazy expensive compared to historical rockets).
That’s how much the “assurance guarantee” subsidies add to the costs. But it makes you wonder how lazy and corrupt ULA has to be such that even $440 a core isn’t enough for them to actually bother to provide “assured launches”. They insist on eating their cake and having it too, being able to charge nearly half a billion dollars for a fundamentally $100 million launch vehicle and getting the DoD to foot the bill on any supply chain problems the ULA runs into. Yet somehow these asses have the temerity to defend this extremely broken system of fleecing the American taxpayer.
Well said.
My take; I wonder how ULA’s books will look if the Feds say “No more engines for the Atlas V? No problem… we’ll take Delta 4 cores at a one-for-one swap.” In other words, making them deliver on the “guaranteed access” they’ve been charging a billion a year for.
My guess at the actual deal that’ll be reached is slightly different; The RD-180 costs 10 million, which is about 4% of the actual cost they seem to be getting for an Atlas V launch from DOD. So, they’ll simply, and quite magnanimously, give a refund of 4% for every core they can’t find an engine for.
$440[e6] a core
Idly curious, I looked up the price of airliners. The most expensive one I found, the A380, comes in at $420e6 a copy; the pricier 747s are about $50e6 less. In fact, the range of prices for launch vehicles, small to big, generally coincides with that for airliners. Really Big Rockets don’t have airliner equivalents and I decline to speculate what an SLS-equavelent would look like or cost.
You Americans must be fantastically wealthy to afford ULA prices when SpaceX offers far lower prices!
No, we’re like my ex-wife: a fantastically stupid shopper with a huge credit limit. And now, a debt to match.
There’s a lot that doesn’t add up here. Each side is blaming the other, the AP reports the bodies weren’t fresh but decomposing, the SAM theory’s sole source is President Obama, the pilot diverted into the warzone, and this is the second jet Malaysia Airlines has lost this year under mysterious circumstances.
Also, any missile battery capable of a SAM launch to 30k feet is capable of distinguishing a civilian transponder.
Janes had an interesting description of the Buk system. In a normal battery (TELAR, acquisition radar, command post vehicles), the acquisition radar would certainly be able to tell a 777 at altitude from an An-26. But the TELAR can operate in an autonomous mode using its engagement radar for search, and I’d question just how much height-finding or other discrimination capability it has.
Anyway, there’s a lot we don’t yet know about this terrible event.
It is also the 3rd accident they had with a Boeing 777-200ER. The first accident was when the airplane had a faulty accelerometer and the pilot had to do an emergency landing of the plane in Perth.
the AP reports the bodies weren’t fresh but decomposing,
No, it’s the AP reporting a claim by an interested party (a “pro-rebel website” which had interviewed a “pro-Russian rebel commander” who claimed something in turn which he hadn’t witnessed either).
The more I think about it, the more potential ramifications I see;
If we assume that our relations with the Russians worsen;
No more RD-180, so no more Atlas 5.
No more Atlas 5 means 2 of the three commercial crew competitors are out of the game.
Commercial crew may be a moot point anyway; the Russians might well decide that it’d be useful to humiliate the US by creating a debacle in space; they withdraw from ISS with little to no notice (they’d probably offer our station crew a ride down, but that’s it) and we’re treated to a scene of the US being unable to save ISS, or do anything at all as the uncontrollable station’s orbit decays, and the world is fixated on the slow motion disaster and endless games of “where will it come down?”