Boeing could have invested the R&D funds into building a new rocket along the simplified lines of the Falcons any time in the last 20 years but didn’t. They could have been the ones in the international launch drivers seat right. Unfortunately, Boeing has always been a company that builds airliners with some subsidiary defense companies the government wanted to them to keep alive for a time. Their entrepreneurial mindset and IR&D went to making a white elephant plastic airliner instead. Given Boeing’s past corporate decisions, I’m guessing their rocket business is now dead. Maybe it’s time to clear away the dinosaurs.
Boeing got out of the rocket business in the last decade, when they handed the assets off to ULA.
Rand, my understanding is Boeing *isn’t* totally out of the rocket business and that’s part of problem. Some ULA friends told me their charter has some kind of “can’t compete with the parents” clause and they’d be better off if LockMart and Boeing cut them loose. Is my understanding incorrect?
Also, I dig the new template. Very clean, very modern.
MR
Yes, but that’s not because Boeing doesn’t want competition on (private) rockets. They are, of course, still in the rocket business with their cost-plus SLS work. Mainly, the parents don’t want ULA to do anything that puts their government work at jeopardy (e.g., pushing propellant depots). And yes, they (and in my opinion, the country) would be much better off if the parents divested.
Why kill margins on something that is government driven and doesn’t need any additional R&D unless something breaks?
Only way they get back in the business is if SLS evolves into a model similar to CCiCap.
Hrmmm. This makes no sense to me, because the Atlas 5 has two issues; it has Russian engines, and it doesn’t have the capacity of Delta 4 heavy, and the capacity of the latter is needed for some NRO launches.
Phasing out D IV in 2018 means doing so 4 years before the NET first flight of its replacement, the NGLV, and that doesn’t count certification time.
So, the reason this plan makes no sense to me from ULA’s POV is this; they’d be surrendering their heavy lift government launches to SpaceX (the only viable alternative) for half a decade. Why would they consider doing this?
I have a SWAG at an explanation; their recent show of cutting costs has already pushed them below profitability on these launches.
On the flip side, I doubt the government will certify SpaceX for the high value launches anytime soon; SpaceX simply doesn’t have the track record they want in order to entrust them with billion-dollar birds. IMHO, they’re going to want to see the F9 rack up 25 launches, minimum, before even considering this. And currently, the number of F9 launches, including 1.0, is 16.
There’s also the fact that the certification process takes a lot of time and money. I strongly suspect that it took months, and millions, just to determine and certify that Hawthorne, California, is located in the USA and not overseas.
No, the Air Force is expecting to have F9 certified this year. What that means in terms of FH is unclear.
The certification system has, if I recall correctly, three levels. SpaceX is asking for level 2 cert. That won’t give them the level 1 cert needed for the billion-dollar class payloads.
CJ, if you read the article you will see that they are only planning to retire the single core Delta IV. They say they will keep the Heavy for as long as the government requests it. As to the gap, they specifically said they will seek legislative relief on the prohibition of using RD-180 after 2019.
I believe they are only giving up the single core Delta IV.. not the heavy.. that will not be replaced until they know if the Atlas 6 will be configured to take over.
I have never quite got why the Delta IV is more expensive than Atlas V. Is it because the booster engines are manufactured in the USA? I thought RS-68 was supposed to be a cheap engine to manufacture. Is it the tankage that is too expensive? Is it because you need larger solids when you have a LOX/LH2 booster engine? Lack of economies of scale due to having few launches? Why is the rocket so expensive?
It seems kind of nonsensical to me to replace a 100% USA built rocket to something which requires Russian engines. But this has been in ULAs cards for quite some time now.
Speaking of the RS-68, is the planned phasing in of the RS-68A this year continuing?
That article is from 2012 so the phase in of the new engine should have happened some time ago.
What the article says is,
“Fleet Standardization [on the RS-68A] is currently in the Final Design phase, with a Critical Design Review coming up in October [2012] with fleet cut-in and first launch planned in mid 2015”
Boeing could have invested the R&D funds into building a new rocket along the simplified lines of the Falcons any time in the last 20 years but didn’t. They could have been the ones in the international launch drivers seat right. Unfortunately, Boeing has always been a company that builds airliners with some subsidiary defense companies the government wanted to them to keep alive for a time. Their entrepreneurial mindset and IR&D went to making a white elephant plastic airliner instead. Given Boeing’s past corporate decisions, I’m guessing their rocket business is now dead. Maybe it’s time to clear away the dinosaurs.
Boeing got out of the rocket business in the last decade, when they handed the assets off to ULA.
Rand, my understanding is Boeing *isn’t* totally out of the rocket business and that’s part of problem. Some ULA friends told me their charter has some kind of “can’t compete with the parents” clause and they’d be better off if LockMart and Boeing cut them loose. Is my understanding incorrect?
Also, I dig the new template. Very clean, very modern.
MR
Yes, but that’s not because Boeing doesn’t want competition on (private) rockets. They are, of course, still in the rocket business with their cost-plus SLS work. Mainly, the parents don’t want ULA to do anything that puts their government work at jeopardy (e.g., pushing propellant depots). And yes, they (and in my opinion, the country) would be much better off if the parents divested.
Why kill margins on something that is government driven and doesn’t need any additional R&D unless something breaks?
Only way they get back in the business is if SLS evolves into a model similar to CCiCap.
Hrmmm. This makes no sense to me, because the Atlas 5 has two issues; it has Russian engines, and it doesn’t have the capacity of Delta 4 heavy, and the capacity of the latter is needed for some NRO launches.
Phasing out D IV in 2018 means doing so 4 years before the NET first flight of its replacement, the NGLV, and that doesn’t count certification time.
So, the reason this plan makes no sense to me from ULA’s POV is this; they’d be surrendering their heavy lift government launches to SpaceX (the only viable alternative) for half a decade. Why would they consider doing this?
I have a SWAG at an explanation; their recent show of cutting costs has already pushed them below profitability on these launches.
On the flip side, I doubt the government will certify SpaceX for the high value launches anytime soon; SpaceX simply doesn’t have the track record they want in order to entrust them with billion-dollar birds. IMHO, they’re going to want to see the F9 rack up 25 launches, minimum, before even considering this. And currently, the number of F9 launches, including 1.0, is 16.
There’s also the fact that the certification process takes a lot of time and money. I strongly suspect that it took months, and millions, just to determine and certify that Hawthorne, California, is located in the USA and not overseas.
No, the Air Force is expecting to have F9 certified this year. What that means in terms of FH is unclear.
The certification system has, if I recall correctly, three levels. SpaceX is asking for level 2 cert. That won’t give them the level 1 cert needed for the billion-dollar class payloads.
CJ, if you read the article you will see that they are only planning to retire the single core Delta IV. They say they will keep the Heavy for as long as the government requests it. As to the gap, they specifically said they will seek legislative relief on the prohibition of using RD-180 after 2019.
I believe they are only giving up the single core Delta IV.. not the heavy.. that will not be replaced until they know if the Atlas 6 will be configured to take over.
I have never quite got why the Delta IV is more expensive than Atlas V. Is it because the booster engines are manufactured in the USA? I thought RS-68 was supposed to be a cheap engine to manufacture. Is it the tankage that is too expensive? Is it because you need larger solids when you have a LOX/LH2 booster engine? Lack of economies of scale due to having few launches? Why is the rocket so expensive?
It seems kind of nonsensical to me to replace a 100% USA built rocket to something which requires Russian engines. But this has been in ULAs cards for quite some time now.
Speaking of the RS-68, is the planned phasing in of the RS-68A this year continuing?
http://spacenews.com/new-delta-4-engine-variant-part-ula-cost-cutting-strategy/
That article is from 2012 so the phase in of the new engine should have happened some time ago.
What the article says is,
“Fleet Standardization [on the RS-68A] is currently in the Final Design phase, with a Critical Design Review coming up in October [2012] with fleet cut-in and first launch planned in mid 2015”