An interesting report by Peter Selding of a talk by one of ULA’s execs. It seems remarkably candid. Tory has really brought big changes to the company. But I don’t get this thinking:
“Don’t get me wrong: SpaceX has done some amazing stuff,” Tobey said. “The landing [in December] of that [Falcon 9] first stage at the Cape was nothing short of amazing. My wife and I were at Best Buy and watching it on my iPhone and I just got goose bumps. It was cool.
“Watching them smash it into the barge was fun, too,” he said of previous, and a subsequent, SpaceX attempts at landing the first stage.
“It’s getting tons of press. It’s extraordinarily, engineeringly cool – but it’s dumb,” Tobey said. “I mean: Really? You carried 100,000 pounds of fuel after deployment of the SES satellite [SpaceX’s March launch of the commercial SES-9 telecommunications satellite, to geostationary-transfer orbit] just to try to land on the barge.”
Let’s see. Propellant costs less than a buck a pound. So for less than a hundred grand, you get an entire stage, worth tens of millions, back intact. Doesn’t sound dumb to me.
[Update a few minutes later]
Some discussion on Twitter, including with Jeff Foust, indicating that perhaps he didn’t intend for that talk to be on the record. If so, that would account for the unusual candor.
[Update a few more minutes later]
OK, majority of upset on Twitter seems to be the analogy of having two fiances. And I can’t imagine that Eileen will be happy about that talk.
[Update a while later]
Oops.
.@jsutton101 These ill-advised statements do not reflect ULA’s views or our relationship with our valuable suppliers. We welcome competition
— Tory Bruno (@torybruno) March 16, 2016
[Afternoon update]
Tory has to clean up the mess.
[Thursday-morning update]
Aaaaaaand, he’s outta there.
Apparently, he’d only been in the job since September. He’d come there from Lockmart. Not sure if we should draw any conclusions from that.
[Update a few minutes later]
More from Peter Selding. Tobey was canned for a Kinsleyan gaffe — accidentally telling the truth in public. It’s the first time (and probably last) that I’ve ever seen anyone from ULA call the parents “dysfunctional.” But everyone in the business knows it’s true.
[Mid-morning update]
And now McCain is sticking his idiot nose in.
[Update a while later]
Here‘s Tim Fernholz’s take.
Rand take off your engineer’s hat and put your marketer’s hat on. 😉
This is just a little advance PR-FUD to hype the ULA airborne “big net” engine-only recovery approach. Apparently our trusted reporter either didn’t take the bait or decided after the fact the comment follow-up was pure PR, not germane to the topic at hand and didn’t deem it fit to publish.
OTOH assuming the engine section is captured separately, maybe in a future version of Vulcan they could vent & seal the tank section and have it come down with a parachute for at sea recovery? ULA has that option in a later version of Vulcan. After all, they are designing a new rocket…
This is just a little advance PR-FUD to hype the ULA airborne “big net” engine-only recovery approach.
Oops. I should have said “big hook”.
OK, well there’s plenty of room in the doghouse. After all its right next to the woodshed…. <:-P
Sheesh… And people wonder why engineers don’t like talking to people at parties?
“It’s getting tons of press. It’s extraordinarily, engineeringly cool – but it’s dumb,” Tobey said.
George Sowers was arguing against re-usability here:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=37390.0
Well, against full reusability. He favors getting engines back.
That is a really interesting discussion to read, thanks for the link.
While I’m more on the SpaceX side than the ULA side of this argument, your 100,000lb of propellant comment misses the point somewhat. It’s not just 100,000lb of propellant, it’s the fact that the first stage now has to be that much larger–you’re talking more tanks, more engines, etc. And since they’re diameter limited, it means that they now have to prechill propellants, and go with a higher aspect ratio vehicle, etc. So it’s not just the raw propellant costs you have to factor in.
That said, I disagree with Tobey’s position, and think that reusability is worth it, because even if you only get one reuse per stage, it’s quite possibly cheaper than making a new one from scratch.
Just being pedantic.
~Jon
My point assumes you’ve already sunk the cost of a larger vehicle (as SpaceX in fact has). It’s a marginal-cost argument.
The article says he was referring to “the damage to a rocket’s first stage, including its engine, as it heads toward landing, plus the cost in fuel,” which is marginal cost (and obviously larger than the propellant costs alone).
If the damage to the rocket is large (as ULA obviously believes), then recovering it is indeed dumb. If it’s small (as SpaceX hopes), it is just plain common sense.
This is actually the same thing ULA said (more tactfully) during the Vulcan rocket rollout.
The article says he was referring to “the damage to a rocket’s first stage, including its engine, as it heads toward landing, plus the cost in fuel,” which is marginal cost (and obviously larger than the propellant costs alone).
Eh, the thing is, if you don’t do that, then you don’t recover the first stage or engines. I just don’t see ULA’s point here.
If the damage to the rocket is large (as ULA obviously believes), then recovering it is indeed dumb. If it’s small (as SpaceX hopes), it is just plain common sense.
We’ve already had one soft recovery. The “hope” is partially justified. That means even when a first stage is sure to be heavily damaged in recovery for these marginal missions, there are two reasons to do recovery. First, it’s more practice for landing the first stage and they can experiment. Second, you can examine the first stage and study it for potential problems. Even a heavily damaged stage will give you some information which can make your equipment safer and more reliable.
I assumed that the “100,000 pounds of fuel” comment was about the performance sacrifice involved in reuse. Fuel used for re-entry and landing can’t be used to push payload. SpaceX is trying to address that tradeoff by sizing the Falcon 9 such that it doesn’t need that last bit of performance to serve their target market. We should see this year whether they can pull off first stage drone ship landings after launching big comsats to GTO.
I think when you go talk to college students you should assume you’re on the record. Maybe that’s just me.
The other shoe drops. Toby has been fired.
Not smart to attack the boss.
“Students at the University of Colorado got an unexpected lesson about the speed of business transformation recently, when a recording of their guest’s candid remarks was posted to the internet, and led to his resignation the next day. Brett Tobey, an aerospace industry veteran who worked at Lockheed Martin for 32 years before joining the space launch company United Launch Alliance in 2015, was visiting his alma mater to talk to engineering students – See more at: http://www.ooyuz.com/geturl?aid=10858439#sthash.dGPQiJdp.dpuf”
http://www.ooyuz.com/geturl?aid=10858439
Candor can be quite the crime. You’ve got to feel for the guy.
I’ve always felt the need to tell the boss unpleasant truths, but then leave decisions to them and supporting them as well as I could (w/o being dishonest… a line I will never cross if I’m aware.)