11 thoughts on “The Military Launch Mess”

  1. In the meantime, Congress has said nothing about OSC signing a deal to buy $1 billion worth of rocket engines from Russia. And NASA is pressing ahead with its plan to extend US-Russian cooperation on ISS to 2024 — or maybe 2028. Since that’s been such an effective part of US diplomacy. But we’ve “sanctioned” Russia by cutting off other forms of space cooperation — which no one will miss because no one can even identify them.

    I’m sure Putin is quaking in his boots.

    1. Yeah. The Orbital case is less of an issue since AFAIK Antares doesn’t launch military payloads, which is what the Russians claim to want to embargo. But you should try to prevent any new rockets from using Russian engines. Which is what they are doing.

  2. I wonder about ULA’s strategy with retiring the single core Delta IV before a replacement booster is available. On the face of it, it doesn’t make much sense. Are they playing hardball with the Air Force and Congress to get the RD-180 ban lifted?

      1. Combination of cynicism and industrial necessity – or at least convenience – I think. The ULA NGLS (Next Generation Launch System) will have to use the Delta’s 5-meter core form factor to accommodate the larger methane fuel tanks it’ll need relative to the Atlas V’s kerosene tanks. An Atlas V stretched to accommodate sufficient methane volume would be taller than a Falcon 9 and wouldn’t fit any of the existing vertical payload integration infrastructure for either Atlas V or Delta IV. It would be advantageous to repurpose the 5-meter Delta tooling and production line to NGLS ASAP. Hence ULA’s move to bum’s rush the Delta IV and the scary hints about the price of the Heavy. The Delta IV has to die for NGLS to be born. Credit Aaron Mehta, by the way, in foreseeing this in his coverage of the ULA-Blue Origin engine deal way back in September 2014.

    1. Always count on greed. Atlas V is more profitable so they push that regardless of all else. I do think it is a better design but national security requires other, more important, considerations.

      1. Well according to the testimony I heard Mr. Bruno give, the reason for the retirement of the Delta IV is that it is not cost competitive with the Falcon 9. But if assured access is what is the most important issue here, I guess I can say “who cares?” Instead of the Senate and House bashing each other over RD-180 language why not draft a new procurement for a small block buy of Delta IV’s to “bridge the gap”, until the RD-180 replacement is available? I don’t see the rush to retire the D-IV on the part of ULA unless it’s a simple ploy to get Congress to approve additional RD-180’s for their more profitable Atlas-5.

  3. Maybe a better strategy would be to just call ULA’s bluff.
    If they want to give a monopoly on medium lift to SpaceX, well fine.

    After all it’s their business, literally. As I taxpayer I don’t see the compelling need to give money to ULA. Although granted the RD-180 mess was Congress’s fault to begin with and ended up putting ULA in a tough spot. In retrospect, the whole RD-180 mess was mishandled. I know hindsight is always 20/20, but instead of granting contracts to NPO/Energomash, why didn’t we offer H1B visa’s to their engineers instead, and let ULA decide the best option for themselves? Bruno seems like a smart guy. I have no doubt ULA is in good hands, and is quite capable of coming up with technology that will compete effectively with SpaceX.

  4. Just a few years back, the Federal government allowed/encouraged Boeing and Lockheed to merge their launch divisions into one company because they *wanted* a monopoly. It would be more “efficient.”

    Now, they say ULA should be allowed to buy Russian rocket engines because, otherwise, SpaceX would have a monopoly!

    Strange how the argument favors the same side, either way.

  5. I’m very curious about this Aviation Week article which says that Falcon 9 v1.2 will fly this summer, with a 30 percent increase in performance (payload to GTO) over the Falcon 9 v1.1, while also landing on the barge. It’s got higher performance engines than they’re currently using, the result of improvements they could see with the Merlin 1D development but which they didn’t have time to implement until now.

    1. Basically, from what I understand the Merlin D is only running at about 85% of capacity. Starting sometime this summer, they’re going to increase the thrust to full power. They’re also likely to increase the size of the upper stage propellant tanks and there’s discussion about super-cooling the RP-1 to increase the density. All of that will offer a substantial increase in performance at little cost.

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