Slashdot Mirror
Lockheed, SpaceX Trade Barbs
Lockheed Martin and Boeing have been getting all government launch contracts for the past six years. That is, until SpaceX demonstrated they could reach the International Space Station successfully this year. Asked about the new competition brought by SpaceX, Lockheed CEO Robert Stevens made light of the younger company's success. "I’m hugely pleased with 66 in a row from [the Boeing-Lockheed alliance], and I don’t know the record of SpaceX yet," he said. "Two in a row?" When he was asked about the skyrocketing price of launching his sky rockets, he said, "You can thrift on cost. You can take cost out of a rocket. But I will guarantee you, in my experience, when you start pulling a lot of costs out of a rocket, your quality and your probability of success in delivering a payload to orbit diminishes." SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was blunt about the source of the price difference between the companies: "The fundamental reason SpaceX’s rockets are lower cost and more powerful is that our technology is significantly more advanced than that of the Lockheed-Boeing rockets, which were designed last century." The Delta IV and Atlas V rockets of Lockheed-Boeing average about $464 million per launch, while SpaceX's Falcon 9 launches for $54 million. Its upcoming Falcon Heavy will go up for $80-125 million.
Musk, is essentially running a massive experiment to see what costs can be squeezed out of building and operating launch systems. Much of it has to do with using off the shelf technology (as opposed to the proverbial gold-plated screws...), and flattening his supply chain.
Obviously, it's working, as the old guard are getting butthurt that they're uncompetitive after growing fat and lazy off government space and defence contracts.
Gotta love free markets when they work well.
SpaceX would need to have solids, which they've quite deliberately eschewed. As it is, they're thoroughly optimized for space launch, not storable rockets that can be launched at zero notice.
> SpaceX would need to have solids, which they've quite deliberately eschewed.
ULA's Common Booster Core (CBC) is liquid-fueled only. Solids are indeed more storable for the long term, but if you need to vary the thrust for different orbital profiles and payloads, liquid is the only way to go.
I don't know that SpaceX is even interested in the ICBM market. Elon Musk is a space head who just wants to see people in the stars, and his company is a way to achieve his boyhood dream while making it pay for itself.
What I want to know is when someone is going to take on the jetliner market. Maybe a SpaceX-like company could come along and eat into that market a swell. Then Airbus will join Boeing and the others in complaining and sweating. :)
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.