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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.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
- some baldie
Lockheed traded Barb Williams to SpaceX in return Barb McIntosh and a sum of $3 million. No word yet on what that will do for their chances of winning the Goddard Trophy, the long-time rocketry championship, but the expectation is that this will allow Lockheed to unload an unfavorable contract while making SpaceX more competitive in the playoffs.
I am officially gone from
Robert Stevens should well be aware of that by now.
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.
He doesn't seem to know the difference between "cost" and profit. He keeps using the word cost but I'm not sure he actually knows what it means. Well boo hoo and let me get out the world's smallest violin now that they have to compete on price in their former monopoly market.
I, for one, welcome our new SpaceX overlords.
"Chance favors the prepared mind." ~Me
You can not accurately say that just because an organization is not accredited by X body that its quality is lower.
"Chance favors the prepared mind." ~Me
How is an advantage on price "unfair"? Build a better mousetrap, for a lower cost, and people will buy it. Also, please enlighten us on the correlation between CMMI accred and quality. Perhaps they have a lower price specifically because they don't play by those types of rules in their organization...
unless the parent company (USA) uses its representatives (Congresscritters) to protect all those layers of bureaucracy (and funding) -- resulting in appointing managers at NASA who force contracts to Lockheed/Boeing to keep safe all those jobs (for contractors).
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Ah yes, CMMI, where you fork over a bunch of money to get a piece of paper that says you have a process. Not a good process, but a process. So it has to be better!
If you think SpaceX has no repeatable processes, documentation, you are insane.
There's some truth to it. SpaceX is built like an Internet startup - failure is always an option. The "old technology" is from an age when every launch was a national news event and failure was no option.
Read this:
http://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff
and then realize that while everything NASA seems to be luxury spending, their software development manages to have at least two orders of magnitude fewer bugs than any commercial software company.
If your life depends on it - would you rather fly a NASA Space Shuttle or a Microsoft Rocket ?
SpaceX deserves a lot of credit, no doubt. Among other things, they have revitalized the "space exploration is cool" meme. And with it the willingness to take risks.
But how about we talk about costs when they've had their first two or three explosions and resulting fallout in costs, publicity, etc.?
I'd be mightily surprised if the learning wouldn't go two-way. Old tech learns from SpaceX how to cut costs while SpaceX learns from old tech which costs you shouldn't save on.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
"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."
Fishy argument. Most of the payload I gather is pretty cheap stuff to make astronauts' life on ISS possible.
In a way, price gauging of the launchers has resulted in the reactive price gauging of the payload. But if one can cheaply transport materials to the ISS, some stuff can be actually built and assembled right there - instead of creating the stuff on surface up to the very high standards, required for it to survive the lift off.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Thank you for repeating your point from the article, Lockheed CEO Robert Stevens.
It depends on how much their lobbyists can get Washington to vote into NASA's budget. Then it's a simple matter of division.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Oh yeah, but it's just a chalkboard in their office.
Considering a lot of people in Congress and the Senate until recently did not want to fund SpaceX (Falcon 9) or Orbital (Antares) for COTS i.e. ISS ressuply and continue paying even more to the Russians, or even more than that to ULA, well things have proceeded as usual. Not to mention that SpaceX can only ramp up their business so quickly. These things take time to mature.
It won't even take that long. Just one failure on the next few launches, dropping a $100M+ commercial satellite, and SpaceX could be toast in that market. For ISS resupply, they might survive a low but non-zero failure rate. The assumption there is that, as long as they can get a replacement launch up before consumable levels become critical, the replacement cost of the payload would be more like pocket change.
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
Having worked as a contractor for Goddard Space Flight Center years ago on a few projects, I can assure you that SpaceX's way of doing business is completely different than the old school space business. Coming from NASA, which trickles down to Boeing and Lockheed, the standard mentality is do everything at least twice, and usually triple checking all of that. New processes are frowned upon and twenty year old technology is still considered new, potentially even unproven. It is a frustrating way to work for a lot of people because it moves so slow. However, it is fairly safe and effective.
Now, enter SpaceX. I suspect they have a lot of the old NASA engineers, so they have the experience to cut corners. However, they've designed the thing intentionally to tolerate failures - they stuck 9 engines on the rocket. And you definitely want to tolerate failures, however, it does lead to mistakes. Look what happens though when one engine fails - the extra burn time meant the Orbcomm secondary payload on the last mission failed and never made it into orbit. That wasn't highly publicized, but it was a partial failure.
Now, what we're going to run into the standard cost/benefit of the extra work that goes into Boeing rockets. Is it worth it? Well, I suspect once you start sticking people on the top of the rockets the tolerance for failure goes down. Personally, I love what SpaceX is doing and I think a lot of the stuff is cutting edge. It is the direction we need to be headed, and I personally think the risks are worth it.
Better - Faster - Cheaper
You only get two.
----- obSig
Not exactly, It currently costs 454 million to launch a satellite with the Big Guys. Space-ex is 54 million. You could lose two or three of those satellites and still be a competitor with the big guys.
I think they insure those launches. If you can save $400 million per launch having to launch two $100M satellites to get one in orbit is fine. You still come out $200 Million to the good.
Musk once alluded to a better manufacturing process for actually building rockets. So, instead of saying that he's taking shortcuts and what not and doesn't have layers of bureacracy, what if he just has a cheaper way to build rockets that are better?
This is my sig.
66 in a row was once 2 in a row, 64 launchs ago. guess he forgot. been nice knowing you.
Insurance companies aren't in the business of losing money. Increase premium costs too much if you go with SpaceX and nobody will use them. And turn-around time to replace a lost satellite also means loss of income and opportunity.
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
Insurances premiums still would not exceed the cost of launch and cargo. Which means insurance will not more than double launch cost. Which is still not half what the competitors want. You can insure for that as well, either with additional insurance or just build two of everything and sell any leftover units. Still cheaper than the other provider. At some point cost savings of this magnitude change the market that much.
If launch + cargo cost $150million, then you can take three attempts and still break even. Which means if you can get the job done in two attempts, you do it that way every time.
You can if you are Carnegie Mellon University and you are not getting your cut of the accreditation business.
Have gnu, will travel.
Solid+Liquid can be the best way to go performance-wise, although there's that cost penalty from heterogeneity.
The problem with solid fuel rockets is, you can't turn it off and back on once you light it. With the proper engineering, you can with a liquid fueled rocket.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
That's not the case with a hybrid. In that setup, you have a solid fuel and a liquid oxidizer. By varying the oxidizer feed you can control the thrust.
I have confidence in SpaceX's automation. The first test launch to ISS aborted at T-0, the onboard computer detected a fault and shut the whole damned bird down. They safed it and checked it out and found the problem and fixed it. SpaceX did something seriously right.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
SpaceX isn't pulling costs out of a rocket. SpaceX isn't putting them in in the first place.
If you're talking about the DC-X, well it became a complete failure after NASA took it over. But prior to that, it was a complete success. It achieved all of its design goals and its mission purpose. Which were:
1. Build a working scale model of the proposed Delta Clipper ship. Fly it as an X program. (a real X program that flies stuff like the X-1, not a computer simulation only-deal like the X-33)
2. Demonstrate the feasibility of a vertical takeoff / vertical landing rocket. Done. Test SSTO (single stage to orbit) concepts and operation procedures in test flight. Done. Prior to this, it wasn't thought possible to fly a vertical takeoff and landing ship at low speed, or to control its attitude from vertical to horizontal and back to vertical.
Afterwards, NASA took over the program, somewhat reluctantly since they already had a competing big-budget program (the X-33). Some might say NASA wanted it to fail. Regardless, it didn't crash, not even in NASA hands. On its last flight, it landed flawlessly. It just toppled over after landing because a NASA technician forgot to connect the landing gear control mechanism and one of the gears folded. It exploded from toppling over and spilling fuel due to a careless mistake, not because of any flaws in the ship design or the program itself.
Some viewpoint from people involved with the program:
Jerry Pournelle's Space Papers
What is an X Program?
That's not the case with a hybrid. In that setup, you have a solid fuel and a liquid oxidizer. By varying the oxidizer feed you can control the thrust.
They're notoriously tempermental.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Unless the insurance companies stipulate that they send up 3 units on three separate rockets (still cheaper) before they pay out. A good analyst would look at the numbers and point out that just planning to send up three units still comes out cheaper, and if none fail, you have 3 times the capacity, or two units for redundancy. If 2 out of 3 fail, you are still better off than sending one up at 10x the price.
Apart from the completely irrelevant dragging in of China, where is the argument? A level of staffing and competence is needed for a project but large companies are full of bureaucracy and private empires that make products worse and more expensive. Government needs to stop being addled by size and cronyism.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Which is why the the continual Luddite refrain that the Apollo program was just a way to build a better ICBM is so nonsensical. Even a Saturn I would have been a horrible ICBM...
Ignoring the ad-hominem attack which does nothing to support your claim, your statement is overlooking something. You claim that the various rockets would have been poor weapon platforms, but your thesis statement is that the Apollo program wasn't tied to ICBM development. You are correct that the Saturn rockets would be lousy weapons, but you overlook that there were a lot of things probably learned in the civilian rocket programs that got applied to ICBM development. A lot of times studying field 'A' will teach you a lot about field 'B'. We figured out nuclear energy and weapons after studying stars.
Recall that the space race was closely tied to the cold war, and that by showing the US that they could put a satellite in orbit, the Russians were showing us that they could drop a nuke anywhere they wanted to. The primary goal of the Apollo program was to put civilian ships in space, but you are deeply deluding yourself if you think that the Air Force (the guys who controlled the ICBMs) wasn't watching or advising every step of the way.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
They're in routine use in hobby and amateur rocketry.
Any particular reason or is this just a random book review?
It's not just Lockheed. It's a joint venture with Boeing that Robert Stevens is presiding over.
And yeah, that's the same Boeing that ate McDonnell Douglas and killed the Delta Clipper program.
8 years ago, shortly after the Ansari X-Prize was claimed, I was a new graduate who just started at one of Lockheed when Bob Stevens came to our office and held a townhall. Working up the nerve, I asked what impact he saw the X-Prize having, to which he replied "None, they spent $25 million to win a $10 million prize, so I don't see that being a good business model." Shocked by his lack of forward looking vision, I re-phrased "Do you think the fact that commercialization of space travel will change the shape of our industry?" (we were heavily involved in satellites at that location) Once again he brushed it off, saying that we had looked at the type of technology they were using long ago and decided it was not feasible to do profitably. And that was when I knew that Bob Stevens has absolutely zero vision, and is merely a bean counter. The only business model Lockheed knows is 1) Hire former military/government officials 2) Pay them gobs of money 3) Send them to schmooze their old buddies in the government and 4) Convince them to buy ridiculously expensive systems, whether the country really needs them or not (can't tell you how much completely wasted spending goes on because some general gets convinced that he needs his own satellite/plane/vehicle/etc rather than sharing the ones already available because he doesn't want to share with some other branch of the military or agency).
And there is the hope that once SpaceX gets the reusable rocket working, the cost would really go down a lot. They just tested the first staging reusable prototype a few days ago, so they're actively working on it.
I'm interested in reading how: 1. Smaller engines are cheaper to develop and build than big engines 2. SpaceX had to use more complex/heavier/expenise plumbing system and thrust structure. From my reading, they're using 9 engines because this is the engine they developed for Falcon-1, which is a small rocket, by reusing it they get Falcon-9 ready fast and cheap, so it's more like "making applepie out of apples".
It's in AviationWeek but behind a paywall, you can find the link in SpaceX website, for actual Chinese launch price you can check the PDF from FAA which you probably already have seen: LM4B=$50M, LM3B=$60M, LM3A=$50M, considering the payload capability of LM3A/3B/4B, I think the statement is not far fetched.
Of course your price for Atlas V is correct, so yeah the price difference is that big, yet.
There is a reason why Scaled Composites is jettisoning its foray into hybrid rocket motors. They are temperamental and cause all sort of problems. Unfortunately Scaled Composites also lost some good people to those tests.... something that sort of tempers you view as well when you are trying to evaluate the viability of a particular technology (regardless of what you may think about its use).
I may be misinformed on this as well, but SpaceShip One did use a hybrid motor for its flights into space.
It's about the development of rocket fuels, and has a very good chapter on hybrids. Definitely worth a read.
It has a bit on hybrids, but it's somewhat outdated. Some more research has made them more viable on a larger scale, and they could likely be scaled up farther.
Not a sentence!
The problem is that the chalkboard itself was required, as the dry erase white board and the digital markup board are obviously unqualified options that need to be discarded in favor of the actual black slate chalkboard that was needed to meet the requirements. And don't you dare use anything other than the white chalk as well! None of that newfangled colored chalk allowed!
Actually, Space Ship Two also has a hybrid engine and they are continuing development.
They had ONE accident while testing the oxidizer flow (which would have likely been needed for a liquid fueled engine as well), but development continued since that danger was in no way specific to hybrid motors.
Yeah. I'll get some references on how having more engines means more plumbing and thrust structure. After all, when I install a second faucet in my kitchen, I don't have to add plumbing... The water just magically appears. (And even if I did have to add pipe, my plumber would give me the pipe for free, and not charge me any labor for all the additional joints.)
Etc... etc...
Seriously, are you that fucking clueless to believe that driving up the complexity of a system doesn't come at a price?
Throwing words like PR, fucking or clueless around just to cover up your baseless claim is pathetic, and good use of kitchen analogs, that'll solve everything (not).
r in the same package, how about that, Mr. photographer?
I was doing a 6 month student internship (basically 6 months paid work that was also a university course and counted towards my degree) for Motorola when they implemented that CMMI crap.
Did absolutely nothing to make their products better (that I could see anyway) and cost a lot of time and effort for no real gain.
That does sound like I good read. I found it at http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf and I will read it.