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Lockheed, SpaceX Trade Barbs

Posted by Soulskill on from the can't-we-all-just-get-along dept.

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.

7 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. Progress! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
    - some baldie

    1. Re:Progress! by taiwanjohn · · Score: 5, Insightful

      SpaceX is blowing the competition away. Even the Chinese have said they can't match SpaceX's prices. ULA will continue building Deltas and Atlases for a while yet, but once their current launch manifests are cleared, they'll have a tough time selling any more. Their only hope of survival is if SpaceX can't ramp up production fast enough to devour the entire market. In the meantime, other "NewSpace" vendors are getting into the game, making life even tougher for the "legacy" crowd. I just wonder how long it will take before SLS gets canceled.

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
    2. Re:Progress! by benjfowler · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

  2. Oldspace got fat and lazy by benjfowler · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Oldspace got fat and lazy by mcgrew · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Also, Lockheed is a very big, very old company with layers of bereaucracy. The bigger the organization, the more bureaucracy is needed, and the more expensive their wares become. Spaxe-X is still young and lean.

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
  3. Re:Government goes with lowest cost by cheesybagel · · Score: 5, Funny

    Nah, the government goes with the lowest bidder. Cost is something that is totally irrelevant.

  4. some truth by Tom · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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