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SpaceX, US Air Force Settle Spy Sat Dispute
hypnosec writes The US Air Force and private space flight company SpaceX have settled their dispute involving the military's expendable rocket program, thereby paving the way for SpaceX to join the spy satellite launch program known as Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV). The settlement opens doors for SpaceX to compete with United Launch Alliance (ULA) for launch of spy satellites. ULA is a joint Boeing-Lockheed venture – the only private player to have received clearance for launching black ops satellites.
Maybe someone high up in the USAF food chain is retireing soon and looking for a job... Boeing obviously didn't pay them off enough to keep exclusivity on their overpriced program.
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Superbe, more revenue to fund that trip to Mars
They're absolutely desperate to get away from Lockheed.
I had hoped that SpaceX might hold higher principles :(
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USA: home of the world's largest terrorist training camp.
ULA is a very well entrenched establishment, and they will do anything and everything to protect their interests
Launching spy satellite is a very very lucrative business, and if Elon Musk is too headstrong into butting his SpaceX in, who knows what ULA will do next ...
SpaceX will sell the Air Farce the rockets. The AF launches their gear into orbit. SpaceX has nothing to do with it more than to get paid for the hardware and some support personnel who will have to have security clearances. This should help drive down prices for launching spy satellites as now there will be some competition. Lockheed/Boeing can't be happy about that! They had a nice monopoly for a long time.
The post contains several errors. EELV was a program in the 1990s to develop modernized rockets to launching USAF payloads (not just 'spy' satellites). The program produced two new competing launch vehicle families: the Boeing Delta IV and the Lockheed-Martin Atlas V. Subsequently, these launch providers merged to form the United Launch Alliance (ULA) which has had a monopoly on USAF launches. ULA has racked up an impeccable reliability record, with something approaching 100 straight successes, but the price per launch has been high. SpaceX wants to compete for that business with its much cheaper, but less well-proven, Falcon 9. But just around the time the Falcon 9 began to fly, the USAF signed a “block buy” agreement with ULA for several dozen rocket cores (the Heavy version of the Delta IV uses three cores, so the number of launches may be smaller). Only a smaller number of launches were left open for competitive bids, and that number was subsequently cut. SpaceX cried foul and sued the USAF. This is the suit which has been settled, with the settlement requiring the USAF to make a larger, but not publicly announced, number of launches open for competitive bidding. SpaceX is the only plausible near-term competitor to ULA. I think Orbital Sciences announced plans to offer their Antares (the rocket that crashed on a Space Station resupply mission a few months ago, but they're out of it for a while at least. Being allowed to compete doesn't guarantee SpaceX will win any of the business, though. It's possible that the USAF will decide to stick with the tried-and-true rather than risk their very expensive, and sometimes national security critical payloads to the upstart. More likely, the price difference may be so large that it justifies the added risk, at least for some payloads. We'll have to wait and see what they do.
'Impeccable' except for the first Delta IV Heavy launch which put the dummy payload in the wrong orbit. Still did not stop the DoD from launching a really expensive satellite on it right on the next flight. Of course if your name is SpaceX instead of Boeing then you need to conduct dozens of continuous successful launches before being accepted. Fact is Falcon 9 also has an 'impeccable' launch record.
Also there are more companies working on the launch services market like Blue Origin which may eventually enter the market. There are other companies which could launch the US satellites but they're foreign companies so for US national security reasons they can't be used. Even if the company is run by US allies like Arianespace.
More competition can be good but pretending you are inventing a new industry - not so good.
> ULA is a joint Boeing-Lockheed venture – the only private player to have received clearance for launching black ops satellites.
Sounded like ULA had a very cosy monopoly there. The lowest bidder always won! ;-)
Folsom's UNCLE SAM CAN'T COUNT is a well-written, entertaining book on government monopolies: https://www.google.com/search?q=folsom+uncle+sam+can't+count
The Colorado representatives favor ULA, of course. So they asked for information about the full costs to have SpaceX do it, mentioned that SpaceX has a higher rate of cancelled launches, etc. Just as SpaceX and their representatives point out the downsides of the ULA contract. I think that's a good thing, that the House and the American people hear both perspectives, then make decisions.
Certainly you wouldn't want the administration to make these choices behind closed doors, with no public information about why they chose one vendor over another and what the options were, would you?
Maybe I just don't understand the bold postmodern reality where you can change things just by changing what you call them; but isn't a 'united alliance' between the two effective players in a market what we used to call a 'cartel'?
Is there some sort of argument in favor of it that gets trotted out with a straight face when someone asks if there was just too much 'ruinous competition' between Boeing and Lockheed, and some 'price stability' was badly needed, or is this purely a because we can sort of operation?
Still did not stop the DoD from launching a really expensive satellite on it right on the next flight
There was no other option at the time. It was either a Delta IV Heavy or it didn't get launched.
Fact is Falcon 9 also has an 'impeccable' launch record.
And a much shorter one. Five of those were Falcon 1.0 and nine were Falcon 1.1. The Falcon 9 Heavy has not even launched yet. ULA has been launching for over 50 years; Space X less than 5.
And keep in mind, Mr. Musk is not some schmuck like the Amazon guy who has a Space Vanity Project. SpaceX has launched real rockets into real space with real payloads. Musk and SpaceX are here to stay.
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Well that is until they have a base on Mars of course...
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...is government cheese.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
ULA didn't even exist 50 years ago. Boeing bought their launchers division from Douglas. Atlas was originally built by Convair. People die and institutional knowledge dies with them. Then again Delta IV and Atlas V have little to do with the original rockets. For example they use isogrid manufacturing methods which weren't in common use at the time.
Also you can get a pretty good ideas of the reliability of a rocket with ten launches. Even 3 launches can be good enough for most purposes. Most accidents with a rocket happen in the initial batch of launches and once you get past that hump the rocket is usually pretty reliable.
There are models for this. Given Falcon 9's past launch record it probably has a reliability rate of 90% or more.
If their reliability rate was poor the insurance rate for the satellites they launch would go though the roof and no comsat operator would use them regardless of how cheap the launch price was. But it seems their launch manifest is quite full with orders so it seems the insurance companies disagree with your perspective.
ULA didn't even exist 50 years ago.
But the components of ULA did. All they did was change the name.
People die and institutional knowledge dies with them.
But a significant amount of institutional knowledge live on.
There are models for this. Given Falcon 9's past launch record it probably has a reliability rate of 90% or more.
When you can chose between 90% and closer to 100% which would you chose when dealing with very expensive payloads.
But it seems their launch manifest is quite full with orders so it seems the insurance companies disagree with your perspective.
You must really be an insider to know the insurances charged for each Space X launch. You have nothing to back up those statements. For all you know these launches have no insurance. Again, it may be an issue of supply and demand. Companies need satellites launched to keep business going. They may take a higher risk option to stay in business.
LockMart put the plans on a server hooked to the internet - no big surprise that China got them. This could NOT have been an "accident". Guess what? if you build a 5th gen fighter when nobody else has one, you might not get a contract for a 6th gen for another 30 years.... but if your "enemies" get a 5th gen right away, then the government will have to start issuing contracts to start T&D for a 6th gen right away.
LockMart is going to be selling them to Turkey, which USED to be s "secular" Muslim state in NATO, but which is no longer secular and is moving closer and closer into alliance with Iran. Any F-35 that Turkey gets will be examined by Iran and China and Russia immediately.
Can anybody even REMEMBER the las time LockMart delivered an aerospace project on time and on budget with the promised capability?????
....[impatient toe-tapping]...
....[crickets]...
Orion space capsule? Ha, Apollo-redux that has already taken a decade to fly an incomplete boilerplate on a one-off test flight with an incomplete LockMart service module which has now been cancelled and replaced with a service module from ESA. The A-12 for the US Navy? Ha, we never even got a full-scale mock-up. I'd love to hear of a significant LockMart success story (remember: one with no cost or schedule overruns and no underperformance)
There WERE two significant players in the market for American launch vehicles: Lockheed (Atlas family) and Boeing (Delta family). They both priced their products very high based on a government customer who would pay any price, thereby pricing themselves right out of the commercial launch market (leaving both companies seriosously competing ONLY for the relatively few government launches).
The two companies told the government there was not enough business to support two vendors, and the government (eager to preserve redundancy) did not want to see either vendor get out of the market, so a merger was proposed [1] to save money and [2] to preserve strategic capabilities. The companies formed a monopoly called ULA, which the government happily blessed. Everybody NOT in the crony-capitalist-and-government bubble KNOWS monopolies lead to corruption and higher prices, but both the government and these vendors promised this would not happen.
As part of the deal "to keep prices low", Lockheed used cheaper Russian engines on the Atlas instead of employing American rocket engine makers (so much for ppreserving strategic capabilities)
As time passed, prices rose dramatically (so much for keeping prices low)
Eventually, people started calling for ULA to abandon either the Atlas or the Delta (to help get prices back down, so much for maintaining redundancy)
With a new upstart competitor called Space-X on the horizon, the US Air Force suddenly discovered that it had a very long and complex set of proceedures for the approval of new vendors and launch vehicles (which their monopoly members had never needed to clear) ... crony-capitalism on display.
With Space-X on the cusp of clearing the hurdles to get "certified", the USAF felt the sudden need to issue a huge contract for YEARS worth of launches from thier monopoly provider (at its MUCH higher prices than the new upstart) and appeared to be surprised that some segments of the public just "didn't understand". Nobody in the Government-Crony-Monopoly conglomerate could offer any credible explanation for these events.
As a general rule, Monopolies are ALWAYS bad for the consumer/taxpayer, and open competition is ALWAYS a good driver for lower prices, higher performance, and innovation; it's no surprise that neither Boeing nor LockMart (both of which have been around for a century) has ever bothered to even TRY to recover and re-use the first stage of a launch vehicle but Space-X which is only about a decade old HAS attemped multiple times and gets better with every attempt.
For all you know these launches have no insurance.
Outside of governments everyone gets launch insurance unless they are out of their mind. A failed launch can easily cause a commercial company to go bankrupt. A government can afford to chance it but not anyone else.
A Mars bas would be outstanding for Amazon, send its stock into the stratosphere, because it's a perfect location to drop-ship for the customers on the outer reaches of our solar system...
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