Author Topic: ULA Vulcan Launch Vehicle - Business Case/Competition/Alternatives Discussion  (Read 336171 times)

Offline envy887

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I don't see Vulcan being developed to compete for commercial launches.  That is not how ULA has operated.

 - Ed Kyle

How do you interpret Bruno's statements that they need commercial customers to survive with Vulcan?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lockheed-martin-boeing-ula/lockheed-boeing-rocket-venture-needs-commercial-orders-to-survive-idUSKBN0O62M720150521

Offline Sknowball

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Where have ULA stated Vulcan price of $99M. Only price I've heard is less than $100M. They are not same thing.

He said $99M for Vulcan, about a year and a half ago:

Quote
ULA is working on a next-generation rocket called Vulcan that will be less expensive to manufacture and fly than its current Atlas booster.

Quote from: Tory Bruno
Our prices are coming down every day, we now talk about a $99 million launch service.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-ula-layoffs/united-launch-alliance-to-lay-off-up-to-875-by-end-of-2017-ceo-idUSKCN0XB2HQ

I have never been certain if he was referring to Vulcan costs or Atlas V costs when he made this statement as at the time Atlas V costs were on a downward trend having hit 109M.

Offline Coastal Ron

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But ULA will have to compete with more than Falcon Heavy to win commercial customers. They will also be competing against Falcon 9, Ariane 5/6, Proton and others. ULA needs to find their competitive differentiator that will allow them to hold onto and grow their marketshare - and so far it's not clear what that will be.
I don't see Vulcan being developed to compete for commercial launches.  That is not how ULA has operated.

You seem to want to only predict the future by relying on what has happened in the past. That strategy guarantees that you will miss out on changes in the marketplace - such as what's happening today. From a 2016 article on Tory Bruno and ULA:

Quote
Today, ULA gets about 60% of its revenues from national-security launches, with the remainder split almost evenly between civil and commercial work. Looking out to 2020, though, Bruno sees national-security missions falling to 42% of revenues, with NASA and commercial launches providing the rest.

And...

Quote
In other words, ULA has to do more business with NASA and commercial customers otherwise the Air Force competitive model will break down.
If we don't continuously lower the cost to access space, how are we ever going to afford to expand humanity out into space?

Offline john smith 19

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But ULA will have to compete with more than Falcon Heavy to win commercial customers. They will also be competing against Falcon 9, Ariane 5/6, Proton and others. ULA needs to find their competitive differentiator that will allow them to hold onto and grow their marketshare - and so far it's not clear what that will be.
I don't see Vulcan being developed to compete for commercial launches.  That is not how ULA has operated.

 - Ed Kyle
True. ULA has pretty much operated as an arms length part of the US government.

However both its predecessor companies pitched commercial launches as a key part of their business plan to get govt funding for their EELV programme entries, allowing "cost sharing" to benefit the govt.

You're saying ULA is planning no attempts to compete for commercial launch business?

Because depending on how you frame that it's either a begging letter or a Blackmail letter to the USG.


Either tactic can work to a point with the USG, given enough lobbying, wheather or not US taxpayers like it.
MCT ITS BFR SS. The worlds first Methane fueled FFSC engined CFRP SS structure A380 sized aerospaceplane tail sitter capable of Earth & Mars atmospheric flight.First flight to Mars by end of 2022 TBC. T&C apply. Trust nothing. Run your own #s "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" R. Simberg."Competitve" means cheaper ¬cheap SCramjet proposed 1956. First +ve thrust 2004. US R&D spend to date > $10Bn. #deployed designs. Zero.

Offline john smith 19

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NGL is not going to launch astronauts.
I very strongly doubt it will launch anything ever.

How long did ATK take to get to the Aries 1-x flight from CxP programme start?

Then they promoted Liberty, and said they'd pursue it with company funds even if not selected for COTS. They weren't selected and they didn't pursue it.

So they have a track record of taking
a) A  very long time to deliver incomplete hardware (4 working segments of a 5 segment booster and a completely dummy US and mass simulator after how much money was spent on what was pitched as
basically the upgraded Shuttle SRB's?)
b) Not committing any company funds on a project.

OrbitalATK may theoretically be a competitor to ULA for big rockets, but I doubt ULA takes them very seriously.
MCT ITS BFR SS. The worlds first Methane fueled FFSC engined CFRP SS structure A380 sized aerospaceplane tail sitter capable of Earth & Mars atmospheric flight.First flight to Mars by end of 2022 TBC. T&C apply. Trust nothing. Run your own #s "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" R. Simberg."Competitve" means cheaper ¬cheap SCramjet proposed 1956. First +ve thrust 2004. US R&D spend to date > $10Bn. #deployed designs. Zero.

Offline john smith 19

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Where have ULA stated Vulcan price of $99M. Only price I've heard is less than $100M. They are not same thing.

He said $99M for Vulcan, about a year and a half ago:

Quote
ULA is working on a next-generation rocket called Vulcan that will be less expensive to manufacture and fly than its current Atlas booster.

Quote from: Tory Bruno
Our prices are coming down every day, we now talk about a $99 million launch service.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-ula-layoffs/united-launch-alliance-to-lay-off-up-to-875-by-end-of-2017-ceo-idUSKCN0XB2HQ

I have never been certain if he was referring to Vulcan costs or Atlas V costs when he made this statement as at the time Atlas V costs were on a downward trend having hit 109M.
Welcome to the site.

It's a good question.  ULA has a good history of producing reliable LV's and it could be argued that Vulcan is no bigger a shift than Delta IV or Atlas V were from their predecessor designs but the fact remains it will be a substantial shift and ULA needs to be competitive to get itself in front of commercial customers as a first move.
MCT ITS BFR SS. The worlds first Methane fueled FFSC engined CFRP SS structure A380 sized aerospaceplane tail sitter capable of Earth & Mars atmospheric flight.First flight to Mars by end of 2022 TBC. T&C apply. Trust nothing. Run your own #s "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" R. Simberg."Competitve" means cheaper ¬cheap SCramjet proposed 1956. First +ve thrust 2004. US R&D spend to date > $10Bn. #deployed designs. Zero.

Offline Sknowball

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SMART saves 90% of the booster propulsion cost according to ULA. The last contract for RD-180 was $24M per engine, so they can save $22M off a base Atlas V a $109M. This is about 20% off, while SMART reduces payload by around half that.

BE-4 is estimated at $16M, so taking the 90%, $99M, and $16M at face value a SMART launch base Vulcan would be $85M for ~4.5 tonnes to GTO. That is competitive with Ariane 5. To compete with Ariane 6 and Proton (6 or 7 t to GTO) it will need either 2 SRBs or Centaur 5, which likely add some cost.

I am not familiar with the source for that $16M figure is that per BE-4 or is that for the 2xBE-4 engines that will be used by Vulcan?

Offline john smith 19

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A note on FH pricing.

Musk stated that FH pricing could be below $1000/lb if SX launches 4 fully loaded FH's a year.

Note those 2 constraints closely.

Arianespace had trouble getting rideshares with 2 satellites and with SX charging another $30m for GTO comm sats that exceed it's standard F9-to-GTO mass limit people will work very hard to either stay below that limit of max out to the full up to the full GTO capacity of FH if they can't.

Keep in mind also with Musks stated goal of phasing out all F9 booster production to move to BFS SX will likely become very unwilling to fly a mission that expends any further F9 booster stages.

I'll leave other posters to decide how that affects their views on Vulcan, Ariane 6 and all those "smallsat" launcher who are expecting payloads to get smaller as payloads "dis-aggregate" despite the fact  Starlink payloads are likely to be in the 400Kg+ range.
« Last Edit: 01/02/2018 03:47 pm by john smith 19 »
MCT ITS BFR SS. The worlds first Methane fueled FFSC engined CFRP SS structure A380 sized aerospaceplane tail sitter capable of Earth & Mars atmospheric flight.First flight to Mars by end of 2022 TBC. T&C apply. Trust nothing. Run your own #s "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" R. Simberg."Competitve" means cheaper ¬cheap SCramjet proposed 1956. First +ve thrust 2004. US R&D spend to date > $10Bn. #deployed designs. Zero.

Offline TrevorMonty



Where have ULA stated Vulcan price of $99M. Only price I've heard is less than $100M. They are not same thing.

He said $99M for Vulcan, about a year and a half ago:

Quote
ULA is working on a next-generation rocket called Vulcan that will be less expensive to manufacture and fly than its current Atlas booster.

Quote from: Tory Bruno
Our prices are coming down every day, we now talk about a $99 million launch service.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-ula-layoffs/united-launch-alliance-to-lay-off-up-to-875-by-end-of-2017-ceo-idUSKCN0XB2HQ

The $99m is target price for Atlas 401, still no price for Vulcan. Given they haven't finalised the engine choice or design its no surprise there isn't an published price.
With BE4 engines and existing Centuar price should be closer to $90M as BE4 are 30% cheaper (ULA quote) than RD180. Vulcan should be cheaper than Atlas to build and operate as it clean sheet design. Losing He for tank pressurisation alone should be big saving. They are now planning to use a new larger Centuar (50t?) with more engines, which may or may not be much dearer than existing Centuar. If it uses IVF and lower cost RL10 may well be same price as current Centuar.

Performance for this new Centuar version without SRBs is likely to be close to 8t GTO.




Offline john smith 19

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Performance for this new Centuar version without SRBs is likely to be close to 8t GTO.
Which sounds pretty good, especially the bit about not needing SRB's.

MCT ITS BFR SS. The worlds first Methane fueled FFSC engined CFRP SS structure A380 sized aerospaceplane tail sitter capable of Earth & Mars atmospheric flight.First flight to Mars by end of 2022 TBC. T&C apply. Trust nothing. Run your own #s "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" R. Simberg."Competitve" means cheaper ¬cheap SCramjet proposed 1956. First +ve thrust 2004. US R&D spend to date > $10Bn. #deployed designs. Zero.

Offline AncientU

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You're telling me that the Vulcan SMART system will be less complex than what SpaceX does?  :o
As I said earlier, I haven't mentioned SMART.  I'm not assuming for this discussion that it will be developed.
Quote
But ULA will have to compete with more than Falcon Heavy to win commercial customers. They will also be competing against Falcon 9, Ariane 5/6, Proton and others. ULA needs to find their competitive differentiator that will allow them to hold onto and grow their marketshare - and so far it's not clear what that will be.
I don't see Vulcan being developed to compete for commercial launches.  That is not how ULA has operated.

 - Ed Kyle

Exactly. 
That's the point that has been made over and over -- Vulcan is not going to be a competitor (nor competitive) in the commercial market.  But -- 1. They say they need commercial launches to close business case, and 2. USAF expects to share cost with commercial launches for its selectees, probably stems from being burned so badly by the unsustainable launch costs by non-market-competitive ULA.

I completely agree that this is not how ULA has operated in the past and they most likely will not change.  They are planning to say 'take it or leave it' to the USAF when Phase 2 bids are submitted.  Expect severe lobbying to change the rules for that competition.
"If we shared everything [we are working on] people would think we are insane!"
-- SpaceX friend of mlindner

Online gongora

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Comparisons between Vulcan and its competitors are on-topic for this thread, but when a series of posts is only about NGL or FH those should be made in the appropriate threads.

Offline envy887

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I don't see Vulcan being developed to compete for commercial launches.  That is not how ULA has operated.

 - Ed Kyle

How do you interpret Bruno's statements that they need commercial customers to survive with Vulcan?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lockheed-martin-boeing-ula/lockheed-boeing-rocket-venture-needs-commercial-orders-to-survive-idUSKBN0O62M720150521
Note that the story says "commercial and civil space launch orders".  Civil space is also government work, which I don't consider to be "commercial". 

ULA has launched a bare handful of "commercial" satellites, but I'm not sure it has any such contracts on its current backlow.  It anticipates more work for NASA, most certainly, now that it has the "commercial" crew contract.

 - Ed Kyle

Civil launches still have to compete on price, although NASA's redundancy requirements will get them at least a couple launches per year until either Orbital or Blue enters the crew picture. That could take a while.

Offline envy887

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Where have ULA stated Vulcan price of $99M. Only price I've heard is less than $100M. They are not same thing.

He said $99M for Vulcan, about a year and a half ago:

Quote
ULA is working on a next-generation rocket called Vulcan that will be less expensive to manufacture and fly than its current Atlas booster.

Quote from: Tory Bruno
Our prices are coming down every day, we now talk about a $99 million launch service.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-ula-layoffs/united-launch-alliance-to-lay-off-up-to-875-by-end-of-2017-ceo-idUSKCN0XB2HQ

The $99m is target price for Atlas 401, still no price for Vulcan. Given they haven't finalised the engine choice or design its no surprise there isn't an published price.
With BE4 engines and existing Centuar price should be closer to $90M as BE4 are 30% cheaper (ULA quote) than RD180. Vulcan should be cheaper than Atlas to build and operate as it clean sheet design. Losing He for tank pressurisation alone should be big saving. They are now planning to use a new larger Centuar (50t?) with more engines, which may or may not be much dearer than existing Centuar. If it uses IVF and lower cost RL10 may well be same price as current Centuar.

Performance for this new Centuar version without SRBs is likely to be close to 8t GTO.

Even Vulcan-ACES needs at least a single SRB to get 8 t to GTO. See the ULA graphic above. The first SRB adds a lot of capability, after that there's diminishing returns.

Offline Sknowball

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Even Vulcan-ACES needs at least a single SRB to get 8 t to GTO. See the ULA graphic above. The first SRB adds a lot of capability, after that there's diminishing returns.

Are you reading that chart as the base Vulcan/ACES starting at 10k lb or at 18k lb GTO?  That particular chart is a little confusing as the steps are in the background with the rocket in the foreground.   Looking at the equivalent chart from their AIAA presentation in 2016 http://www.ulalaunch.com/uploads/docs/Published_Papers/Evolution/Vulcan_ACES_and_Beyond_2016_AAS_16-052_DEROY_REED.pdf(steps in foreground, rocket in background) it looks like the base Vulcan/ACES starts at 18k lb to GTO (otherwise there would be 7 SRB steps rather than 6 SRB steps).
« Last Edit: 01/02/2018 05:59 pm by Sknowball »

Offline Coastal Ron

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Note that the story says "commercial and civil space launch orders".  Civil space is also government work, which I don't consider to be "commercial".

Which is why the author said "commercial and civil space launch orders". I think you are working too hard to confuse them.

Quote
ULA has launched a bare handful of "commercial" satellites, but I'm not sure it has any such contracts on its current backlow.

That's right, because there was plenty of government work to rely upon, and no competitors.

However the amount of non-NASA government payloads is forecasted to decrease, and since those provided the most amount of revenue for ULA in the past it needs to find other sources of revenue in the future.

Quote
It anticipates more work for NASA, most certainly, now that it has the "commercial" crew contract.

No, not NASA, Boeing. Boeing's customer is NASA, ULA's customer is Boeing. And Commercial Crew contracts would be considered "commercial" since they are not U.S. Government.

Remember also that Boeing has said they could use Falcon 9, so ULA does have to competition that it has to worry about. Of course Boeing, which is a 50/50 partner in ULA, is unlikely to switch to SpaceX, but I think there are scenarios where it would be considered.

Regardless, Tory Bruno has stated that Vulcan will need commercial customers to be successful, and there is plenty of evidence to support his statements.
If we don't continuously lower the cost to access space, how are we ever going to afford to expand humanity out into space?

Offline envy887

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Even Vulcan-ACES needs at least a single SRB to get 8 t to GTO. See the ULA graphic above. The first SRB adds a lot of capability, after that there's diminishing returns.

Are you reading that chart as the base Vulcan/ACES starting at 10k lb or at 18k lb GTO?  That particular chart is a little confusing as the steps are in the background with the rocket in the foreground.   Looking at the equivalent chart from their AIAA presentation in 2016 http://www.ulalaunch.com/uploads/docs/Published_Papers/Evolution/Vulcan_ACES_and_Beyond_2016_AAS_16-052_DEROY_REED.pdf(steps in foreground, rocket in background) it looks like the base Vulcan/ACES starts at 18k lb to GTO (otherwise there would be 7 SRB steps rather than 6 SRB steps).

I think you're right. Although, that ACES has 68 t of hydrolox and 4x RL-10. If Centaur 5 has ~50 t and 2x RL-10 it will get more like 6.5 t to GTO without SRBs and about 13 t to GTO with 6x GEM-63XL, which would be enough to hit all the EELV reference payloads and orbits by my calcs.

6.5 t to GTO covers something like 80% of both NSS and commercial launches, potentially in the same ~$80M to $90M range as Ariane 62 and Proton. But they would still need either ACES or two SRBs to get all EELV orbits and to match Ariane 64 and FH, which I think bumps them well over $100M.

Offline envy887

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No, not NASA, Boeing. Boeing's customer is NASA, ULA's customer is Boeing. And Commercial Crew contracts would be considered "commercial" since they are not U.S. Government.
Where the money comes from is what matters.  The money is coming from the U.S. Government.
Quote
Regardless, Tory Bruno has stated that Vulcan will need commercial customers to be successful, and there is plenty of evidence to support his statements.
That's his plan, and I expect ULA to gain a few truly commercial satellite launches, but Vulcan is essentially being custom-designed to meet the needs of one government customer.  It will be less competitive for commercial launches than other launch systems that are not designed primarily to meet DoD/EELV requirements.  I know there are quotes from ULA's CEO about plans to compete for commercial satellite launches, but I could probably dig up similar quotes from 10 or 20 years ago from other CEOs who said the same, but did not produce serious action to follow the words.

Remember, when it comes to commercial GTO launches, ULA would be competing against not just U.S. launch companies, but against the entire planet, including providers in India, Europe, Russia, Japan, and probably China.  "Winning" such contracts may not be profitable in the long run.   

 - Ed Kyle

Winning those contracts would put them in a much better spot if and when Orbital and/or Blue get certified for NSS launches. The DoD isn't going to keep 3 or 4 companies afloat when they only need 2.

Offline envy887

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I think you're right. Although, that ACES has 68 t of hydrolox and 4x RL-10. If Centaur 5 has ~50 t and 2x RL-10 it will get more like 6.5 t to GTO without SRBs and about 13 t to GTO with 6x GEM-63XL, which would be enough to hit all the EELV reference payloads and orbits by my calcs.
To meet the EELV requirements list, Vulcan needs to lift 8.165 t to a GTO that is about 1,800 m/s short of GEO or 6.577 tonnes to GEO.  Those are the goals that I suspect Vulcan Centaur 5 is being designed to meet.

 - Ed Kyle

6+ t to GEO is by far the harder of those two requirements, and the Vulcan core with a 50 t dual RL-10 upper stage and six GEM-63XL can most likely do it with plenty of margin. They will need the SRBs, but that's no issue for NSS launches.

They can bring ACES in later and drop most (for GEO) or all (for GTO) of the SRBs for the same performance.

Offline russianhalo117

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I think you're right. Although, that ACES has 68 t of hydrolox and 4x RL-10. If Centaur 5 has ~50 t and 2x RL-10 it will get more like 6.5 t to GTO without SRBs and about 13 t to GTO with 6x GEM-63XL, which would be enough to hit all the EELV reference payloads and orbits by my calcs.
To meet the EELV requirements list, Vulcan needs to lift 8.165 t to a GTO that is about 1,800 m/s short of GEO or 6.577 tonnes to GEO.  Those are the goals that I suspect Vulcan Centaur 5 is being designed to meet.

 - Ed Kyle

6+ t to GEO is by far the harder of those two requirements, and the Vulcan core with a 50 t dual RL-10 upper stage and six GEM-63XL can most likely do it with plenty of margin. They will need the SRBs, but that's no issue for NSS launches.

They can bring ACES in later and drop most (for GEO) or all (for GTO) of the SRBs for the same performance.
Keep in mind that ULA considers the RL-10C series LRE's as the Vulcan Baseline for Centaur-5 and ACES. Keep in mind that they have not announced what will power these stages so really math needs to be done for not just RL-10 but also the LRE options.

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