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Antares
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« Reply #15 on: 04/27/2012 02:39 PM » |
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ULA dissapoints me, simply because they don't inspire me. Not to say ULA isn't a great company doing great things. Agreed. They have not been particularly innovative or forward thinking. In addition, they have not sought to change the game, but then again, there's been no driver for them to do so.
You need to be careful in the use of "they." It shouldn't refer to all of ULA. ULA is hamstrung by its parents (Boeing and Lockheed) shooting them in the back. There are a great many individual innovators at ULA. They publish a lot of papers, build a little new hardware, and would do much more if they could.
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go4mars
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« Reply #16 on: 04/27/2012 04:34 PM » |
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Mars.
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Jason1701
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« Reply #17 on: 04/27/2012 04:35 PM » |
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I stopped watching at 0:23 when I heard "... and on budget".
"on budget" is not a lie or a misrepresentation
Not if you continually increase the budget, no.
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FinalFrontier
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« Reply #18 on: 04/27/2012 04:42 PM » |
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I stopped watching at 0:23 when I heard "... and on budget".
"on budget" is not a lie or a misrepresentation
Not if you continually increase the budget, no.
Hard numbers would be appreciated because I disagree. Unless your referring to the missions that fly on ULA vehicles, that of course would be different, but those have nothing to do with ULA's costs at all.
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DavidH
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« Reply #20 on: 04/27/2012 04:53 PM » |
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To me ULA is less inspiring because (right or wrong):
1. "They" are 2 monopolistic giants who already control a huge swath of the market
2. combined to non-compete the entire thing and legally make it impossible for anyone else to play
3. and charge huge amounts of money to do so.
4. Weren't there people who've worked for ULA,Boeing,LM inside the gov't that were charged and convicted of collusion?
That boils down (for me) to the standard in today's Americana; corporate America is all about money, politics, and locking in the customer so they have no choice but to pay whatever is being asked.
How is that inspiring?
Whether they are over-priced can be bantered about all day, but cannot be proven. Their prices have gone up more than advertised, much like the Shuttle. Was that due to real technical issues or a business decision? Who can answer that for sure? But appearances are opportunistic to me, much like the current Russian prices per seat.
Call it belief without merit, if you will, but that is mine.
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jongoff
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« Reply #21 on: 04/27/2012 05:09 PM » |
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ULA dissapoints me, simply because they don't inspire me. Not to say ULA isn't a great company doing great things. Agreed. They have not been particularly innovative or forward thinking. In addition, they have not sought to change the game, but then again, there's been no driver for them to do so.
You need to be careful in the use of "they." It shouldn't refer to all of ULA. ULA is hamstrung by its parents (Boeing and Lockheed) shooting them in the back. There are a great many individual innovators at ULA. They publish a lot of papers, build a little new hardware, and would do much more if they could.
+10 I know of several ULA engineers who are under strict orders from their parent company to not even use certain words in public, at risk of their job. Now, Boeing and LM also have a lot of good people at them, trying to do innovative things, but the incentives structures in the relationship between ULA and its parent companies is almost entirely perverse. I know there's like -20% chance of this ever happening, but I'd love to see what ULA could do if Boeing and LM were forced to let ULA go public and sell off enough shares to get their combined ownership down below 50%. ~Jon
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brihath
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« Reply #22 on: 04/27/2012 05:19 PM » |
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ULA doesn't have to be inspiring. It does have to do the following:
-Deliver profits to the parent companies.
-Successfully deliver payloads to orbit.
-Attract new and recurring customers if they want to grow the business.
I believe it is doing these things currently. They are hamstrung somewhat because their parents are legacy companies with higher costs than the startups. In a recent article, AW&ST magazine noted they have cut costs through consolidation.
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Jim
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« Reply #23 on: 04/27/2012 05:24 PM » |
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I stopped watching at 0:23 when I heard "... and on budget".
"on budget" is not a lie or a misrepresentation
Not if you continually increase the budget, no.
Which is the case. On budget only applies to the cost of each vehicle. It has nothing to do with the difference in costs between vehicles.
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Jim
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« Reply #24 on: 04/27/2012 05:25 PM » |
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To me ULA is less inspiring because (right or wrong):
1. "They" are 2 monopolistic giants who already control a huge swath of the market
They are not monopolistic giants. and they do not control the market.
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Jim
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« Reply #25 on: 04/27/2012 05:27 PM » |
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4. Weren't there people who've worked for ULA,Boeing,LM inside the gov't that were charged and convicted of collusion?
Call it belief without merit, if you will, but that is mine.
It is without merit and with wrong information. It was not collusion. The was Boeing cheating on LM.
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kevin-rf
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« Reply #26 on: 04/27/2012 05:36 PM » |
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-Attract new and recurring customers if they want to grow the business.
I disagree with that point, ULA was formed because DOD needed assured access to space and there was not enough business to actually keep both launchers going. At the time of ULA's formation LM had been badly damaged by Boeing's behavior, and Boeing was threatening to cancel Delta IV due to lack of being able to be cost effective (both with LM damage liabilities and not being cost competitive with LM and the rest of the commercial launch industry (Proton,Ariane,Sealaunch)). ULA is assured access to space for US needs. btw. There is an interesting article on aviation week ( http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/AW_04_23_2012_p30-449639.xml&p=2 ) that while mostly about Orbital, points out that LM is getting ready to again market Atlas (subcontracting the launch services through ULA).
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spectre9
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« Reply #27 on: 04/27/2012 11:13 PM » |
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Secretive pricing. Only in it for the lucrative DOD contracts. Thank god they haven't lost any NASA probes though. They really do deserve a pat on the back for that. 
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oiorionsbelt
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« Reply #28 on: 04/27/2012 11:38 PM » |
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It would help the cause of Spaceflight in general if SpaceX could deliver like ULA and ULA could inspire like SpaceX?
ULA had a real shot at getting people inspired with ACES but it seems to have fizzled.
Slightly OT but has Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne ever launced anything, or do they make engines / components.
If the answer is no they never built and launched a rocket, doesn't that make their 'Noise' add a little hollow?
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strangequark
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« Reply #29 on: 04/28/2012 12:04 AM » |
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2). Because Elon Musk has more than a little Steve Jobs in him, and that's not a compliment.
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