Author Topic: ULA Vulcan Launch Vehicle - General Discussion Thread 2  (Read 592711 times)

Offline Coastal Ron

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Re: ULA Vulcan Launch Vehicle - General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #800 on: 04/02/2017 10:13 pm »
Rather than discuss how rockets were priced in the past, perhaps more relevant to Vulcan is how they will be priced when Vulcan is introduced.  Here would be my guess:

Stock commercial launch (LEO or GTO) = $50M.  Everyone will be able to do this, so the most competitive market.  Customers are also flexible here, helping their negotiating power.

Tory Bruno said in April of 2016 that they were targeting a base Vulcan with no boosters for $99M.  Though there will be plenty of other expendable rocket providers in the market, I don't know if this price will be enough for ULA to get enough commercial launch business to supplement their USG business.

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Government launch (LEO, GPS, comsat-like military satellites) = $100M.   There are extra costs for dealing with the government.  and not as much competition (SpaceX and ULA for sure, maybe Orbital and/or BO?).  Use the recent GPS contract as a guess.  You could imagine this is low (SpaceX is underbidding) or high (SpaceX can lower the price with re-use).

A far limited pool of competitors since it's pretty much just U.S. companies only.  This is the segment that ULA is already seeing competition bite into their backlog, since SpaceX has won two GPS contracts.  And once Falcon Heavy and their vertical integration capabilities are brought online SpaceX will be able to capture even more of this market.  However I don't think the USAF will let ULA get below a certain level of wins, and I support procurement strategies like that, but that will put even more pressure on ULA to find defendable markets somewhere else.

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High-end government launch = $250M.  Custom fairing, vertical integration, extra security, more mission assurance, etc.  Guessing here that the government will be willing to pay more per launch here, instead of payments for capability.  Their goal would be to get at least two bidders here, to help both reliability (in case of stand-down for one) and eventually help lower costs.

A base Delta IV Heavy probably starts about $375M, which is what NASA paid back in 2011 for the 2014 Orion EFT-1 flight.  USAF requirements will add onto that for USAF payloads, but it's the base price that is the starting point.  As a point of comparison SpaceX used to advertise an expendable Falcon Heavy for $135M, which should be able to compete with Delta IV Heavy, so that might be enough of a price difference to cause customers to reassess their requirements.

However there is no doubt ULA will have a significant competitive advantage for these types of payloads, and my guess has been that SpaceX would not go after the requirements-heavy part of this market.

Still, can ULA be the type of profitable company it's corporate parents want by only focusing on the high-end of the market?  Tory Bruno has said they need commercial launches in order to be successful, so they have to figure out how to lower that initial base price down far enough to attract commercial customers.

Can they?  And if so, how?
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 AncientU

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Re: ULA Vulcan Launch Vehicle - General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #801 on: 04/02/2017 10:37 pm »
ELC may be the make or break funding.
Currently, doesn't ELC sum to around $80-100M per launch?

Does it go away completely, or remain as a subsidy for launch capability?
Is the $99M basic Vulcan figure all inclusive?
"If we shared everything [we are working on] people would think we are insane!"
-- SpaceX friend of mlindner

Offline HIP2BSQRE

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Re: ULA Vulcan Launch Vehicle - General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #802 on: 04/02/2017 10:53 pm »
ELC may be the make or break funding.
Currently, doesn't ELC sum to around $80-100M per launch?

Does it go away completely, or remain as a subsidy for launch capability?
Is the $99M basic Vulcan figure all inclusive?

I thought that the ELC is going away?  Since if ULA gets an ELC, then SpaceX would argue where is mine. 
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=41374.20

Offline TrevorMonty

Costal Ron.

Did Tory say $99m or <$100m. There is a difference.


Offline Dante80

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Re: ULA Vulcan Launch Vehicle - General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #804 on: 04/03/2017 12:16 am »
Still, can ULA be the type of profitable company it's corporate parents want by only focusing on the high-end of the market?  Tory Bruno has said they need commercial launches in order to be successful, so they have to figure out how to lower that initial base price down far enough to attract commercial customers.

Can they?  And if so, how?

SMART re-use is designed to address that, together with rocketbuilder.

Offline Coastal Ron

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Re: ULA Vulcan Launch Vehicle - General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #805 on: 04/03/2017 01:52 am »
Costal Ron.

Did Tory say $99m or <$100m. There is a difference.

What Wikipedia references is:

United Launch Alliance to lay off up to 875 by end of 2017: CEO | Reuters

Relevant 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.

"Our prices are coming down every day," Bruno said. "We now talk about a $99 million launch service."
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 gospacex

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Re: ULA Vulcan Launch Vehicle - General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #806 on: 04/03/2017 02:04 am »
Going exclusively for the high-end, extreme reliability end of the market requires that your rockets almost literally never fail. This does not strike me as a sound strategy. You have a failure or two, and your customers start wondering "why, again, are we paying these guys x2 or more that what competition offers???"

Offline Space Ghost 1962

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Re: ULA Vulcan Launch Vehicle - General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #807 on: 04/03/2017 02:11 am »
Vulcan is the best direction for ULA as it can do. It uses all the fundable strengths, skills and capabilities to support its customer base as they have required. And it can be operated such that those customer expectations can be maintained over concurrent product lines, which is no mean feat.

Even harder on the workforce is the need to do this at comparative expenses to their rival, who does not have the same burdens. And why they have let go many good people.

That's the whole point of Vulcan. It's how ULA stays in business while gradually leaving two critical and successful LV families, which is mandatory for them to have a future. Vulcan is the third EELV.

There's not a lot more they have room to do - that choice is up to Lockheed and Boeing for more. Take your shortcomings to those two.

The separate question is how an EELV will fair with highly reused component LV's. It would seem that Boeing and Lockheed consider that secondary. That is fair game.

Am truly sorry they cannot act as an "also ran" as Musk's rival. But that's not the point.

Offline Coastal Ron

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Re: ULA Vulcan Launch Vehicle - General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #808 on: 04/03/2017 02:27 am »
Still, can ULA be the type of profitable company it's corporate parents want by only focusing on the high-end of the market?  Tory Bruno has said they need commercial launches in order to be successful, so they have to figure out how to lower that initial base price down far enough to attract commercial customers.

Can they?  And if so, how?

SMART re-use is designed to address that, together with rocketbuilder.

SMART is more of an untested technique than what either SpaceX or Blue Origin are already doing, and it addresses far less of the total cost of a rocket.  So I don't know how that would allow them to meet, or even beat, the prices of reusable rocket companies.

As to RocketBuilder, I put in a configuration for LEO with a 5m short fairing, and this is how they priced it:

Unmatched Reliability = $12M
Schedule Certainty = $23M
Orbit Optimization = $30M
Cost after added value = $55M

Total = $120M

For Vulcan, when it eventually becomes operational, they won't be able to justify $12M for "unmatched reliability" because it will obviously be a new transportation system that will need years to prove it's reliability.  And it's a distinct possibility at that point that Falcon 9 will be able to claim the mantel of "unmatched reliability" (or someone else), so justifying a surcharge of $12M will be difficult.

For "schedule certainty", that is obviously playing off the recent events that have hobbled SpaceX, but so far that has not caused a flood of customers to leave SpaceX, so that apparently is not a deciding factor as of today.  Plus, and this is probably the more important point, with reusable systems and fast turnaround, schedule certainty is more likely to happen.  And with Vulcan being new they can't really make that claim either, since they won't have enough history to back up such a claim - especially if they are charging $23M for it.

I'm not a rocket scientist, so I don't know how valid a claim the "orbit optimization" charge is, but since fuel is such a small part of the cost of a rocket I'd have to think that this won't be a competitive difference when Vulcan becomes operational.  It would be worth $30M to their competitors to solve this, so that's a lot of incentive.

And Rocketbuilder does not lower the cost of using a Vulcan, it only explains it in a public forum.  But customers today would get a much more detailed breakout of their costs (and ULA's justifications for them) than what Rocketbuilder can provide, so I think this is more of a marketing gimmick than something of value.

A reusable Falcon 9 is going to be in the range of $50M or less, so how will a $99M Vulcan compete?

This is why I don't see a profitable path forward for ULA unless they build a fully reusable 1st stage...
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 Coastal Ron

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Re: ULA Vulcan Launch Vehicle - General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #809 on: 04/03/2017 02:44 am »
Vulcan is the best direction for ULA as it can do. It uses all the fundable strengths, skills and capabilities to support its customer base as they have required. And it can be operated such that those customer expectations can be maintained over concurrent product lines, which is no mean feat.

ULA today can afford to just focus on their primary customer, since it provides the vast majority of their profit.

But Tory Bruno has stated that they will need commercial customers for Vulcan, and unfortunately the needs of the commercial marketplace in the 2020's will be different than what the government marketplace is today for them.

So how do they satisfy two different customer marketplaces with one product/service?
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 Kansan52

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Re: ULA Vulcan Launch Vehicle - General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #810 on: 04/03/2017 03:17 am »
Only based on reading posts here but the answer seems to be Vulcan will reduce costs while keeping a low failure rate. Couple the low failure rate with on-time launches you have the value add needed to justify (in the customer's mind) the higher cost per flight.

Only time will tell if the combo of lower costs and value add will bring in enough customers.

IMHO.

Offline ChrisWilson68

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Re: ULA Vulcan Launch Vehicle - General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #811 on: 04/03/2017 03:39 am »
SpaceX has been working on reliability and meeting schedules.  So far, they've been continuing to make changes to their launch system, and that has hurt them on both counts.  Going forward, they claim they won't be making more changes to the launcher after block 5 and that they will focus on getting the launch tempo up.  Being able to reuse boosters will help them a lot with that.  If SpaceX's efforts succeed, in a couple of years they'll have a long record of successful, on-time flights, and that record will only get longer over time.  That would make it impossible for ULA to charge a premium for reliability or schedule confidence.

So the ULA premiums for reliability and schedule can only be charged if SpaceX fails to meet its goals.  Having a business plan that relies on the competition failing is never a good sign.

Offline Newton_V

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Re: ULA Vulcan Launch Vehicle - General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #812 on: 04/03/2017 03:44 am »
Having a business plan that relies on the competition failing is never a good sign.

Couldn't agree more....

Offline HIP2BSQRE

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Re: ULA Vulcan Launch Vehicle - General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #813 on: 04/03/2017 03:57 am »
Still, can ULA be the type of profitable company it's corporate parents want by only focusing on the high-end of the market?  Tory Bruno has said they need commercial launches in order to be successful, so they have to figure out how to lower that initial base price down far enough to attract commercial customers.

Can they?  And if so, how?

SMART re-use is designed to address that, together with rocketbuilder.

SMART is more of an untested technique than what either SpaceX or Blue Origin are already doing, and it addresses far less of the total cost of a rocket.  So I don't know how that would allow them to meet, or even beat, the prices of reusable rocket companies.

As to RocketBuilder, I put in a configuration for LEO with a 5m short fairing, and this is how they priced it:

Unmatched Reliability = $12M
Schedule Certainty = $23M
Orbit Optimization = $30M
Cost after added value = $55M

Total = $120M

For Vulcan, when it eventually becomes operational, they won't be able to justify $12M for "unmatched reliability" because it will obviously be a new transportation system that will need years to prove it's reliability.  And it's a distinct possibility at that point that Falcon 9 will be able to claim the mantel of "unmatched reliability" (or someone else), so justifying a surcharge of $12M will be difficult.

For "schedule certainty", that is obviously playing off the recent events that have hobbled SpaceX, but so far that has not caused a flood of customers to leave SpaceX, so that apparently is not a deciding factor as of today.  Plus, and this is probably the more important point, with reusable systems and fast turnaround, schedule certainty is more likely to happen.  And with Vulcan being new they can't really make that claim either, since they won't have enough history to back up such a claim - especially if they are charging $23M for it.

I'm not a rocket scientist, so I don't know how valid a claim the "orbit optimization" charge is, but since fuel is such a small part of the cost of a rocket I'd have to think that this won't be a competitive difference when Vulcan becomes operational.  It would be worth $30M to their competitors to solve this, so that's a lot of incentive.

And Rocketbuilder does not lower the cost of using a Vulcan, it only explains it in a public forum.  But customers today would get a much more detailed breakout of their costs (and ULA's justifications for them) than what Rocketbuilder can provide, so I think this is more of a marketing gimmick than something of value.

A reusable Falcon 9 is going to be in the range of $50M or less, so how will a $99M Vulcan compete?

This is why I don't see a profitable path forward for ULA unless they build a fully reusable 1st stage...

Let's assume SpaceX does not lower the price...it is already one of the lowest price leaders but keeps it at $62m.  Vulcan is competitive in the govt contracts -- SpaceX just bid $90+m.  On the commercial side -unless customers are paying $90 million for a fully expendable f9 why would I go to ULA?  Don't forget ULA will also be competing with BO. 

Offline TrevorMonty

Costal Ron.

Did Tory say $99m or <$100m. There is a difference.

What Wikipedia references is:

United Launch Alliance to lay off up to 875 by end of 2017: CEO | Reuters

Relevant 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.

"Our prices are coming down every day," Bruno said. "We now talk about a $99 million launch service."

You will find this price is for Atlas 401, Tory stated while back they trying get Atlas down to $100m.  Pricing for Vulcan is yet to be made public, which is not surprising as they haven't down selected engines yet.

Offline Space Ghost 1962

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Re: ULA Vulcan Launch Vehicle - General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #815 on: 04/03/2017 05:17 am »
Vulcan is the best direction for ULA as it can do. It uses all the fundable strengths, skills and capabilities to support its customer base as they have required. And it can be operated such that those customer expectations can be maintained over concurrent product lines, which is no mean feat.

ULA today can afford to just focus on their primary customer, since it provides the vast majority of their profit.

But Tory Bruno has stated that they will need commercial customers for Vulcan, and unfortunately the needs of the commercial marketplace in the 2020's will be different than what the government marketplace is today for them.

So how do they satisfy two different customer marketplaces with one product/service?
They are closer with Vulcan than with the combination of Atlas Delta they are currently selling.

Priorities here. ULA first needs to be ULA with a current ULA product that has a future.

There are still customers for that, just like there are customers for Ariane. They are not going away.

What you are talking about is addressing the longer term competitive landscape, where SX hasn't yet made economics work. That is a business yet to happen.

Everyone likes to get ahead, because that's exciting. But SX is not in the same position as ULA. ULA is a mature provider, SX is a rival with a compelling story in the future, with exciting things happening in the present.

SX is influencing pricing with this. This will increasingly pressure ULA and other providers. But it does not forestall them.

Don't get the cart before the horse. Also, don't count ULA out. It is wise to have concerns for the future.

You've seen what happens with SX/BO failures - they roll back the future years. The worst that has happened for ULA has been some anomalies.

I'm one of the bigger critics of ULA. And advocates of the effects of reuse to increase launch frequency. For decades. Won't defend Gass or the parents or some decisions of the past, although understand them.

Given what they are doing, in the situation they have to work with ... they cannot do much better.

This year looks like they'll turn the corner on Vulcan. They are a powerful launch provider. And they'll get better at being a competitor against all providers including SX.

Offline Brovane

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Re: ULA Vulcan Launch Vehicle - General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #816 on: 04/03/2017 11:42 am »

Let's assume SpaceX does not lower the price...it is already one of the lowest price leaders but keeps it at $62m.  Vulcan is competitive in the govt contracts -- SpaceX just bid $90+m.  On the commercial side -unless customers are paying $90 million for a fully expendable f9 why would I go to ULA?  Don't forget ULA will also be competing with BO.

It always just about price, it could be the timing of the launch.  For example, OA-7 was procured from ULA because they could offer very quick turn around from procurement to launch.  SpaceX doesn't currently have room on their manifest for quick turn around launches like this. 
"Look at that! If anybody ever said, "you'll be sitting in a spacecraft naked with a 134-pound backpack on your knees charging it", I'd have said "Aw, get serious". - John Young - Apollo-16

Offline GWH

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Re: ULA Vulcan Launch Vehicle - General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #817 on: 04/03/2017 05:28 pm »
Tough to find the correct place to put this, but it does relate to cost-cutting for the RL-10 that could see it being used on ACES.  AJR tests full scale 3D printed thrust chamber:
http://spaceref.biz/company/aerojet-rocketdyne-tests-full-scale-rl10-3-d-prine-copper-thrust-chamber-assembly.html

Offline TrevorMonty

Tough to find the correct place to put this, but it does relate to cost-cutting for the RL-10 that could see it being used on ACES.  AJR tests full scale 3D printed thrust chamber:
http://spaceref.biz/company/aerojet-rocketdyne-tests-full-scale-rl10-3-d-prine-copper-thrust-chamber-assembly.html
The RL10 is still one of contenders for ACES along with ULA funded XCOR engine and Blue BE3U. I think it is really between RL10 and XCOR engine as all of ACES pictures have 4 engine.


Offline jongoff

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Re: ULA Vulcan Launch Vehicle - General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #819 on: 04/03/2017 06:52 pm »
Seems like they would need a minimum of 5 engines on the core to use the middle engine for throttling down to land a booster.  5 engines is close to New Glenn.  Otherwise, they could use the old RS-27 or H-1 engine from Saturn I and Delta II on a larger core like SpaceX.  They are going to eventually have to get away from the Russian engines.  Newer engines being developed by SpaceX and Blue Origin are metholox engines at around 500,000 lbs + thrust.  I don't know if they have even started on the AR-1, and it is also a 500k thrust engine.

They can also go with smaller landing engines. Ursa Major and Masten are both working on LOX/Methane engines in the 25klbf class (staged combustion for Ursa and expander cycle for Masten). There's nothing that says you have to use all the same engine size, especially if there are other customers for that engine size to keep the production rates up.

~Jon
How much thrust would Vulcan need for landing burn ie how many 25k engines would be needed.
Deorbit burn could be done by BE4s.

Not sure to be honest. But my SWAG is that you're probably talking about 2-4, depending on how much redundancy you want, and how high of a stage T/W ratio you want during landing, and whether you want to come in tail-end first like Space-X, or sideways ala DTAL (there are good arguments for both, though for DTAL you'd probably 8x slightly smaller engines).

~Jon

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