Author Topic: NASA Announces New Rover to Close Out Decade of New Missions  (Read 95919 times)

Offline cleonard

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Re: NASA Announces New Rover to Close Out Decade of New Missions
« Reply #140 on: 12/07/2012 07:28 pm »

...Viking lander only weighed 0.6 tons plus 0.5 tons for heat shield..     

How much did the Viking cruise stage, eer orbiter weigh again? That is why it flew on a Titan! If you had separated the two, it could have flown on smaller rockets, maybe.

Out of interest would the Falcon 9 be capable of launching this rover along with its EDL and cruise stage?

A bit more directly the answer is no.  The mass sent to Mars for MSL was a bit under 4000kg.  The Falcon 9 can't even launch that out of earth orbit let alone the extra energy to get to Mars.  It's just not powerful enough.  The max for a typical Mars trajectory is more like 2000kg.

At one time the Falcon Heavy was advertised to be able to send 10,000kg on a Mars trajectory.  I have a feeling that is a bit optimistic, but time will tell.  If you could actually send that much mass it could launch two MSL's and still have enough mass capability left over for a telecom orbiter.

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Re: NASA Announces New Rover to Close Out Decade of New Missions
« Reply #141 on: 12/07/2012 08:28 pm »
That's a good point and by then the FH should have clocked up enough flights to prove its reliability for such a mission.
For the just announced next rover, Falcon (9 or Heavy) needs to be Nuclear certified.

I would guess that's an involved process?

It is. It's also rather expensive. And I think that it also has to be essentially amended for each vehicle/spacecraft configuration. For instance, if New Horizons flies on the Atlas with its RTG on the left side and MSL flies on the Atlas with its RTG on the right side, they have to do assessments for each, because in one case a launch failure might result in the RTG falling in the ocean and another it might result in the RTG falling on Titusville (not that anybody would care, because it's Titusville).

I'm on somewhat dangerous (i.e. ignorant) ground here, and Jim probably knows better because he actually deals with integration issues. But a few years ago while working on the RPS study I did hear someone discuss for a few minutes what is involved in nuclear certifying a launch vehicle as well as a specific launch. Essentially it is a very careful analysis of all the failure modes on the vehicle and how they would impact the RTG all the way into orbit. It's engineering analysis and certification, and that's expensive. So once you do it for a vehicle, you have sunk a lot of cost into that, and you don't want to have to do that again for a completely new vehicle unless you cannot help it.

Now I vaguely remember that the process for certification for a launch is called NEPA, although the only letter I can figure out is N for "Nuclear." I believe (again, vague memory) that the process for getting NEPA certification for a launch takes something like two years and it costs something like $10 million. That is not small change when you have a cost-capped mission.

If Falcon is a successful vehicle and if it is significantly cheaper than Atlas and becomes available for planetary missions, I am sure that they will probably certify it for nuclear payloads. The planetary science community is being eaten alive by launch vehicle costs, and they long for the return of the Delta II or something in that cost range. So they (NASA and the scientists) would definitely want to switch, even if that required sinking money into nuclear certifying a new vehicle.

Offline Dalhousie

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Re: NASA Announces New Rover to Close Out Decade of New Missions
« Reply #142 on: 12/07/2012 08:47 pm »
Quote
The planetary science community is being eaten alive by launch vehicle costs, and they long for the return of the Delta II or something in that cost range. So they (NASA and the scientists) would definitely want to switch, even if that required sinking money into nuclear certifying a new vehicle.

Is this true though?  Launch costs are 5-10% of a planetary mission and well understood.  It is the spacecraft that are expensive and most likely to suffer unreasonable cost growth.
« Last Edit: 12/07/2012 09:04 pm by Dalhousie »
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Re: NASA Announces New Rover to Close Out Decade of New Missions
« Reply #143 on: 12/08/2012 01:46 pm »
Is this true though?  Launch costs are 5-10% of a planetary mission and well understood.  It is the spacecraft that are expensive and most likely to suffer unreasonable cost growth.

It is absolutely true. Consider that a Discovery class mission is approximately $500 million (recent ones have been in the $425-$450 million range). Launch vehicle costs are running $150 million. That is way more than 5-10% of the cost. And it means that three rockets are the equivalent of another mission.

NASA did some budgetary shuffling to alleviate the direct pressure on individual programs by removing the vehicle cost from the Discovery and New Frontiers program caps. The reason was that vehicle costs were rising so fast that they were killing the principal investigators doing the missions. Suppose you are a PI on a Discovery mission and when you start building your spacecraft your Delta II is only going to cost $70 million, but by the time you get ready to launch, it has increased by $20 million. That has carved out $20 million that you could have used for your spacecraft. (Jim might have better numbers on this, but Delta II costs increased dramatically. I think that they more than doubled in a decade. Delta II was running at something like $60-$65 million in 2000, and probably like $120 million by 2009, as the result of the phase-out. Once it was phased out, even if you had a small spacecraft, you had to stick it atop a $150 million Atlas. And if you think this is bad, consider people in the Earth sciences and heliophysics, where they typically build a spacecraft for $250 million. You think they want to spend $150 million on a launch vehicle?)

There are several recent missions, including Juno and New Horizons, that got slammed by those increases--not only Delta II going up in cost, but being forced to shift from a Delta II to the more expensive Atlas V because DII was being phased out.

What NASA did in response was to lower the cost cap for the spacecraft (I don't know by how much) and remove the launch cost from the cap limit. That gave the PI less money, but insulated them from increasing launch vehicle costs. However, you can figure this out--NASA still had to pay the rising costs of the launch vehicles, so they ultimately do less missions.

If you look in any report about the planetary science program produced in the last five years you will find that they discuss the negative impact of rising launch costs. It is a very big deal.
« Last Edit: 12/08/2012 01:51 pm by Blackstar »

Offline ugordan

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Re: NASA Announces New Rover to Close Out Decade of New Missions
« Reply #144 on: 12/08/2012 01:53 pm »
There are several recent missions, including Juno and New Horizons, that got slammed by those increases--not only Delta II going up in cost, but being forced to shift from a Delta II to the more expensive Atlas V because DII was being phased out.

I find it hard to believe that either one of those two missions could have launched on Delta II in the first place, given their mass and C3 requirements. What am I missing here?

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Re: NASA Announces New Rover to Close Out Decade of New Missions
« Reply #145 on: 12/08/2012 03:20 pm »
There are several recent missions, including Juno and New Horizons, that got slammed by those increases--not only Delta II going up in cost, but being forced to shift from a Delta II to the more expensive Atlas V because DII was being phased out.

I find it hard to believe that either one of those two missions could have launched on Delta II in the first place, given their mass and C3 requirements. What am I missing here?

I was referring to other missions that have had to move from Delta II to Atlas V.

Cost increases happened to Delta II, they happened to Atlas V, and the retirement of the Delta II forced a transition to the more expensive Atlas V.

Offline Khadgars

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Re: NASA Announces New Rover to Close Out Decade of New Missions
« Reply #146 on: 12/08/2012 03:49 pm »
There are several recent missions, including Juno and New Horizons, that got slammed by those increases--not only Delta II going up in cost, but being forced to shift from a Delta II to the more expensive Atlas V because DII was being phased out.

I find it hard to believe that either one of those two missions could have launched on Delta II in the first place, given their mass and C3 requirements. What am I missing here?

I was referring to other missions that have had to move from Delta II to Atlas V.

Cost increases happened to Delta II, they happened to Atlas V, and the retirement of the Delta II forced a transition to the more expensive Atlas V.

Interesting, I didn't know that.  Any likelihood of using Falcon 9 or is it far too early for them to trust it at this point?
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Re: NASA Announces New Rover to Close Out Decade of New Missions
« Reply #147 on: 12/08/2012 06:15 pm »
Interesting, I didn't know that.  Any likelihood of using Falcon 9 or is it far too early for them to trust it at this point?

Too early.

They would like to use Falcon 9, assuming that it can hit its promised cost goals and reliability. But it has to demonstrate a number of successful missions before it will be accepted on the NASA launch services contract.

Offline stone

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Re: NASA Announces New Rover to Close Out Decade of New Missions
« Reply #148 on: 12/08/2012 06:24 pm »
Even if they can use MSL spare parts it will be challenging to stay below 1.5 G$. For me this sounds like: Do not change anything which means significant cost increase.

Changing from MMRTG to anything different must be cheap, which I doubt is the case.

Instruments should come from Nasa spare parts or from other countries, because they do not cost anything for Nasa.

Risky things like change to new technologies increases the cost risk and will not be done.

Is this what will happen?

For me it is good, I am happy to be part in a DLR financed instrument like MOMA or another LD-MD GC-MS Instrument which will be not to low on the list for the 2020 rover.


Offline stone

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Re: NASA Announces New Rover to Close Out Decade of New Missions
« Reply #149 on: 12/08/2012 06:26 pm »
Grunsfeld asked in his talk for voluntiers for the science definition team for the new rover and a few hands were raised. (more of  joke) In this process a more astrobiology rover or a more geology rover or a more geophysics rover might be  the outcome strongly depending on the group selected to do the science definition.

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Re: NASA Announces New Rover to Close Out Decade of New Missions
« Reply #150 on: 12/08/2012 08:50 pm »
Grunsfeld asked in his talk for voluntiers for the science definition team for the new rover and a few hands were raised. (more of  joke) In this process a more astrobiology rover or a more geology rover or a more geophysics rover might be  the outcome strongly depending on the group selected to do the science definition.

It's going to end up as astrobiology with sample caching for future Mars sample return. There is no way that they can build this rover and not have caching and still satisfy the Mars community. The Mars community is pretty united in support of sample return.

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Re: NASA Announces New Rover to Close Out Decade of New Missions
« Reply #151 on: 12/08/2012 09:00 pm »
Even if they can use MSL spare parts it will be challenging to stay below 1.5 G$. For me this sounds like: Do not change anything which means significant cost increase.

Figuring out the exact cost for Curiosity is probably a little difficult because you have to adjust for inflation. I do not know if anybody have adjusted the cost for 2012 year dollars, but the total cost has been stated as $2.5 billion. The cost of the 2020 rover is expressed in 2015 dollars.

The Mars Program Planning Group used the same contractor (Aerospace Corp) and the same CATE process that we used in the planetary decadal survey. This rover had an estimated cost (in FY2015 dollars) of $1.3-$1.7 billion, so NASA is quoting the middle of that range.

I think that we can have reasonable confidence in their numbers. Several things drove up the cost of Curiosity and those things should not happen this time. Missing the 2009 launch window cost them over $400 million. If you assume that they do not miss their launch window, that should cut the cost to $2.1 billion. Now assume that they do not make any of the mistakes or other bad choices that they made before (because they know what the right decision is). That probably eliminates another couple hundred million dollars. The rest of the reduction compared to Curiosity's cost comes from a) the spare parts that they have, and b) no need for designing major parts of the system, and probably reduced amounts of testing.

But then you have to add in the cost of inflation, add in the cost of any changes to the instrument suite, add in the costs of getting new suppliers in case some have gone out of business, and probably a few more things.

Re-using the Curiosity design should save them a fair amount of money. The only big issue would be if some of the subcontractors have gone away and need to be replaced.


Offline Eric Hedman

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Re: NASA Announces New Rover to Close Out Decade of New Missions
« Reply #152 on: 12/08/2012 09:37 pm »
Grunsfeld asked in his talk for voluntiers for the science definition team for the new rover and a few hands were raised. (more of  joke) In this process a more astrobiology rover or a more geology rover or a more geophysics rover might be  the outcome strongly depending on the group selected to do the science definition.

It's going to end up as astrobiology with sample caching for future Mars sample return. There is no way that they can build this rover and not have caching and still satisfy the Mars community. The Mars community is pretty united in support of sample return.
If caching is involved, I am assuming that selecting a landing site for this rover pretty much also means picking the landing site for the followup sample return mission.  If so, what limits does this put on site selections?  Latitude?  Terrain?  Elevation of site?

Offline Star One

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Re: NASA Announces New Rover to Close Out Decade of New Missions
« Reply #153 on: 12/08/2012 10:03 pm »
Is this true though?  Launch costs are 5-10% of a planetary mission and well understood.  It is the spacecraft that are expensive and most likely to suffer unreasonable cost growth.

It is absolutely true. Consider that a Discovery class mission is approximately $500 million (recent ones have been in the $425-$450 million range). Launch vehicle costs are running $150 million. That is way more than 5-10% of the cost. And it means that three rockets are the equivalent of another mission.

NASA did some budgetary shuffling to alleviate the direct pressure on individual programs by removing the vehicle cost from the Discovery and New Frontiers program caps. The reason was that vehicle costs were rising so fast that they were killing the principal investigators doing the missions. Suppose you are a PI on a Discovery mission and when you start building your spacecraft your Delta II is only going to cost $70 million, but by the time you get ready to launch, it has increased by $20 million. That has carved out $20 million that you could have used for your spacecraft. (Jim might have better numbers on this, but Delta II costs increased dramatically. I think that they more than doubled in a decade. Delta II was running at something like $60-$65 million in 2000, and probably like $120 million by 2009, as the result of the phase-out. Once it was phased out, even if you had a small spacecraft, you had to stick it atop a $150 million Atlas. And if you think this is bad, consider people in the Earth sciences and heliophysics, where they typically build a spacecraft for $250 million. You think they want to spend $150 million on a launch vehicle?)

There are several recent missions, including Juno and New Horizons, that got slammed by those increases--not only Delta II going up in cost, but being forced to shift from a Delta II to the more expensive Atlas V because DII was being phased out.

What NASA did in response was to lower the cost cap for the spacecraft (I don't know by how much) and remove the launch cost from the cap limit. That gave the PI less money, but insulated them from increasing launch vehicle costs. However, you can figure this out--NASA still had to pay the rising costs of the launch vehicles, so they ultimately do less missions.

If you look in any report about the planetary science program produced in the last five years you will find that they discuss the negative impact of rising launch costs. It is a very big deal.

This has been all very informative. But what have been the factors in driving up launch costs in recent years, why have launchers become so expensive?

Offline Dalhousie

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Re: NASA Announces New Rover to Close Out Decade of New Missions
« Reply #154 on: 12/09/2012 01:24 am »
Is this true though?  Launch costs are 5-10% of a planetary mission and well understood.  It is the spacecraft that are expensive and most likely to suffer unreasonable cost growth.

It is absolutely true. Consider that a Discovery class mission is approximately $500 million (recent ones have been in the $425-$450 million range). Launch vehicle costs are running $150 million. That is way more than 5-10% of the cost. And it means that three rockets are the equivalent of another mission.

NASA did some budgetary shuffling to alleviate the direct pressure on individual programs by removing the vehicle cost from the Discovery and New Frontiers program caps. The reason was that vehicle costs were rising so fast that they were killing the principal investigators doing the missions. Suppose you are a PI on a Discovery mission and when you start building your spacecraft your Delta II is only going to cost $70 million, but by the time you get ready to launch, it has increased by $20 million. That has carved out $20 million that you could have used for your spacecraft. (Jim might have better numbers on this, but Delta II costs increased dramatically. I think that they more than doubled in a decade. Delta II was running at something like $60-$65 million in 2000, and probably like $120 million by 2009, as the result of the phase-out. Once it was phased out, even if you had a small spacecraft, you had to stick it atop a $150 million Atlas. And if you think this is bad, consider people in the Earth sciences and heliophysics, where they typically build a spacecraft for $250 million. You think they want to spend $150 million on a launch vehicle?)

There are several recent missions, including Juno and New Horizons, that got slammed by those increases--not only Delta II going up in cost, but being forced to shift from a Delta II to the more expensive Atlas V because DII was being phased out.

What NASA did in response was to lower the cost cap for the spacecraft (I don't know by how much) and remove the launch cost from the cap limit. That gave the PI less money, but insulated them from increasing launch vehicle costs. However, you can figure this out--NASA still had to pay the rising costs of the launch vehicles, so they ultimately do less missions.

If you look in any report about the planetary science program produced in the last five years you will find that they discuss the negative impact of rising launch costs. It is a very big deal.

Thanks for this.  I was thinking of MSL where the launch cost is (or was) only about 5%.  But spacecraft cost is still the biggest component, and this suggests that it might be better to ry and reduce costs with these for a bigger impact.
Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

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Re: NASA Announces New Rover to Close Out Decade of New Missions
« Reply #155 on: 12/09/2012 02:35 am »
Thanks for this.  I was thinking of MSL where the launch cost is (or was) only about 5%.  But spacecraft cost is still the biggest component, and this suggests that it might be better to ry and reduce costs with these for a bigger impact.

Of course the biggest impact is going to be on the cheapest spacecraft. Discovery and New Frontiers have taken hits. We could undoubtedly afford more Discovery missions if we still had an inexpensive Delta II.

I grabbed this out of a Space News article on heliophysics missions:

"Explorer missions are led by a single scientist called a principal investigator. These cost-capped, competitively selected missions typically have a budget of $120 million to $180 million, including launch. Heliophysics and astronomy once shared a common Explorer budget account, but beginning in 2012 the two disciplines got separate Explorer budget lines."

I don't know what kinds of rockets Explorer missions use, but if they have to go on an Atlas V, which costs around $150 million, you can see that up to half of the mission cost could be the launch vehicle.

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Re: NASA Announces New Rover to Close Out Decade of New Missions
« Reply #156 on: 12/09/2012 02:51 am »
This has been all very informative. But what have been the factors in driving up launch costs in recent years, why have launchers become so expensive?

I don't know this all that well. Jim might know, if he is reading this thread.

There are several factors that I know of. Delta II infrastructure costs (like the pad) were covered by the USAF and so NASA really only had to pay for the launch vehicle. For reasons I don't understand, the Delta II costs started going up before the USAF stopped using the Delta II. They rose pretty rapidly too. Now I think I read somewhere that in some ways Delta II costs were actually artificially high because USAF had a rapid-launch requirement for Delta II in order to replace sick GPS satellites. That meant that they kept full crews on contract, etc. If USAF had dropped that requirement, then Boeing could have run a more efficient infrastructure for Delta II and the costs would have been lower for USAF. But once USAF decided not to cover the infrastructure costs at all, NASA got hit with the full expense. Like USAF, NASA moved to the Atlas V. USAF covers the infrastructure costs on Atlas and Delta, and NASA goes along for the ride.

Atlas V and Delta IV costs started increasing rapidly several years ago. I don't know why. United Launch Alliance claims that the reason has to do with the "unfair" (my word, but that's what they imply) way in which the government contracts with them. There is some kind of requirement that they be able to guarantee costs and capabilities many years in advance, and this leads to ULA high-balling the costs to cover the possibility that things might be expensive for them and eat into their profit margin. I don't know about it, don't understand it. Lots of people claim that it really comes down to ULA having a monopoly on launches for the US government, so they can charge whatever the heck they want and don't need to try and keep things inexpensive. The recent announcement by USAF that they will buy at least three Falcon 9 launches in the next several years may help to break this monopoly. We'll see.

But I'd rather not turn this into a discussion of the Falcon 9. As you may have seen elsewhere on this site, some people here think that the Falcon 9 has magical powers and can defeat Voldemoort, and I'm a little tired of their... enthusiasm.

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Re: NASA Announces New Rover to Close Out Decade of New Missions
« Reply #157 on: 12/09/2012 03:07 am »
If caching is involved, I am assuming that selecting a landing site for this rover pretty much also means picking the landing site for the followup sample return mission.  If so, what limits does this put on site selections?  Latitude?  Terrain?  Elevation of site?

Yeah, I think that's probably true. After all, the rover is not going to travel that far during its operations, so you're probably going to have to land the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) within a few tens of kilometers of the rover landing site at most.

I don't know the answers, however. The Mars Ascent Vehicle shouldn't necessarily require a skycrane. If you go to the planetary decadal website you can find the MAV mission study there (actually, this is the NASA site that contains all of those studies):

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/2013decadal/whitepapers.cfm?Category=MS

You want the "Lander" study. Also the 2018 opportunity skycrane study. See also the MAX-C and Orbiter studies as well.

I would bet that these will not answer your questions. They were quick studies, not exhaustive. Not sure who could answer your questions. Sorry.

I do know the guy who co-chaired the Curiosity landing site selection team. He may eventually (if he has not already) produce a paper on how they made their selection. They narrowed down the sites according to basic engineering parameters and science, then gave the final set to JPL and let the program team make the final site selection based upon engineering considerations. I remember him saying that all four sites were excellent, but he was biased towards two of them, one of which was Gale Crater. He said he would have been happy with any of the four. (I think that after they missed the 2009 window the site selection team went back and added a site to the list that they had already narrowed. They did this because they had more time. Then they eliminated that new addition.)

My guess is that the four that they selected for Curiosity would be near the top of the list for the next rover, although there is probably a difference between "Which site would you select for Curiosity with its instruments?" and "Which site would you pick for gathering samples for return to Earth?" Lots of things could enter into that latter equation. For instance, you might want a broader range of samples rather than a high probability of getting just one kind of sample. And Curiosity's findings would also affect that as well. If it discovers something very interesting, we just might send the 2020 rover back to Gale Crater. Considering the increased complexity, they might start thinking about site selection now!


Offline Dalhousie

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Re: NASA Announces New Rover to Close Out Decade of New Missions
« Reply #158 on: 12/09/2012 04:58 am »
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/2013decadal/whitepapers.cfm?Category=MS
If it discovers something very interesting, we just might send the 2020 rover back to Gale Crater. Considering the increased complexity, they might start thinking about site selection now!

Which is why it's a shame that the caching capability was left of Curosity (to contain cost, as I understand)
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Offline LegendCJS

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Re: NASA Announces New Rover to Close Out Decade of New Missions
« Reply #159 on: 12/09/2012 05:00 am »
This has been all very informative. But what have been the factors in driving up launch costs in recent years, why have launchers become so expensive?

I don't know this all that well. Jim might know, if he is reading this thread.

There are several factors that I know of. Delta II infrastructure costs (like the pad) were covered by the USAF and so NASA really only had to pay for the launch vehicle. For reasons I don't understand, the Delta II costs started going up before the USAF stopped using the Delta II. They rose pretty rapidly too. Now I think I read somewhere that in some ways Delta II costs were actually artificially high because USAF had a rapid-launch requirement for Delta II in order to replace sick GPS satellites. That meant that they kept full crews on contract, etc. If USAF had dropped that requirement, then Boeing could have run a more efficient infrastructure for Delta II and the costs would have been lower for USAF. But once USAF decided not to cover the infrastructure costs at all, NASA got hit with the full expense. Like USAF, NASA moved to the Atlas V. USAF covers the infrastructure costs on Atlas and Delta, and NASA goes along for the ride.

Atlas V and Delta IV costs started increasing rapidly several years ago. I don't know why. United Launch Alliance claims that the reason has to do with the "unfair" (my word, but that's what they imply) way in which the government contracts with them. There is some kind of requirement that they be able to guarantee costs and capabilities many years in advance, and this leads to ULA high-balling the costs to cover the possibility that things might be expensive for them and eat into their profit margin. I don't know about it, don't understand it. Lots of people claim that it really comes down to ULA having a monopoly on launches for the US government, so they can charge whatever the heck they want and don't need to try and keep things inexpensive. The recent announcement by USAF that they will buy at least three Falcon 9 launches in the next several years may help to break this monopoly. We'll see.

But I'd rather not turn this into a discussion of the Falcon 9. As you may have seen elsewhere on this site, some people here think that the Falcon 9 has magical powers and can defeat Voldemoort, and I'm a little tired of their... enthusiasm.
I had read that there was a kind of backdoor supplement for years helping to indirectly keep ULA costs down in the form of NASA payments for engine support for the Space Shuttle, but no one realized it.  When the Shuttle program wound down the ULA costs saw a spike.  This was a surprise to everyone because for years the Air Force had been feeling sore that they were the only ones supplementing ULA costs through the infrastructure payments, but after the NASA engine supplement cost spike both NASA and the Air Force realized that things had been more fair all along in terms of both parties supplementing the launch costs.

Just goes to show how black box the whole operation is.  No wonder it has its detractors.
« Last Edit: 12/09/2012 08:00 pm by LegendCJS »
Remember: if we want this whole space thing to work out we have to optimize for cost!

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