Curious what the "minor upgrades" to IVF he mentioned are.
Quote from: Sknowball on 02/27/2018 10:17 pmCurious what the "minor upgrades" to IVF he mentioned are.I wonder if adding a little hybrid in, and some batteries might be interesting optimisation, to optimise for an efficient power point on the engine. Lithium batteries have come a moderate way since the inception of ACES.I suppose a tiny electric turbopumped engine doesn't make sense?
A very strange suggestion. The RL10 already has a turbopump, powered by expanding LH2. Where would the electric power even come from?
Tory Bruno stated today that ACES first launch is now targeted for 2023-2024.Question: So how’s ACES looking? What year might it fly, and with what engines?Tory Bruno: Good. IVF, which makes it an ACES, is going through a minor upgrade. Looking at 2023-4. No decisions yet on enginesThis is a change to the statement from a year ago which was First flight in 2022-23.Curious what the "minor upgrades" to IVF he mentioned are.
Trace-ability. Need to keep changes isolated to prove Centaur V retains Centaur 3 qualities/capabilities unalloyed (change management)Part of how "Atlas Centaur" is refined into "Vulcan Centaur". As opposed to being just different and potentially more flawed.Issue with IVF all along has been "too different". Contradiction of risking "more better" and getting unacceptable "worse" like AMOS 6 pad failure. By accident.Benefit of Centaur V for doing IVF is greater scope/capability of improvement, ability to fit improvement into use given need.Best part of "Vulcan Centaur" for IVF/ACES: that having one launcher, one US, to cover all immediate needs ... means its the unavoidable next step in capability/economics.
Easier to get DOD certification with Centuar V if using flight proven systems from existing Centuar. They need performance of Centuar V to retire D4H.
There is a simple answer to the slow walk to IVF. ULA does not have enough budget to implement IVF from the parents in one go. So is doing it piecemeal fashion.
@john smith 19 is properly worry about the pace of IVF implementation by ULA. It might just be a niche player or less by then.
This ongoing delay over IVF baffles me. It's not just the projected 1/2 tonne improvement in payload (a lot of LV's would quite like that). It's the shedload of time, staff and money spent fitting all those separate boxes and tanks (and the wiring and pipes to connect them) Vs a minimum of connections to two pre assembled units (potentially built in much cleaner environments than being assembled on the factory floor).These scream "massive cost savings to ULA" yet 2023 will be about 9 years since ULA's first IVF paper. It almost seems by the time IVF flies the whole idea will be out of patent. I'd be very surprised if other companies were not paying close attention to the concept, if not actively developing their own versions, albeit at a low level of investment.
What I cannot get my head around is the complete lack of on orbit testing any of the IVF components by now. I find it very hard to believe it's impossible to test any of the parts of the system in a way that's a)Affordable to ULA and b) Satisfies the safety concerns of at least some of it's payload customers. Surely this is the way to bring about "risk reduction."
Quote from: john smith 19 on 03/03/2018 11:15 amThis ongoing delay over IVF baffles me. It's not just the projected 1/2 tonne improvement in payload (a lot of LV's would quite like that). It's the shedload of time, staff and money spent fitting all those separate boxes and tanks (and the wiring and pipes to connect them) Vs a minimum of connections to two pre assembled units (potentially built in much cleaner environments than being assembled on the factory floor).These scream "massive cost savings to ULA" yet 2023 will be about 9 years since ULA's first IVF paper. It almost seems by the time IVF flies the whole idea will be out of patent. I'd be very surprised if other companies were not paying close attention to the concept, if not actively developing their own versions, albeit at a low level of investment. Here's a 2009 paper describing IVF and referencing it as "in development", the first paper from ULA I could find that mentions this. So at least 14 years of development for an idea that is not all that complex, by space standards.I agree that the delay seems really counter-productive. I understand the parents are penny-pinchers, but spending a (smaller) amount to reduce the on-going costs seems like a winning idea, and they could certainly afford it. Right now seems like the worst of all possible development paths, spending the money and engineering time to make prototypes and then never even trying them.
JV's don't cope with the future very well. The financial horizon is always "now".
Quote from: Space Ghost 1962 on 03/03/2018 11:00 pmJV's don't cope with the future very well. The financial horizon is always "now".Yeah, that's the fundamental problem. ULA's best odds for survival are if it can find a way to move beyond the Boeing/LM JV governance model. I just wish I knew how to do that. I've got a few ideas, but they're all long-shots.~Jon
Quote from: Space Ghost 1962 on 03/03/2018 11:00 pmJV's don't cope with the future very well. The financial horizon is always "now".Yeah, that's the fundamental problem. ULA's best odds for survival are if it can find a way to move beyond the Boeing/LM JV governance model.
Here's a 2009 paper describing IVF and referencing it as "in development", the first paper from ULA I could find that mentions this. So at least 14 years of development for an idea that is not all that complex, by space standards.
I agree that the delay seems really counter-productive. I understand the parents are penny-pinchers, but spending a (smaller) amount to reduce the on-going costs seems like a winning idea, and they could certainly afford it. Right now seems like the worst of all possible development paths, spending the money and engineering time to make prototypes and then never even trying them.
Yeah, that's the fundamental problem. ULA's best odds for survival are if it can find a way to move beyond the Boeing/LM JV governance model. I just wish I knew how to do that. I've got a few ideas, but they're all long-shots.~Jon
Short answer - they don't want to wreck a perfect streak of missions.Longer - the parents and other stakeholders think of ULA as an idealized service to get payloads to orbits, without any overage/fuss/risk. In that environment, anything that sticks out gets filed off fast. Because it sticks out. They are too obsessive with that.
They are doing Vulcan just to "undo" parts of Atlas that they'd wished were different, done in the present. Part of the past/present.ACES/IVF has nothing to do with past/present. Just future. When they exhaust past/present, it's back to future.
The only way ACES/IVF happens is if future becomes needed because of if the present presses on them. Could easily "backwater".JV's don't cope with the future very well. The financial horizon is always "now".