XCOR and the Lynx rocket

[Space Ghost 1962]

Capex is "capital expense" - the cost to obtain capital. To pay for operations, salaries, and ... wings. The wings are too expensive.

Suborbital space tourism. Unproven market. Unproven ROI in that market. Nobody's rushing for the opportunity.

VG tried it on the cheap - multiple people dead.

Bezos doesn't need to make money off it, but the others do. For him its a means to have a temporary reason to justify it as a business, which he'll likely exit for ... orbital HSF. But these are all futures not reality. Dragon 2 / Spaceliner / Dreamchaser are also not real yet, lots to do.

[Gliderflyer]

XCOR has released a statement on the recent events: http://www.xcor.com/news/xcor-annouces-stronger-strategic-focus-on-lh2-program/


Following recent breakthroughs in its development of safer, cost-effective, sustainable, reliable and instantly reusable rocket engines for XCOR’s Lynx and other launchers, XCOR Aerospace announced earlier today that it has decided to focus the majority of its resources on the final development of its revolutionary liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen (LH2) program.

This innovative propulsion technology has applications for upper-stage liquid hydrogen engines suitable for the Atlas V, the Delta IV, and the planned NASA Space Launch System (SLS). This shift underscores the partnership between XCOR and ULA, USA’s premier launch services provider that was announced March 9 this year.

“Based on the immediate engine opportunities presented to us and our resource constraints we decided we needed to fully focus on the LH2 program for the forthcoming period,” said Jay Gibson, President and CEO of XCOR Aerospace. “Given that we remain a small-scale company, we are planning to place more emphasis on fine-tuning the hydrogen engine program to achieve an optimal closed loop system for cryogenic rocket engines.

We are convinced that this effort will ensure that XCOR is ultimately better positioned to
finish the Lynx Project and produce an efficient, reliable and safe vehicle. Instantly
Reusable Launch Vehicles will make the edge of space accessible for everyone and our
efforts with ULA on the LH2 propulsion systems will do the same for deep space.”
XCOR will continue to keep working from both its Mojave and Midland locations.

[Gliderflyer]

And it appears the latest Lynx report is now publically available as well. This has some of the latest pictures of the Lynx status, as well as a rendering of some of the flight plumbing. I have been looking forward to this one because it includes one of my projects, the engine blast shield.

http://www.spccuracao.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/LYNX_REPORT_Jun2016.pdf

[Kansan52]

Seems like the death knell for Lynx. All resources focused on ULA, nothing left for Lynx but lip service. Hope not. Would like to see the Lynx fly safely.

[Blackjax]

Could be worse, at least XCOR has a revenue source.

Do you mean the ACES engine for ULA?  They're one of three contenders to provide an upper-stage engine that won't fly until 2023 at the earliest.  Their two competitors are well-funded.

It's something, but not a lot to base an entire company on.

It is enough to recoup investments from.

Is it?  Maybe, maybe not.  I don't think we have the evidence to decide that.

Even if long-term it would be enough to recoup the investment in developing that engine, the engine won't fly until 2023 at the earliest.  There's no guarantee ULA will ever even fly Vulcan Centaur, let alone move on to Vulcan ACES.  There's no guarantee XCOR will win the contract even if Vulcan ACES flies.  And -- it flies in 2023 at the earliest.  The development program won't last that long.  I can see that maybe they're getting some development funds from ULA and the Air Force, but I don't see how that can last them until it flies in 2023.

I think at best ACES buys them some time to look for other streams of revenue.

Takes a smaller team. Other potential customers/acquirers. Product has significant advantages over rivals.

They might have some advantages, but they also have some major disadvantages.  Blue Origin is already the first choice of ULA for their first stage Vulcan Engine.  It's less of a risk to ULA to depend on a single supplier for both engines than to depend on two suppliers.  And Blue Origin has financial stability.  Big companies don't like to become dependent on small companies that might go under.  Particularly after this round of layoffs, ULA might be skittish about making their launcher depend on a company that might not make it.  And ARJ has a long-standing supplier relationship with ULA, and is more diverse and financial-stable.  All big disadvantages for XCOR.

And other firms have focused on just engines before.

As to the other two competitors, one is really not much of a competitor by choice, and the other has too much on its plate at the moment - easily distracted.

I don't buy that.  Lots of companies do far more than that and have no problem executing on it.

Excellent time to go "heads down" to win on a single product and broaden domestic sales to 3-4 not 1.

I don't see an easy path to broaden sales.  Who else besides ULA is going to buy a hydrogen engine?

I find myself wondering if what we are seeing here is really Xcor trying to make itself an attractive acquisition target for ULA.

[Space Ghost 1962]

Let's look at that.

XCOR's investors don't look enthusiastic for raising money, even though they are in a good position to do so IMHO. They didn't use Greason/others wisely from earlier, so not so easy to bring off Lynx. Nor is having ATK do the difficult wings a "low cost" provider. If they were to go back to Lynx, significant investment and hiring must occur. Either that or "sell" to another firm (DreamChaser started with Jim Benson of Benson Space), with a "design win" of vehicle use for that all important "two vehicle use" for economics.

On the ULA side, you could continue with AJR with a cost reduced RL10, assuming it is possible to cost reduce any engine produced by these guys, who are more interested in shaking down Congress for more bucks than reinventing the firm, which they've been promising for many decades.

Or, you could be doubly dependent on BO for two engines. Note that BO seems to be supplying OA with a entire US, which might allow three providers to share an economic US whose virtue might be to compete against a SX F9US well.

However, ULA needs to make Centaur/ACES as a significant differentiator for high performance, high capability launch services.

The presence of three (OA, ULA, SX) NSS providers, and ULA's need for commercial/govt missions to "fill the hole" presents a quandry - frequent "low cost" stage vs infrequent high capability stage need. The point of ACES is to be a kind of "dial a US", slap on as many engines as needed by mission to fly. But BE-3u makes that 1-3 not 1-5 as with RL10.

Also, BE-3u is a "tap off" engine, which for highest performance missions means that some iSP will be "left on the table".

So, for ULA, if serious about rocket economics, you want a "cash cow" booster+US to garner enough of the "low end" EELV business, and you want to build it out of ACES so that enough flight frequency keeps alive your "top end".  You don't want two stages if you can help it (a multiple provider stage plus ACES).

Also, for competitiveness, you'd like to dominate engine/stage performance, so you'd like considerable "say" in pushing the engine above your rivals immediate needs, since it may be your primary advantage. Yet you also need 2-3 vehicles sharing the continuing cost of the engine.

Few ways to do this, actually barely two.

[mheney]

So does that mean you think XCOR would or would not be an acquisition target for ULA?  (Some of us are slow ....)

[Katana]

Nobody in the potential suborbital space tourism market could compete with BO, on maturity and safty, even reuse frequency and cost.

Capex is "capital expense" - the cost to obtain capital. To pay for operations, salaries, and ... wings. The wings are too expensive.

Suborbital space tourism. Unproven market. Unproven ROI in that market. Nobody's rushing for the opportunity.

VG tried it on the cheap - multiple people dead.

Bezos doesn't need to make money off it, but the others do. For him its a means to have a temporary reason to justify it as a business, which he'll likely exit for ... orbital HSF. But these are all futures not reality. Dragon 2 / Spaceliner / Dreamchaser are also not real yet, lots to do.

[strangequark]

On the ULA side, you could continue with AJR with a cost reduced RL10, assuming it is possible to cost reduce any engine produced by these guys

You'd be surprised. Your prejudices don't square with the numbers I've seen.

[Davidthefat]

All this talk about upper stage LH/LOX engine. What's stopping Aerojet from reviving the J-2X as an alternate of the RL-10? Taking an established design that was already being modernized probably will save money from a buyer's perspective. Honest question: what high thrust LH/LOX engine legacy does XCOR bring to the table to be able to compete? Are they just banking on low cost?

[Steven Pietrobon]

All this talk about upper stage LH/LOX engine. What's stopping Aerojet from reviving the J-2X as an alternate of the RL-10?

J-2X has too much thrust (at 1.3 MN, it is 11.9 times the thrust of the RL-10), is too heavy (2472 kg, 8.2 times heavier than RL-10) and has lower ISP (4393 m/s, 3.1% less than RL-10) for EELV class vehicles.

[Davidthefat]

All this talk about upper stage LH/LOX engine. What's stopping Aerojet from reviving the J-2X as an alternate of the RL-10?

J-2X has too much thrust (at 1.3 MN, it is 11.9 times the thrust of the RL-10), is too heavy (2472 kg, 8.2 times heavier than RL-10) and has lower ISP (4393 m/s, 3.1% less than RL-10) for EELV class vehicles.

My bad, I should have said ACES engine as a cluster of four RL-10s is one candidate ULA is choosing from. But a J-2 (originally 230klb) modified to be underpowered fits the bill for LH/LOX 150klb upper stage as the single engine option.

[TrevorMonty]

RL10 is well proven engine, if ARJ can get price down they stand a good chance. The big question is what happens to XCOR if RL10 is selected for ACES. I doubt ULA will keep funding them and ULA may not allow XCOR to sell any engine ULA funded, especially to competition.

[Space Ghost 1962]

On the ULA side, you could continue with AJR with a cost reduced RL10, assuming it is possible to cost reduce any engine produced by these guys

You'd be surprised. Your prejudices don't square with the numbers I've seen.

Which "numbers"? Pre qualification? Or post qualification? Please - surprise me.

Your "prejudices" might be my "pragmatism". We might even agree on the ability to achieve a lower cost, more performant RL10 as achievable and desirable - an impressive expander. Issue is not with the engineering but elsewhere.

[baldusi]

On the ULA side, you could continue with AJR with a cost reduced RL10, assuming it is possible to cost reduce any engine produced by these guys

You'd be surprised. Your prejudices don't square with the numbers I've seen.

As in it's not really that expensive or in they are very far from the competition?

[strangequark]

On the ULA side, you could continue with AJR with a cost reduced RL10, assuming it is possible to cost reduce any engine produced by these guys

You'd be surprised. Your prejudices don't square with the numbers I've seen.

As in it's not really that expensive or in they are very far from the competition?

The costing I've been privy to has been pleasantly surprising and competitive with offerings from other vendors. I also have some insight into the efforts on updating the RL-10, and they are doing the right things.

[TrevorMonty]

On the ULA side, you could continue with AJR with a cost reduced RL10, assuming it is possible to cost reduce any engine produced by these guys

You'd be surprised. Your prejudices don't square with the numbers I've seen.

As in it's not really that expensive or in they are very far from the competition?

The costing I've been privy to has been pleasantly surprising and competitive with offerings from other vendors. I also have some insight into the efforts on updating the RL-10, and they are doing the right things.

The RL10 doesn't need to match competition for price, it just needs to be considerably cheaper than it is now.
The RL10 even with significant cost reductions would be lower risk option than competition.
Neither XCOR or Blue have flown a vacuum engine while RL10 has 100s missions behind it.

[jongoff]

On the ULA side, you could continue with AJR with a cost reduced RL10, assuming it is possible to cost reduce any engine produced by these guys

You'd be surprised. Your prejudices don't square with the numbers I've seen.

As in it's not really that expensive or in they are very far from the competition?

The costing I've been privy to has been pleasantly surprising and competitive with offerings from other vendors. I also have some insight into the efforts on updating the RL-10, and they are doing the right things.

The RL10 doesn't need to match competition for price, it just needs to be considerably cheaper than it is now.
The RL10 even with significant cost reductions would be lower risk option than competition.
Neither XCOR or Blue have flown a vacuum engine while RL10 has 100s missions behind it.

ULA is shooting for ACES costing the same as a Single-Engine Centaur, which is pretty ambitious. That said, the rumors I've heard are the same--after realizing they could get aced out of Vulcan propulsion if they aren't careful, I've heard that AJR is taking the RL-10 competition a lot more seriously.

But that's just third-hand rumors. It'll be interesting to see how this pans out. Can RL-10 get the price competitive enough? Can XCOR deliver and find a way to solve heritage concerns? Is BE-3U going to be high enough performance for ACES?

I just wish for XCOR's sake that they had more in the pipeline than just the RL-10 replacement engine, because it's far from clear they'll win this, even if they make it work, and even if the cost is reasonable. One interesting question though would be if ULA will fund them far enough that they could possibly market their engine to others even if they don't win ACES? A Masten XS-1 with a LOX/LH2 "Mini-taur" expendable (or reusable) upper stage would be pretty sweet for instance.

~Jon

[ChrisWilson68]

I just wish for XCOR's sake that they had more in the pipeline than just the RL-10 replacement engine, because it's far from clear they'll win this, even if they make it work, and even if the cost is reasonable.

Yeah, that's the crux of the problem for XCOR.

One interesting question though would be if ULA will fund them far enough that they could possibly market their engine to others even if they don't win ACES? A Masten XS-1 with a LOX/LH2 "Mini-taur" expendable (or reusable) upper stage would be pretty sweet for instance.

Masten also isn't swimming in cash.  It's hard to see them as anything but a very long shot for producing funding for a new hydrolox upper stage.

Also, any time a company goes through massive layoffs, it has lingering effects.  It tends to create a sense things aren't going well for the company.  Remaining employees often find it harder to stay motivated.  The best of them are more likely to leave after big layoffs.  Prospective new hires tend to be harder to entice -- people want to join the exciting company that is growing, not the company that is shrinking and trying to survive.  Would you be more excited about joining XCOR or Firefly right now?

It's not impossible XCOR could survive, it's just looking like long odds against them at this point.

[QuantumG]

Layoffs can have a motivating effect when you have different teams competing for the limited resources of a company. XCOR has always been a propulsion company that was building a vehicle - with the profits from the propulsion team going into the black hole of Lynx funding. You can be fairly safe in saying that some on the propulsion team are saying "it's about time" in response to this decision.