As you went on to suggest, a big part of the cost has to do with EELV not proceeding as originally planned. It was supposed to be winner take all, but the Pentagon couldn't take the leap, deciding to keep two systems while simultaneously running into payload issues that cut the number of overall government launches. Delta 4, especially, was designed to support all of the EELV requirements, but was left with a fraction of the expected total work.
Yea, that’s what I thought the case was. So when trying to figure out if SpaceX will be in the same boat as ULA on government launches, I was just trying to figure out if the circumstances that lead to ULA’s current cost issues would apply to SpaceX. This big one here won’t apply to SpaceX, which will just be operating one LV system rather than two.
Additionally, since SpaceX will probably have a pretty busy commercial manifest, this one LV system will be launched much more often than just government payloads. That’s very key, because I very much doubt SpaceX will get all the government payloads. They’ll probably start out with just a few to make sure they can get the job done as ULA can. As SpaceX doesn’t appear to have any way to vertically integrate payloads, I think several government payloads would have to stick with ULA based on that alone.
Another factor is the DoD requirements themselves, which require two launch sites, and systems and payload processing that requires more man-hours than commercial satellite campaigns. These same issues will add costs to Falcon, which makes me wonder how it can compete commercially while still meeting the DoD requirements.
- Ed Kyle
Yea, and that will be key. I don’t know what all of the DoD requirements are, so it’s hard to predict how that may effect SpaceX’s ability to compete for them at their normal rates.
When you say they need two launch sites, won’t they have that when the VAFB site is finished? Or do you mean they need two launch sites at the Cape? But that wouldn’t make too much sense, because while ULA does have both LC-41 and LC-37, prior to the ULA merger in 2006, Boeing only had LC-37, and LM only had LC-41. Then each had a pad at VAFB (or was in the process of modifying old VAFB for Atlas and Delta, prior to the formation of ULA I believe.)
So SpaceX should have what Boeing and LM had prior to merging into ULA. If SpaceX puts a new HIB at LC-40 at the came able to handle FH at 90 degrees to the existing HIB, they should be able to effectively double their launch rate from LC-40.
Perhaps that new HIB would be designed and built to whatever government requirements there might be for [horizontal] integration if their payloads? (if there are any such requirements the existing HIB would need to have upgraded)
And actually, there’s probably no reason SpaceX couldn’t build a vertical integration building large enough for both F9 and FH instead of a new FH compatible HIB at LC-40, if they feel they that would be beneficial to them going forward.
A VIB could open up more SpaceX competition to ULA. And even if meeting government red-tape means they’d have to charge more per launch for government payloads than for the commercial prices they keep touting, they’d have to go up quite a bit before they’d have parity with ULA. And even if they were close, they could still poach some contracts by just being a little cheaper.
One way or the other, SpaceX will probably start to get some government work that’s currently going to ULA. I don’t think they’d have built the new pad at VAFB if they didn’t feel they could.
And the folks at ULA I’m sure must see this and have ideas for ways to streamline to better compete. If they were smart, IMHO, they’d take steps to not only get their government costs down so they can continue to get the bulk of government launches and make sure SpaceX doesn’t get too far in that market, but I think they could get their commercial prices down enough to get more commercial contracts.
But who knows? Maybe the government has given ULA assurances that they’ll get enough money to keep going the way they are going, in order to retain the assets as they sit now, so ULA won’t change anything? I guess that’s what I’m curious about. Seems horribly expensive and inefficient to go on that way, but maybe that’s the plan going forward?
Personally, I’d love to see ULA get in the market of really competing for commercial launches again, whatever they need to do to do that. I think that competition would spur an overall reduction in costs, and in more payloads world-wide because of it. They should get in there and try to start poaching AraineSpace’s customers, as well as the Russia’s commercial customers. Bring that work back here to the US. I think that’s SpaceX’s plan (to try). Especially with all the smack talk from Elon about beating out China, Russian and AraineSpace. I’d love to see the bulk of the world commercial launch work being does by ULA and SpaceX, and the US owning that market. Be great if LC-41 and LC-37 were shooting off rockets every month or two, rather than just a handful of times per year.
Perhaps what’s really required, is the government reevaluating their requirements, so that more standard commercial hardware and procedures could be used without needing to carry a bunch of extra expenses and overhead? So that ULA would be free to streamline their offerings as they see fit in order to get costs down, and SpaceX could compete with their commercial offering with few changes, which would get the government’s costs down accordingly.