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#20 by joek on 26 May, 2013 03:19
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I'm curious whether there are many signs the USAF itself is at all dissatisfied with the cost vs. realized and anticipated benefits of the EELV program?
The EELV program has demonstrably not fulfilled it's promises. This is less a matter of "dissatisfied" and more "How do we justify this Really Expensive Turkey?" While the Dod/USAF may be satified (as their mission mandates), they have dropped the ball, and obviously have little clue otherwise. Which is why they continue to be pummeled by the GAO (among others) for justifications and answers which DoD, USAF and ULA don't appear able to provide.
In particular, ULA may be a mature, well-oiled, reliable machine capable of providing extremely reliable launch services, but from a business perspective, they appear to have no clue as to exactly what their costs are and why (as suggested by recent EELV "should cost" reviews). No wonder that DoD/USAF has had trouble determining, much less containing, program costs. -
#21 by kevin-rf on 26 May, 2013 03:53
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The EELV program has demonstrably not fulfilled it's promises. This is less a matter of "dissatisfied" and more "How do we justify this Really Expensive Turkey?"
The answer is, provide a better valid solution. Sadly, no one else is currently qualified to provide a lower cost alternative. I do think EELV is cheaper than Titan would be at this point. Titan had to go, and most payloads have outgrown Delta II.
Hate to say it, but DOD did this to themselves.
Jim will contradict me, and maybe throw out a no west coast Atlas Heavy pad herring, but when Boeing threatened to pull out of the program after the cheating scandal with a rocket that was not competitive in commercial markets, the DOD should have said don't let the door hit you in the rear on the way out. Instead we have this shotgun ULA wedding.
Somewhere is an archived thread from when ULA formed where many of these same arguments where made seven years ago. Honestly, my memory may be fuzzy but none of the key posters have changed position about ULA.
If (Big, Big If) SpaceX and Orbital manage to bring cost effective rockets to the DOD market place, it will be commercial forces saving DOD's bacon. Not anything DOD has done to foster lower launcher costs.
That is the sad part to me... -
#22 by Star One on 26 May, 2013 19:37
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If ULA end up having to down select to one launcher which one should they keep & which one should they let die?
I suppose there is an argument for the Delta to be the one that is kept on as overall doesn't it have a greater launch capacity, especially as it includes the Heavy version amongst its manifest of variants. -
#23 by newpylong on 26 May, 2013 19:48
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What is frustrating? That the Air Force has a near perfect success rate using two highly versatile booster families to choose from?
SpaceX was awarded some launches. Let's see how they do and how ULA adjusts before we go overboard with the whining.
Source on down selecting? I've never once heard that...The original intent of the EELV program was to "reduce launch costs by at least 25 percent over heritage Atlas, Delta and Titan space launch systems".
The original plan was to down-select to one launch vehicle.
Frustrating.
- Ed Kyle -
#24 by Star One on 26 May, 2013 19:57
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What is frustrating? That the Air Force has a near perfect success rate using two highly versatile booster families to choose from?
SpaceX was awarded some launches. Let's see how they do and how ULA adjusts before we go overboard with the whining.
Source on down selecting? I've never once heard that...The original intent of the EELV program was to "reduce launch costs by at least 25 percent over heritage Atlas, Delta and Titan space launch systems".
The original plan was to down-select to one launch vehicle.
Frustrating.
- Ed Kyle
Just speculation as indicated at further up this thread. -
#25 by edkyle99 on 26 May, 2013 21:38
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What is frustrating? That the Air Force has a near perfect success rate using two highly versatile booster families to choose from?
Frustrating that DoD did not stick to its original plan, which was to have only one EELV. They would now only be paying for one EELV, at probably half the cost. That one EELV would almost certainly have had the same success rate that the two together have posted.
SpaceX was awarded some launches. Let's see how they do and how ULA adjusts before we go overboard with the whining.
Source on down selecting? I've never once heard that...The original intent of the EELV program was to "reduce launch costs by at least 25 percent over heritage Atlas, Delta and Titan space launch systems".
The original plan was to down-select to one launch vehicle.
Frustrating.
- Ed Kyle
It is not "whining" for a taxpayer to wonder why he has to pay twice as much as needed, or why the cost itself has doubled, and doubled again.
- Ed Kyle -
#26 by kevin-rf on 27 May, 2013 01:38
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How many times have the EELV programs been paused due to problems? I can think of three launch issues that have given the DOD pause.
First Delta Heavy launch cavitation issue.
Atlas NOSS launch with a leaky RL-10 valve.
And the recent Delta IV GPS launch with the RL-10 leak.
DOD bought assured access, while I feel DOD should have said to Boeing don't let the door hit you in the nozzle on the way out after the cheating scandal. DOD wants assured access, the trade is having to eat the overhead of two under utilized launchers.
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#27 by gospacex on 27 May, 2013 01:54
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The original intent of the EELV program was to "reduce launch costs by at least 25 percent over heritage Atlas, Delta and Titan space launch systems".
The original plan was to down-select to one launch vehicle.
Frustrating.
- Ed Kyle
What you should feel is "It was inevitable".
When did you see a monopoly working hard to lower costs??? -
#28 by joek on 27 May, 2013 21:42
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What you should feel is "It was inevitable".
When did you see a monopoly working hard to lower costs???
It was not inevitable. The decision to proceed with two launch providers (instead of a down-select to one) was made back in 1998, long before ULA existed. Also, one of the most significant factors driving recent cost increases is engines, which ULA doesn't make.
There's plenty wrong with the EELV program and more than enough blame to go around; singling out ULA may be convenient and may make some feel better, but oversimplifies and distorts the situation. -
#29 by baldusi on 27 May, 2013 22:33
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As matters stand right now, USAF has bought (via the redundancy) an insurance policy against which they haven't yet needed to make a claim. In hindsight insurance that never gets used always looks like an unnecessary expense!
That's not how it works. You're confusing the pecuniary insurance with other types of insurance. Government launches are self insuranced. Which means that the government might opt to eat the chances of a failure and pay a new launch, or take the equivalent money to an insurance and apply it towards risk mitigation applications.
One reason to do this (self insurance) is that it requires a great degree of technical insight for pricing purposed and even more in case of a failure, and on secret programs that's not acceptable. A second one is that the amount to insure might be many times what the commercial market is used to, and thus is out of scale for the market, making it unfeasible. And thirdly (but most probably the most important factor), the capabilities are critical to national security, thus, getting their money back but loosing the location of a leading terrorist or losing troops due to lack of assets is not acceptable.
Normal commercial insurance goes between 15% to 10% of the total program cost, depending on LV reliability and total insured amount. And let's remember that those numbers (let's say 450M to round off) include a lot of custom work. And each Delta IV Heavy is more like two rockets. And you have to assume at least a 3% inflation to 2028 (that's a 55% price increase). Then, we could say that they are paying an average premium of about 250M on top of what the "commercial" launch cost should be.
So, the question is if they are having an average fully burdened cost per payload on the 2.5B range. It would seem to me that the WGS and GPS are lower than that. But I ignore the NRO, and even NOAA seems to be on that range. And the fact that the money spent meant an excellent reliability and availability record, means that the technical insurance did worked, even if it is expensive.
You might say that they are being overly cautious and risk avert. Yes, I say that could be discussed. But the reliability and availability requirements haven been fully met. And that's thanks to the "insurance" (or call it risk reduction) money spent. -
#30 by Antares on 27 May, 2013 22:38
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Monday morning quarterbacking makes me yawn.
Trying to run a program with a 535-member board of directors where 3/4 get mad when you spend too much and 3/4 get mad when your launch becomes a ballistic missile makes me condescend to that BoD.
Managers set a policy and manage to that policy with the best information at the time. No one was saying 15 years ago that there wouldn't be a market. If the BoD only wants one rocket family, then provide funds for that - and live with the consequences of not being able to launch for several months. I wonder what the shareholders would say about that. -
#31 by RocketmanUS on 28 May, 2013 00:04
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Assured access.
U.S. government pays for yearly overhead.
This keeps the company in business, however it also does not get the company to seek out commercial launches. Part of the solution would have been to allow the DoD to contract out some of their launches per year to other U.S. launch vehicles that might exist that they don't cover their yearly overhead ( with or without launching ). Also the should have over time reduce their support of the yearly overhead forcing the company to look for commercial launches to support the reduce amount that was supplied to them even when there could have been years without launches. If the company said they could no longer afford to do business without full coverage then look for another company and drop this one.
The DoD should have gotten it's price quote just for their needed number of launches per year with more launches from commercial side to help lower the cost. Always look at what it might cost on the high side before committing.
What was needed to keep cost down would have been the requirement for the two launch vehicles to have commercial customers also.
They needed a way to be able to have two launch vehicles ready at the same time. Atlas V if it had two MLP's and VIF could have had two ready at the same time ( one launch pad ). So if DoD needed a launch at the last minute one of the MLP's and VIF's would be on stand by for DoD.
A commercial customers cost for a launch then would have included some of the yearly overhead cost ( payed back to the U.S. government ). This would have helped keep the cost down. Also competition, keeping the two competitors separate ( no ULA ).
Both launch companies needed to find was to lower their cost. They both needed to keep all parts production in the U.S. or at least work towards that goal. Even NASA contracts could have helped lower their cost with added flights ( at least it would still have help the U.S. after Columbia in 2003 ). -
#32 by Lobo on 28 May, 2013 00:16
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Frustrating that DoD did not stick to its original plan, which was to have only one EELV. They would now only be paying for one EELV, at probably half the cost. That one EELV would almost certainly have had the same success rate that the two together have posted.
It is not "whining" for a taxpayer to wonder why he has to pay twice as much as needed, or why the cost itself has doubled, and doubled again.
- Ed Kyle
This is why I think it's really to bad that USAF/DoD and NASA have never seemed to been able get together and come up with a single rocket family that could take care of both of their needs.
I understand during the EELv program NASA was still flying STS, and probably figured it would continue to do so for some time. But weren't they on some level thinking about what would come after the Shuttle? About maybe going back BLEO some day? Seems like someone would have been considering that.
Not only did there not seem to be any attept at collaboration between NASA and USAF/DoD on EELV, NASA seemed to put their fingers on the scale during ESAS to specifically discount EELV options.
So not only did they just not get together, but they've seems actively hostile to it on both sides going all the way back to Titan and Saturn 1 in the 60's.
in the late 70's and Early 80's there seemed to be -some- collaboration on launching USAF/DoD payloads on the Shuttle. Not sure if they wanted that, or just that Reagan pushed it on them.
But after Challenger, that all went away.
If you add up all of NASA, USAF, and DoD's -total- launches per year, you could probably keep one LV family busy enough to get some economics of scale into play.
I know their requirements are differnet, but after listening to that clip by Dr. Sowers at ULA, he seemed to indicate that Atlas V was going to get a manrating "kit" for manned launches and that it wasn't all that expensive.
So I'd think a new common ELV could just be designed from the jump to take a man-rating kit for missions that needed it, and not when it doesn't?
So for the sake of cost sharing and both sides supporting a common LV for mutually assured access to space, you'd think both could come together to the table and see if there'd be a set of requirements that'd work for both of them?
At least for everything in the EELV-medium and up class range.
I think a set of requirements that had a common engine, common core diameter, common upper stage, etc could be agreed upon.
I think Something like Atlas Phase 2 would be a good compromise, with a short-core "stubby" version for the EELV-medium class payloads. (as ULA has in their concept).
And the full length version is a good building block for larger NASA HSF payloads. 3 and 5 core versions.
A little different Delta IV would work too. Maybe a wider core with two RS-68's on it as the base LV, with a shorter version with single RS-68 on it for medium class payloads. something more like Saturn 1 diameter of 6.6m.
3 and 5 core versions there as well.
And there's probably other better ideas. But the point being, government launching is different than commercial launching. ULA is a result of that, as was Titan IV. SpaceX is learning about it I think and we'll see how that effects their costs. So have one provider for -all- government launches, to deal with all that red-tape and beuracracy but still have a reasonable econmics of scale so things aren't too crazy.
And, as we've seen, then let other companies compete for those commercial contracts.
Either that, or do what ArianeSpace and the Russians do and just drop their price with European tax subsidies to get that work. Just with US tax payers. Which is a point of contention, but to the support of that, a relatively "modest" subsidy gets production rates up more overall, and gets that business into the US anyway.
We really can't do that I don't think with our economic rules, but I could kinda see the advantage in that. Just subsidize enought to make up for the extra costs of meeting all the government requirements for the LV provider. All the costs associated with the red tape and beuracracy of dealing with that. subsidize that and what's left should be a reasonably priced LV. ;-)
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#33 by Jim on 28 May, 2013 01:03
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This is why I think it's really to bad that USAF/DoD and NASA have never seemed to been able get together and come up with a single rocket family that could take care of both of their needs.
EELVs do take care of DOD and most of NASA's needs (except for small sats), now and in the future. NASA has no real requirements that need more than Delta IV heavy -
#34 by RocketmanUS on 28 May, 2013 01:14
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Except for the price to launch
This is why I think it's really to bad that USAF/DoD and NASA have never seemed to been able get together and come up with a single rocket family that could take care of both of their needs.
EELVs do take care of DOD and most of NASA's needs (except for small sats), now and in the future. NASA has no real requirements that need more than Delta IV heavy
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For the near term that is true. A better priced launcher could be made with greater mass and volume to replace the Delta IV heavy, that includes greater performance to GTO.
For now and this thread, what could be done to help lower the costs of the Atlas V and Delta IV?
Would eliminating the Atlas V 400 series help?
Could the 500 series do the job of the 400 series then?
Could an RL-10 replacement help any? -
#35 by a_langwich on 28 May, 2013 01:44
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Funny how this thread talks so much about down-selecting to one launcher, when my impression is that none of the same posters feel that way about commercial crew.
If it's so obvious now USAF should have down-selected to one provider, why shouldn't NASA do the same for commercial crew? Why isn't Senator Shelby right when he says commercial crew will end up like EELV, with the government paying to support all the teams it carries through?
And can you explain to me again, why would down-selecting to a single provider would save you lots of money? Put differently, if USAF can't drive a hard bargain with ULA now, why do you think USAF would be able to drive a hard bargain after there was only one launcher available for all launches? The only way to bargain is by having an alternative...
Separate from that, there still is the practical matter that whatever savings you did manage to realize would be reduced by either having to develop Atlas Heavy and VAFB facilities (and total national security reliance on the RD-180), or paying the higher cost of Delta IV, and selecting a team whose management wanted to exit the business (the previous management team had managed to smear excrement on the ethical reputation of the entire company, and there was NO business other than gov-business). Or have I mis-remembered how things played out?
Separate from that, there is still the possibility that Jim is right when he says the cost is in what the customer is demanding, with regard to payload management and assurance and so on.
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#36 by sdsds on 28 May, 2013 02:26
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As matters stand right now, USAF has bought (via the redundancy) an insurance policy against which they haven't yet needed to make a claim. In hindsight insurance that never gets used always looks like an unnecessary expense!
That's not how it works.
Thank-you for responding and sharing your thoughts on this!
I should have been more careful to make clear that I was using the term "insurance" somewhat figuratively, rather than literally, and I certainly wasn't trying to describe the insurance of individual payloads against loss due to a launch vehicle malfunction. (We agree the US government self-insures against that kind of loss.)
Your comments about risk mitigation seem completely in line with the approach the USAF has taken with the EELV program. Diversely redundant launch systems protect them in a situation where one of those systems becomes unavailable, i.e. is forced to stand down. Admittedly some payloads may have been designed in ways that inextricably wed them to either Atlas or Delta. Certainly almost any payload would require some sort of recertification before it could fly on a different launcher. But here's the big thing: if needed all mission objectives could be accomplished using payloads designed for either Atlas or Delta. So losing one of the two launch systems would not require USAF to fund development of a new launcher.
If they had selected a single EELV provider as originally planned, and then that launch system had become unusable, the US government (and indeed the "free world") would have been in deep trouble! -
#37 by simonbp on 28 May, 2013 04:32
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Trying to run a program with a 535-member board of directors where 3/4 get mad when you spend too much and 3/4 get mad when your launch becomes a ballistic missile makes me condescend to that BoD.
But is really Congress that drove it to this point, or the USAF? IIRC (please correct me), it was USAF's initiative to create ULA in order to "cut costs" and therefore justify not downselecting to one EELV? -
#38 by Lobo on 28 May, 2013 06:13
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This is why I think it's really to bad that USAF/DoD and NASA have never seemed to been able get together and come up with a single rocket family that could take care of both of their needs.
EELVs do take care of DOD and most of NASA's needs (except for small sats), now and in the future. NASA has no real requirements that need more than Delta IV heavy
NASA evaluatd Delta 4 heavy during ESAS and didn't agree with you. They didn't think it was capabe enough for and Orion crew launcher, much less for a heavy lift cargo LV.
Now, NASA's criteria and what they thought their needs were and what they could actually do during ESAS are a debate for another thread. But the point is, they didn't -think- that EELV's would work for them. Not even evolved EELV's (which I find suspect myself).
But, I don't think NASA had any input into the EELV program requirements as STS was their PoR launcher for the forseeable future at that time and they didn't really have a reason to. But...perhaps if they'd had some input. If maybe they'd seen the eventual end of STS and the need to have an ELV system that could be a building block for them, as well as [adequately] suit the needs of USAF/DoD.
But again, this would require both NASA and DoD/USAF having the willingness to -want- to come together and hammer out a common LV family that would probably be a bit of a compromise in each's wish list, but would have the potential to have a pretty reasonable flight rate.
It would also allow just one east coast pad, and one west coast pad, although NASA would probably launch their missions from KSC.
LC-37 would be interesting because there could be two identical pads at one LC in case there was a high enough flight rate for USAF/DoD payloads...since you've indicated they'd never want to deal with trying to launch from KSC.
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#39 by edkyle99 on 28 May, 2013 18:06
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For now and this thread, what could be done to help lower the costs of the Atlas V and Delta IV?
ULA has made many cost reducing changes during the past few years. There are more changes that I imagine could be made.
Would eliminating the Atlas V 400 series help?
Could the 500 series do the job of the 400 series then?
Could an RL-10 replacement help any?
1. Going to a common upper stage engine.
2. Shifting to common avionics for Atlas and Delta, eliminating RIFCA.
3. Eliminating the 4-meter Delta upper stage.
4. Shutting down one of the West Coast launch pads (Atlas only flies once per year, Delta once every other year, on average).
5. Common payload fairings?
6. Common upper stage?
7. Delete one of the EELVs entirely.
Beyond these options, I wonder about longer term planning. I wonder if the Pentagon, and NASA, might be better served by dropping entirely the idea of having a long term launch services contract like EELV. Instead, issue commercial type services contracts for launches of entire satellite families.
One contract, for example, could be for GPS. Another could be for WGS. Another for SBIRS. Others for various NRO satellite families. The result would be rockets tailored for satellites, which might result in smaller rockets for most launches and lower costs. Periodic all or nothing competitions would serve to reign in costs.
- Ed Kyle
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