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. ;-)