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What makes an Atlas V expensive?
by
LouScheffer
on 06 May, 2014 01:29
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Where does the expense come from in the Atlas V? We know from recent disclosures that the RD-180 costs about $10M each (at least in the first order of engines). That can't be too different from 9 Merlin engines. The RL-10 *is* expensive, but even an expensive engine should be only $20M or so, not nearly enough to account for the difference in cost. Avionics can't be that big of a fraction, and it's hard to see how tanks can be hundreds of million more each. So where does the money go? Why can't you launch an Atlas V for $150M or so?
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#1
by
cleonard
on 06 May, 2014 01:48
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The bottom line is billed man hours. Even raw material prices have a lot of labor hours in them.
The RL10 is a classic example. It takes a lot of time to build.
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#2
by
Avron
on 06 May, 2014 01:53
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big pockets
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#3
by
arachnitect
on 06 May, 2014 22:41
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-Older workforce gets paid more, costs more to insure.
-More infrastructure: 2 launch pads, each with VIF. Liquid Hydrogen.
-Solids handling and markup
-support for multiple configurations
-Gov't requirements.
Keep in mind that really the only time we see the "cost" of an Atlas V it's the total value of a launch service contract to a gov't agency that includes a lot of services that aren't strictly the cost of the rocket. NASA or DOD almost always order "all the fixings."
The total cost value for the MAVEN launch service is approximately $187 million. This estimated cost includes the task ordered launch service for the Atlas plus additional services under other contracts for payload processing; launch vehicle integration; mission unique launch site ground support; and tracking, data and telemetry services.
So building the rocket, putting it on the pad, and pressing "GO" probably does cost less than $150M, but all the other stuff adds up.
Avionics can't be that big of a fraction,
How much did it cost to write the software that runs on those avionics?
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#4
by
edkyle99
on 07 May, 2014 19:13
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Here's what I've long believed about EELV costs in general.
1. The program was designed from the outset to cover a huge payload range (from Delta II to Titan IV Centaur) using one vehicle. That's a noble goal, but it means that a launch site that's handling a 1.2 tonne DMSP satellite is also designed to host massive Heavy payloads weighing 17 tonnes or more, and the launch vehicles for both. The same is true of the factory and the processing facilities and the personnel needs and the rockets themselves. The result is a compromise program that may cut launch costs for a few Heavy payloads, but that also raises costs for small payloads. I'm sure someone in the Pentagon has a spreadsheet that proves this approach lowers overall costs. ...
2. The original program called for ONE winning vehicle. The Pentagon decided to keep TWO vehicles. That decision alone DOUBLED costs. One reason that Atlas costs so much, then, is that those dollars are also helping to pay for Delta IV Heavy infrastructure, for two (4 and 5 meter) Delta IV upper stage production lines, Delta IV launch pads, Delta IV strap on booster contracts, Delta IV payload fairings, Delta IV avionics, Delta IV RL10 production, RS-68, etc. and etc..
- Ed Kyle
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#5
by
BrightLight
on 07 May, 2014 19:27
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One of the issues with the production of anything is the number of people required to make the widget - that being said, how;
many people are required to keep the Atlas V system in production?
Are the same people used to keep the Delta V going? and
Does the Atlas V cost have to include the costs for the Delta IV?
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#6
by
JBF
on 07 May, 2014 19:46
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Without an impetus to streamline labor, management, manufacturing, and integration - virtually every company will mismanage costs since there's no penalty for doing so. It's more human nature than "oh! they should have subcontracted that component manufacturer instead."
3 fuel types? If someone was designing a rocket on paper from scratch, I tend to think they wouldn't design each stage with a different propellant. Those sort of decisions add up over the whole project and lead to ballooning costs. This is largely due to the making decision based on political will, rather than engineering savvy. If you want congressional support for some big DoD project, they serve up subprojects as political sweeteners for congressional support in different states.
It's not one simple reason, but a general culture that doesn't value streamlined and efficient engineering as much as garnering political capital.
Some people are going to flip out at me for the real politik, but who can deny that's how it works? They're still good engineers, just not as good as they could be when they take orders from politicians.
The three different engines comes from optimizing for performance not cost. Solids are really great for the initial push off the pad. RP-1 is great for lower atmosphere and LH2 is great for upper and space.
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#7
by
JBF
on 07 May, 2014 19:51
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The three different engines comes from optimizing for performance not cost. Solids are really great for the initial push off the pad. RP-1 is great for lower atmosphere and LH2 is great for upper and space.
That may be true, but wouldn't it sometimes better to sacrifice some of the performance for cheaper and simpler manufacturing and integration? Who cares if you've got the most powerful and high performance engines/rocket in the world if no one can afford it.
No argument from me, I approve of what SpaceX is doing. However that is not what has occurred historically. For a long time we have been optimizing for performance and reliability above all else.
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#8
by
zt
on 07 May, 2014 19:56
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Does anyone in Congress, DoD, USAF, NRO, etc. have a breakdown of price for each of those line items?
| Line Item | Delta IV | Atlas V |
| yearly first stage contract/maintaining production line | $?M | $?M |
| yearly first stage engine contract/maintaining production line | $?M | $?M |
| yearly second stage contract/maintaining production line | $?M | $?M |
| yearly second stage engine contract/maintaining production line | $?M | $?M |
| yearly strap on booster contract/maintaining production line | $?M | $?M |
| yearly payload fairings contract/maintaining production line | $?M | $?M |
| yearly avionics contract/maintaining production line | $?M | $?M |
| yearly west coast pad upkeep | $?M | $?M |
| yearly east coast pad upkeep | $?M | $?M |
| yearly infrastructure contract | $?M | $?M |
| etc. | $?M | $?M |
Then you can say that the price of maintaining the infrastructure buys you one complete Delta IV and one complete Atlas V core (first and second stages and fairing) per year, which they would have to build in order to not forget how and demonstrate that they indeed did not forget how. Actually launching this "free" core costs extra. Building more than one per year costs extra.
And then the price of a launch should only include the things it actually uses just for that launch. Needs a core because it's not the first one in a year? Extra. Needs the fancier upper stage? Extra. Needs strap on boosters? Extra. Needs integration with new payload type? Extra. Needs payload processing? Extra. Special trajectory/handling/secrecy/tracking? Extra.
So the price of a launch is separate from the yearly "maintaining the infrastructure" price, and the infrastructure upkeep is per type of rocket.
Even if each line item is cost-plus, at least the buyer knows what they're paying for.
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#9
by
Jim
on 07 May, 2014 20:29
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One of the issues with the production of anything is the number of people required to make the widget - that being said, how;
many people are required to keep the Atlas V system in production?
Are the same people used to keep the Delta V going? and
Does the Atlas V cost have to include the costs for the Delta IV?
The production, engineering and operations teams cross product lines.
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#10
by
Jim
on 07 May, 2014 20:35
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The three different engines comes from optimizing for performance not cost. Solids are really great for the initial push off the pad. RP-1 is great for lower atmosphere and LH2 is great for upper and space.
The original EELV concepts did not call for solids. It was the commercial market and growth of comsats that drove the use of solids. The CCB and VIF were basically designed before the changes that is why the asymmetric SRB attachments and why the VIF has level numbers X.X in between whole numbers. Otherwise, the Atlas V was an Evolved ELV, it took elements of Atlas and Titan.
The small EELV was for GPS, DMSP (Delta II, Titan II)
the medium for DSCS, UFO, etc ( Atlas II)
The heavy was for DSP, Milstar and NRO sats (Titan IV)
The comsat market changed, the use of commercial comsat buses and termination of the small EELV changed the landscape. The addition of solids became the intermediate class and the bulk of the DOD spacecraft are now in that range.
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#11
by
Jim
on 07 May, 2014 20:45
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Does anyone in Congress, DoD, USAF, NRO, etc. have a breakdown of price for each of those line items?
| Line Item | Delta IV | Atlas V |
| yearly first stage contract/maintaining production line | $?M | $?M |
| yearly first stage engine contract/maintaining production line | $?M | $?M |
| yearly second stage contract/maintaining production line | $?M | $?M |
| yearly second stage engine contract/maintaining production line | $?M | $?M |
| yearly strap on booster contract/maintaining production line | $?M | $?M |
| yearly payload fairings contract/maintaining production line | $?M | $?M |
| yearly avionics contract/maintaining production line | $?M | $?M |
| yearly west coast pad upkeep | $?M | $?M |
| yearly east coast pad upkeep | $?M | $?M |
| yearly infrastructure contract | $?M | $?M |
| etc. | $?M | $?M |
Then you can say that the price of maintaining the infrastructure buys you one complete Delta IV and one complete Atlas V core (first and second stages and fairing) per year, which they would have to build in order to not forget how and demonstrate that they indeed did not forget how. Actually launching this "free" core costs extra. Building more than one per year costs extra.
And then the price of a launch should only include the things it actually uses just for that launch. Needs a core because it's not the first one in a year? Extra. Needs the fancier upper stage? Extra. Needs strap on boosters? Extra. Needs integration with new payload type? Extra. Needs payload processing? Extra. Special trajectory/handling/secrecy/tracking? Extra.
So the price of a launch is separate from the yearly "maintaining the infrastructure" price, and the infrastructure upkeep is per type of rocket.
Even if each line item is cost-plus, at least the buyer knows what they're paying for.
1. Those numbers are proprietary
2. DOD doesn't buy rockets, it buys fix price launch services. So the DOD does not deal with component costs.
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#12
by
veblen
on 07 May, 2014 20:59
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Without an impetus to streamline labor, management, manufacturing, and integration - virtually every company will mismanage costs since there's no penalty for doing so. It's more human nature than "oh! they should have subcontracted that component manufacturer instead."
3 fuel types? If someone was designing a rocket on paper from scratch, I tend to think they wouldn't design each stage with a different propellant. Those sort of decisions add up over the whole project and lead to ballooning costs. This is largely due to the making decision based on political will, rather than engineering savvy. If you want congressional support for some big DoD project, they serve up subprojects as political sweeteners for congressional support in different states.
It's not one simple reason, but a general culture that doesn't value streamlined and efficient engineering as much as garnering political capital.
Some people are going to flip out at me for the real politik, but who can deny that's how it works? They're still good engineers, just not as good as they could be when they take orders from politicians.
The three different engines comes from optimizing for performance not cost. Solids are really great for the initial push off the pad. RP-1 is great for lower atmosphere and LH2 is great for upper and space.
That may be true, but wouldn't it sometimes be better to sacrifice some of the performance for cheaper and simpler manufacturing and integration? Who cares if you've got the most powerful and high performance engines/rocket in the world if no one can afford it.
By the same token if a cheap rocket cannot do the mission the price is irrelevant.
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#13
by
zt
on 07 May, 2014 21:35
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Does anyone in Congress, DoD, USAF, NRO, etc. have a breakdown of price for each of those line items?
...
1. Those numbers are proprietary
2. DOD doesn't buy rockets, it buys fix price launch services. So the DOD does not deal with component costs.
1. It's ok that
I don't get these numbers, as long as the buyer has them. But the only way to know why the price is high is to find out the real component costs.
2. ULA mentioned the government not having insight into SpaceX costs. That meant to me that the government
does have insight into ULA's costs. What's the difference between the insight the government has into ULA vs. SpaceX?
3. For a sole-source contract for a service critical national security that costs billions, the government should demand total transparency. You can use the free market to control efficiency if you have a market, which implies multiple providers not colluding. When only a single entity is capable of building such rockets (before SpaceX is certified), the only way to control efficiency is to have total transparency. Does buying navy ships work the same way? Navy knows the total price, not the component cost? If so, that's nuts.
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#14
by
baldusi
on 07 May, 2014 22:53
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One thing to consider is the fact that DoD's requirements made optimizations that increased cost just enough to price them out of the market. The recent commercial wins for Atlas V and NASA's performance shows that they are a bit higher, not ridiculously higher. If they had down selected to one, the economies of scale alone might have allowed costs to be competitive. Of course that with down select to one there would be very few slots for commercial launches.
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#15
by
Jim
on 07 May, 2014 23:00
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1. It's ok that I don't get these numbers, as long as the buyer has them. But the only way to know why the price is high is to find out the real component costs.
2. ULA mentioned the government not having insight into SpaceX costs. That meant to me that the government does have insight into ULA's costs. What's the difference between the insight the government has into ULA vs. SpaceX?
3. For a sole-source contract for a service critical national security that costs billions, the government should demand total transparency. You can use the free market to control efficiency if you have a market, which implies multiple providers not colluding. When only a single entity is capable of building such rockets (before SpaceX is certified), the only way to control efficiency is to have total transparency. Does buying navy ships work the same way? Navy knows the total price, not the component cost? If so, that's nuts.
1. Neither does the buyer because it is buying launch services.
2. The govt has ULA on contract, it doesn't have Spacex on contract.
3. Apples and oranges. Again, gov't is buying launch services and not a rocket. The Navy doesn't buy carrier services but a carrier ship.
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#16
by
TomH
on 07 May, 2014 23:21
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Liquid Hydrogen.
Atlas V uses RP-1, not LH
2
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#17
by
baldusi
on 07 May, 2014 23:23
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Liquid Hydrogen.
Atlas V uses RP-1, not LH2
Centaur does.
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#18
by
edkyle99
on 08 May, 2014 01:59
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Liquid Hydrogen.
Atlas V uses RP-1, not LH2
Centaur does.
Yes, but in pretty much the right spot to provide the most performance for the dollar spent. An RP/LOX "Centaur" would boost less than half as much to GTO on an Atlas V.
- Ed Kyle
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#19
by
baldusi
on 08 May, 2014 14:23
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Liquid Hydrogen.
Atlas V uses RP-1, not LH2
Centaur does.
Yes, but in pretty much the right spot to provide the most performance for the dollar spent. An RP/LOX "Centaur" would boost less than half as much to GTO on an Atlas V.
- Ed Kyle
The original question was on the use of multiple propellents, and arachnitect stated that Atlas V used RP-1, hence my answer.
Regarding the economic optimality, that's a more difficult question. Is Atlas V cheaper than an USA made Zenit? I don't really know.