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#40
by
LastStarFighter
on 05 Feb, 2015 18:09
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Maybe I'm getting old and the memory is going but when has it been done before?
For me there are problems with sound at that point of the video, but to me it sounds like he said that vertical landings were easy and done before. And methinks he means DC-X. (But of course DC-X was more like F9-R than F9 1st stage)
Yes, that's what I heard, too, that "vertical landing" has been done before.
Which is true, but which totally ignores the hard part of what SpaceX is planning to do. It was either disingenuous or he's totally out of touch.
I think he is saying vertical landing has been proven many times before... DC -X is one example but Blue Orgin, Armadillo, Masten, Etc... Many have done vertical landings so the science is there. The hard part for SpaceX is proving the ecomomics and reliability of it once they recover one. I'm guessing that is what everyone believes has been too difficult in the past. Looking forward to the next couple years though... Sounds like everyone is rethinking things! Exciting times!
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#41
by
kirghizstan
on 05 Feb, 2015 18:14
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Maybe I'm getting old and the memory is going but when has it been done before?
For me there are problems with sound at that point of the video, but to me it sounds like he said that vertical landings were easy and done before. And methinks he means DC-X. (But of course DC-X was more like F9-R than F9 1st stage)
Yes, that's what I heard, too, that "vertical landing" has been done before.
Which is true, but which totally ignores the hard part of what SpaceX is planning to do. It was either disingenuous or he's totally out of touch.
I think he is saying vertical landing has been proven many times before... DC -X is one example but Blue Orgin, Armadillo, Masten, Etc... Many have done vertical landings so the science is there. The hard part for SpaceX is proving the ecomomics and reliability of it once they recover one. I'm guessing that is what everyone believes has been too difficult in the past. Looking forward to the next couple years though... Sounds like everyone is rethinking things! Exciting times!
Please tell me if I'm wrong, but to me there is a big difference between Grasshopper/DC-x/BO/Armadillo/etc and landing the F-9R S1.
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#42
by
phantomdj
on 05 Feb, 2015 18:14
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I think he is saying vertical landing has been proven many times before... DC -X is one example but Blue Orgin, Armadillo, Masten, Etc... Many have done vertical landings so the science is there. The hard part for SpaceX is proving the ecomomics and reliability of it once they recover one. I'm guessing that is what everyone believes has been too difficult in the past. Looking forward to the next couple years though... Sounds like everyone is rethinking things! Exciting times!
I'll say it again that all of these examples never proved how “easy” it is to land vertically because they never came screaming back to the launch pad at Mach 5.
To say that vertical landing's been done before is to belittle the effort that SpaceX is trying to accomplish.
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#43
by
Space Ghost 1962
on 05 Feb, 2015 18:18
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He'd bet a paycheck on 7-8 reuses, but 14-15 is breakeven.
The 14-15 doesn't make sense to me. If the first customer pays full price because they are not comfortable with re-using then break even comes a bit sooner! Sure once reuse has succeeded customers will change their views (over time) but as long as the launch provider offers a decent discount, surely the first RLV provider can price things in a way that generates significant profits quickly? It'll take real RLV competition to force prices much closer to cost.
I believe the 7-8 and 14-15 numbers were a way to "not explain" the rationale of partial recovery. Through knowing margins, fatigue, thermal cycling, and engine erosion, one might say you've get away with some reuse success with 7-8, but then you'd hit a wall around 14-15, so in paying off the economics of legs et al, the trade for a fully reusable vehicle wouldn't occur.
This may be a roundabout way of saying "no way in hell do you get hundreds of reflights" like in aircraft operation Musk says he can do.
I read it that ULA (and others) are absolutely terrified of this prospect occurring soon, so pour the same kind of cold water on it that they did any kind of booster recovery earlier. Not saying that it can be done, but it sounded like "fear of flying" to many members of the audience I know/spoke with.
I talked to grad students afterward, including one for hours, about why they showed up, what they expected, how the talk was received, and how they felt about it afterwards.
Only one grad spoke with him afterward as long as I was there.BTW, a common perspective was that they perceived the speaker as on a PR tour, and not at all certain of what the point was in discussing reuse. It came across overall as more of a backhanded critique of Musk's attempts to achieve reuse, with the sarcasm and petty jabs showing through at various times.
As if he couldn't sort out for himself the conflicting attitudes of wanting to bond as an engineer, wanting to challenge a novel effort, wanting to poke a rival, wanting to self justify a position, and wanting just to start having a presence in public where none had been before. Confusing.
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#44
by
Space Ghost 1962
on 05 Feb, 2015 18:35
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He did hint that he'd cut price in half and double launch rate...
Unfortunately, we have heard such bold statements before, and not just from ULA. None of those promises ever came thru. This one won't either IMO.
I agree completely with you. And I think the same is true for other providers in "the club". He alluded to this in "international competition and cooperation" question. Where he froze me cold when he described in euphemisms dealings with the Russians - the last time I heard such was during the cold war with AF officers - was not expecting anything like that.
FWIW, he'd announced no reveals at the beginning of the talk, but couldn't help himself and announced these meaningless "hints" as hints as if they mattered, then launched into a one-sided discussion of reusable rockets topic. The grad students expected a more serious back and forth, and even asked some follow-up questions later to this end. They appeared to be disappointed by this, with the positive take away being his performance arguments in payload pound reduction trade choices. His allusions to "business" imperatives and business models were annoying to them and cryptic, only making sense well after the fact when you added in some comments during questions to puzzle out things. Perhaps he didn't know that at least 4 present were also from the business school either.
My read is that what they will do is a NGLV much like Atlas, and partial first stage reuse as an experiment so they don't look too retrograde. They will try to do what they consider "Musk like marketing spin" on this, and it will go nowhere.
When asked about his goal to do with ULA, his august goal was to ride out the uncertainty to a solid future as one of the providers in a field of many, then to retire and ride horses.
So, yeah, you're right, nothing will happen.
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#45
by
Space Ghost 1962
on 05 Feb, 2015 18:44
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Interesting comments towards end of video about aging work force at ULA (aerospace industry in general) and need to bring in young engineers and up skill them (soon) before older work force retires. These speeches at universities, and his tweeting are part of their recruitment drive.
Having a new booster followed by a new upper stage to develop over the next few years will help with the recruitment drive. The NGLS maybe expendable but it will be modern with innovative technology and who knows, after it is finished and flying regularly, ULA may start work on a RLV.
So...if you're an eager young graduate looking for a job you can join ULA where who knows, someday they might work on something new, or you can join SpaceX where they're already bringing that to production while working on colonizing Mars in their spare time.
I think I can tell which type of engineer will choose ULA and which will choose SpaceX. And it's not good for ULA.
If ULA really wants to compete with SpaceX, they need to up their game, and that starts with doing things today that are interesting enough to attract the best talent.
I counted 5 spacex t-shirts in the audience, and a women grad student with ULA launch patches for an Atlas launch. 4 "gray hairs" including me. The vast majority were under 30 yr old students and post docs, more than half the audience was under 25.
They had come wanting to be sold on ULA because of its fabulous mission success rate. They wanted to have a reason to burn up their lives in the passion for launch. It would appear that they did not get this realized. I don't think ULA really yet has a way of absorbing any of them, and the best ones appeared to be the most annoyed.
Many of these already are considering SpaceX and others. They have trepidation, they are "gettable" by ULA. And they are very, very good. But the message they received to "jump" was "do our bidding, not your own ideas". I don't think the speaker was remotely aware of this, and thought he was doing much the opposite. Ships passing in the night.
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#46
by
Space Ghost 1962
on 05 Feb, 2015 18:55
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Roger that. I think it's a pity ULA's hands are tied as much as they are. If they wanted to do something interesting short term, they should start actually flying IVF/ACES. That would get people excited and the TRL is quite a bit higher than some ideas, IMHO.
My impression from the evening is that specifically the "hobbling" comes from the two ULA shareholders. They think of Musk as a circus act, because he underwrites non-traditional development as a form of marketing.
This is wrongly interpreted to mean that things like IVF and reuse/recovery are low cost carny sideshow acts one tolerates cheaply but never commit to on the main development path. Then they don't even bother to do them or talk about them given distractions, and mock Musk's efforts as a way to minimize the fallout they invite by being disingenuous. Which in turn they take as insult, because they cannot, will not, see that if you don't seriously match Musk's efforts genuinely, then no one accepts your actual "highest level" skills to match/exceed .
Its not that ULA can't "do", its that they "won't do" and appear to "not bother".
They appear, like others in the "club", to be no closer to addressing this issue. Are they even aware? Denial?
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#47
by
Space Ghost 1962
on 05 Feb, 2015 19:14
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An aside from being critical.
Tory Bruno appeared as a real, stand-up kind of guy. He's very effective in communicating, more so than Gass who always appeared to me as uncomfortable in such environments (Bruno very elegantly praised Gass's efforts in forming ULA, effectively illustrating the challenge Gass succeeded with). Bruno is starting to remedy a ULA deficit in building a public and institutional presence outside of ULA. He's nice, and almost approachable by millennial's.
My critiques are to be seen as watching many missed opportunities for ULA last night. They have never had much of a use for what they are now appearing to be building, so it will take time and effort for things to work. Its nice to see them start down this path. More important than winning another NRO launch, no matter the killer launch patches they have ...
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#48
by
Antares
on 05 Feb, 2015 20:39
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Interesting that Bruno seemed to miss his audience.
Everything on Glassdoor shows that SpaceX's work-life balance is an oxymoron. ULA can still attract high achievers who want to have a work life and a home life, where the former generally tops out at 50 a week rather than starts there.
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#49
by
TrevorMonty
on 05 Feb, 2015 20:44
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He did hint that he'd cut price in half and double launch rate...
Unfortunately, we have heard such bold statements before, and not just from ULA. None of those promises ever came thru. This one won't either IMO.
ULA currently have 5 LV, Delta 2, 4, 4H, Atlas 5 5xx, 4xx and 5(?) launch pads. Last year they did 14 launches between these 5 LVs.
They could halve costs tomorrow by switching to a single core eg Atlas 5xx and Atlas 5H. Straight away they could rationalize to 3 pads ( 1 west, 2 east) have one production line producing 14+ cores a year. NB this is example they will not do this with Atlas.
Building BE4 in-house under license I would expect would reduce their booster propulsion (engines + solid boosters) costs by 30-50%. NB NLV uses less SB required for most launches.
The booster structure should be cheaper as they should be able to lose the He for pressurization.
Nearly halving build cost of upper stage shouldn't be hard. Use in-house XCOR engine and switch to IVF. Boeing's new carbon fibre tanks are meant to be 25% cheaper to build and be 25% lighter.
They should be able to match maybe better F9 1st stage build costs. Labour costs should be same for both companies. Building and fitting 2 BE4s should require a lot less labour than 9 merlins.
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#50
by
rayleighscatter
on 05 Feb, 2015 20:48
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I'll say it again that all of these examples never proved how “easy” it is to land vertically because they never came screaming back to the launch pad at Mach 5.
To say that vertical landing's been done before is to belittle the effort that SpaceX is trying to accomplish.
And to say vertical landing hasn't been done before is belittling of all the accomplishments done before which SpaceX is riding on the shoulders of.
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#51
by
Space Ghost 1962
on 05 Feb, 2015 21:17
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Interesting that Bruno seemed to miss his audience.
The way the students, individually, all told me was consistent. "He answers all of the questions wrong for me". "Makes me uncomfortable". "He's not like Musk and not in a good way".
Everything on Glassdoor shows that SpaceX's work-life balance is an oxymoron. ULA can still attract high achievers who want to have a work life and a home life, where the former generally tops out at 50 a week rather than starts there.
They are acutely aware of that. The big thing they have against Musk is the fear that they'll burn out for a stupid reason. But they consider it because "at least I'll have done something great, and with my own ideas". Partially true.
ULA would do better to present "and this is how we'll make use of your innovation, and you won't have to risk burning out and getting nothing for it". They already get the excitement of space/nat sec missions and keeping up a hard pace w/o fail.
Missed opportunities.
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#52
by
Lar
on 05 Feb, 2015 21:20
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I'll say it again that all of these examples never proved how “easy” it is to land vertically because they never came screaming back to the launch pad at Mach 5.
To say that vertical landing's been done before is to belittle the effort that SpaceX is trying to accomplish.
And to say vertical landing hasn't been done before is belittling of all the accomplishments done before which SpaceX is riding on the shoulders of.
To my thinking the truth is somewhere in the middle. No one has done what SpaceX is trying to do, land a booster vertically from reentry speeds. But SpaceX is not starting from scratch. Much useful work was done by others.
What I think is so marvelous about SpaceX is that they are synthesizing. They are not afraid to reuse ideas that work, and also not afraid of rethinking conventional wisdom. Their tech, taken as pieces, is not that special. Individual elements are all well understood. But the sum is greater than the whole of the parts.
Tony Bruno impresses me. I'm even a begrudging fan (reply to my tweet and it buys you a lot!), but I don't see ULA being able to reproduce what SpaceX did. Still, Bruno has moved the company a lot and might be able to move it a lot farther .Time will tell.
(Of course this is with respect to Gass who I was not a fan of at all... happy to see him go)
Also, kudos to Space Ghost 1962 for having been there and giving us the inside evaluation. Thanks!
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#53
by
RocketmanUS
on 05 Feb, 2015 22:08
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I'll say it again that all of these examples never proved how “easy” it is to land vertically because they never came screaming back to the launch pad at Mach 5.
To say that vertical landing's been done before is to belittle the effort that SpaceX is trying to accomplish.
And to say vertical landing hasn't been done before is belittling of all the accomplishments done before which SpaceX is riding on the shoulders of.
To my thinking the truth is somewhere in the middle. No one has done what SpaceX is trying to do, land a booster vertically from reentry speeds. But SpaceX is not starting from scratch. Much useful work was done by others.
What I think is so marvelous about SpaceX is that they are synthesizing. They are not afraid to reuse ideas that work, and also not afraid of rethinking conventional wisdom. Their tech, taken as pieces, is not that special. Individual elements are all well understood. But the sum is greater than the whole of the parts.
Tony Bruno impresses me. I'm even a begrudging fan (reply to my tweet and it buys you a lot!), but I don't see ULA being able to reproduce what SpaceX did. Still, Bruno has moved the company a lot and might be able to move it a lot farther .Time will tell.
(Of course this is with respect to Gass who I was not a fan of at all... happy to see him go)
Also, kudos to Space Ghost 1962 for having been there and giving us the inside evaluation. Thanks!
My take is ULA will first upgrade the first stage with new lower cost manufacturing with the new engine. Next would be the US upgrades.
Latter they will either get the engine(s) or the whole 1st stage back depending on future flight rate and economics of recovery.
The fourth phase would be to go with the STTO RLV if there are yearly flight rates of around 200 ( based on what he said about possible future flight rates and people going to space and working there ). This is not the near term but more like 50 years down the road.
Personally I think they will need to get the 1st stage back as part of their first phase of their next generation launch vehicle. If they don't SpaceX and/or others will have much lower per launch cost.
Edit:
How ULA would get the 1st stage back is not so important. But the possible lower per launch with reliability is.
And SpaceX has already demonstrated they can land a 1st stage with Grasshopper.
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#54
by
Rocket Science
on 05 Feb, 2015 22:31
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It’s great that ULA is doing this but I don’t think they’re really sold on the whole reusability approach and are taking a wait and see attitude (I said this couple of years back). I agree with what’s been said that they are really looking for efficiencies vs reusability and in the long run they will be proven correct. The problem I see with this audience is coming across as paternal with we have the experience and we know better. We’ve thought about returning a first stage whereas SpaceX is “trying” to return a first stage. Which approach do you think will excite a young engineer to one company versus another?
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#55
by
jongoff
on 06 Feb, 2015 01:13
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Roger that. I think it's a pity ULA's hands are tied as much as they are. If they wanted to do something interesting short term, they should start actually flying IVF/ACES. That would get people excited and the TRL is quite a bit higher than some ideas, IMHO.
ULA's actually making decent progress on at least IVF. I don't know what's public knowledge, but there's real progress being made toward flying some of the pieces in the not so distant future. Not sure where ACES stands, but at least IVF is being actively funded and developed.
~Jon
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#56
by
jongoff
on 06 Feb, 2015 01:19
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Interesting that Bruno seemed to miss his audience.
Everything on Glassdoor shows that SpaceX's work-life balance is an oxymoron. ULA can still attract high achievers who want to have a work life and a home life, where the former generally tops out at 50 a week rather than starts there.
Yeah, I'm a fan of keeping the big sprints to an occasional thing, and treating life as a marathon, not 26 miles worth of non-stop 100 yard dashes.
~Jon
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#57
by
jongoff
on 06 Feb, 2015 01:22
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I'll say it again that all of these examples never proved how “easy” it is to land vertically because they never came screaming back to the launch pad at Mach 5.
To say that vertical landing's been done before is to belittle the effort that SpaceX is trying to accomplish.
And to say vertical landing hasn't been done before is belittling of all the accomplishments done before which SpaceX is riding on the shoulders of.
Thank you! The sad thing is that SpaceX amazing peoples are far more dismissive of the efforts of previous VTVL groups than SpaceX was. When we did our in-air relight at Masten, one of the first congrats emails we got was from Tom Mueller. I wish SpaceX's fans were half as classy as that.
~Jon
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#58
by
muomega0
on 06 Feb, 2015 02:20
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It’s great that ULA is doing this but I don’t think they’re really sold on the whole reusability approach and are taking a wait and see attitude (I said this couple of years back). I agree with what’s been said that they are really looking for efficiencies vs reusability and in the long run they will be proven correct. The problem I see with this audience is coming across as paternal with we have the experience and we know better. We’ve thought about returning a first stage whereas SpaceX is “trying” to return a first stage. Which approach do you think will excite a young engineer to one company versus another?
if the business model is a few 100M+ satellites + 6 mT to LEO for ISS w/ launch costs 100M-1B/ea, likely reuse is not worth it.
Centaur technology tells quite a bit about the current and past folks of ULA, not to mention those depot papers. In addition, many studies suggest any robust BEO programs need LH2 and EP transfer stages.
There is a very easy way to increase flight rate: simply build payloads rather than build very expensive excess LV capacity in the form of super HLV and capsules.
The real game changer however, especially for reuse, is a demand for 100s of mT of dirt cheap Class D propellant in LEO for BEO. Atlas and Delta were almost a part of this 'spiral', depot centric, flexible architecture prior to the 2005 ESAS ('black zones', must be less than 3 launches, ). Depots also reduce the LV size required. Imagine if NASA simply demanded ~$1B in launch services to LEO, and spent $2B/year on mission and technology hardware at the *expense* of SLS and Orion at 3B/year. Inconceivable?
Engineer's can clearly see this future, amd most certainly the ULA CEO, so his mixed talk is partly understandable, as change does not come easy:
One day Atlas/Delta/SLS will be consolidated and the US will have two non sole source LVs, while, at the same time, performing LV R&D since SLS/Orion/existing/EELV are not taking Astronauts to Mars..too big and too expensive. What play will Congress call and when?
Catch the wave: LEO Depot, advance R&D, BEO missions, at least one new major market. It all begins with the LEO depot and mission hardware requiring propellant. Quite an exciting future indeed. It may even merit a plus up.
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#59
by
TrevorMonty
on 06 Feb, 2015 06:36
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I'm a big fan of SpaceX reusability effots and hope they achieve it but can also see where ULA are coming from in regards to NGLS and the economics of reusability.
ULA should be able to build the NGLS so that is cost competitive to expendable F9 and FH especially for the high value DOD payloads. There is no show stopping technology that is stopping ULA from doing this just good engineering and business sense. With a LH upper stage it will also be more capable for BLEO missions.
Currently a F9E is worth $63m this is cost of LV (eg $33m), launch costs(eg $10m) and profit ($20m), 1st stage is 3/4 of LV so $25m.
Recovery and refurbishment/ testing assume $5m + 10% depreciation ($2.5m). We have now saved $17.5m per core for a revovered launch all going well.
A DOD mission well have a $30m+ mission assurance cost added to it plus may be a few more for Vertical payload loading so we can assume $100m for DOD launch. SpaceX maybe saving $17.5m a core per launch but they will not be passing all that onto customer especially as they have to carry risk of not recovering a core, assume a $9m discount. A F9R now costs $91m compared to $100m for ULA NGLS for DOD mission for payloads up to 4t GTO. For payloads over 4t GTO SpaceX have to use F9E for $100m or offer a FHR, but now we are talking about recovering 3 cores so add another $20m for the 2 extra recovered cores ie $110m.
Going off Dmitry simulation a NGLS can do 8.85mt to GTO (without SRBs ??) see "ULA new Launch Vehicle" thread.
Even at $90m NGLS is competitive with FHR for GTO payloads up to 7t. Beyond 7t FH needs to expend the middle core making the NGLS cheaper even if it has to use SRBs.
In regards to Tory talking about 20 launches per year, currently they are doing 14 with DOD and NASA. They will definitely lose a few DOD and some NASA missions to SpaceX but I expect them to keep the lions share especially at competitive prices. They will pick up extra flights from CST-100 plus a commercial satellites. At present ULA has reliability record as good as Ariane if not better so picking up commercial satellite missions shouldn't be a problem if they are cheaper than Ariane 5 or 6.