Elon is accusing ULA of bribing an Air Force general with a job, in return for the no-bid contract.
He’s probably right, but those things are always hard to prove.
Meanwhile, Paul Brinkmann at the Orlando Sentinel seems to mistakenly believe that the new engine development has something to do with NASA and SLS.
Elon is making powerful enemies left and right. I hope he has good security. 🙁
Disruptive entrepreneurship is like that. It’s hard enough to break through when you’re merely bucking a hidebound, but within-the-law establishment. When you throw corrupt government officials into the mix, it gets tougher. These guys thought they could shoo Elon away by playing rough – by their lights anyway. I think they’re about to learn what rough really looks like. This Correll creature’s next gig will probably be in the Greybar Hotel. Wouldn’t surprise me if he has some company on his cell block too. The legacy aerospace majors thought they could keep their sleepy little corner of the federal budget off-limits to interlopers via liberal application of “customary graft.” Doesn’t look like that’s working out too well. If these guys spend the rest of their lives paying lawyers and responding to writs and subpoenas it’ll be no more than they all deserve.
Wow. Is he shooting from the hip or did he run this by his lawyers first. Hard to know with Elon. Being a billionaire probably gives him some wiggle room. Go Elon. Corruption fought in the trenches.
From what everyone has told me, Elon doesn’t even run ideas past his engineers before telling the public. His lawyers aren’t even in the same building.
But they’re on the same planet. It’s a start?
Worth reading: This comment on the matter over at Space Politics, and the one from the same poster immediately following. He lays out the issues in this matter clearly, then gives a summary of relevant law.
http://www.spacepolitics.com/2014/05/23/senate-defense-bill-offers-mixed-messages-on-rd-180-replacement-eelv-competition/#comment-485627
Short version: No, Elon wasn’t shooting from the hip.
He was kicking over a table where the game was rigged. They weren’t trying very hard to be subtle about things either. EG, the mysterious USAF waiver of Correll’s normal 12-month revolving-door cooling-off period.
I’d be amazed if Elon didn’t think about this very carefully beforehand.
I’ll quote myself on another comment from spacepolitics.com, while I’m at it:
“Honest competitive procurement of a new booster engine would certainly be a refreshing change from what we’re likely to get.
I’m not sure how we get there from here, though. The remains of the traditional US rocket propulsion vendors have been consolidated under Aerojet, and while there are promising new US propulsion teams, they’re all in-house teams for vehicle companies.
Meanwhile, both USAF and NASA propulsion bureaucracies have been ossifying for decades and wouldn’t recognize a non-traditional approach if it bit ‘em. Both effectively now are incapable of conceiving of any other approach than shoveling billions to Aerojet.
Reforming massive sclerotic bureacracies is a mug’s game. Far easier to bypass them.
We would probably be better off doing competitve procurement of a new booster rather than a new booster engine. That would allow new entrants who wanted to bypass the traditional tarpits via non-traditional propulsion developments to do so. I could see this approach drawing in SpaceX (of course) but also OSC/ATK, in addition to trad-path developments from Lockmart, Boeing, or (via ULA) both.”
Whoops, misplaced this – it was supposed to be a further comment to the Brinkmann thread.
He doesn’t need to prove it.
He just need to convince McCain. (Or the other actors ticked off during the Boeing-tanker-fiasco).
McCain (at least appears) to hate Boeing pretty fiercely.
His hatred of Boeing is irrelevant. Boeing isn’t buying Russian engines. Lockheed Martin is.
Engine development? Is that the USAF integrated powerhead demonstrator?
As for that guy from the DoD Elon is talking about it is probably true but fighting this that way is going to bring a lot of bad blood between them and SpaceX Elon could do without. Last time this happened that I remember, the air force tanker deal, the check ended up going to Boeing anyway. The government is not interested in punishing the big contractors at all.
The original Boeing tanker deal was corrupt as hell. Some Air Force officials went to jail over it. I don’t like McCain but like a broken watch, he isn’t always wrong. I’ve seen that sort of corruption several times. Still, Musk better have some proof for the likely lawsuit. If, as his tweets claim, the same guy tried to work a deal with SpaceX, there should be something in writing.
“Meanwhile, Paul Brinkmann at the Orlando Sentinel seems to mistakenly believe that the new engine development has something to do with NASA and SLS.”
But how cool would it be if SLS’s engines only cost $100 million?
That $100M is just a down payment.
Brinkmann could have been referring to confused early impressions of the push that’s behind the Mitchell Report – the one that calls for joint USAF-NASA development of a new LOX-hydrocarbon engine for 2022, from a commission that Mike Griffin was on.
It seems likely to me that some tie-in to earlier plans for SLS liquid strapons “competition” may be in the works, with NASA getting pulled into the new-engine funding and development.
I’ll quote myself on that prospect from a Spacepolitics.com comment the other day:
“So, a joint project between the Air Force’s engine bureaucrats and NASA’s engine bureaucrats, neither known for being on-time or under budget (nor for actually delivering any usable engine at all over recent decades in most cases), with contract undoubtedly going to the last US engine vendor standing, also not know for on-time or under budget, with a sometime-next-decade delivery date and some hundreds of millions a year budget till whenever.
What could possibly go wrong?”
Brinkman has corrected his post on the story.
Yes, I had a Twitter discussion with him about it.
Thank you for your role in the correction.
I’d say this is really Act 3 of the SpaceX business model failing.
Act 1 was “The Falcon 1 has thousands of payloads stacked up waiting for it”
Act 2 was “The Falcon 9 will tear up commercial space markets.”
Act 3 is ” We can’t survive without USAF markets”.
The Falcon 9 seems like a nice enough idea, but rather silly.However I have no dog in this fight.
SpaceX hasn’t said they can’t survive without USAF markets, you moron.
More like:
Act 1: “We didn’t think big enough. Let’s skip the Falcon 1e and Falcon 5 and get the Falcon 9 built right away.”
Done.
Act 2: “The Falcon 9 will tear up commercial space markets.”
Done. Arianespace is in turmoil, ILS has repeated failures to explain away, Putin & Co. have cut ULA’s engine supply off at the knees and now they and all their little REMF cockroach buddies are caught out in plain sight when the kitchen light is switched on illuminating that noisome block buy deal. SpaceX put a superior deal on the table and their “competition” reacted by cranking up the corruption and indulging in trash talk.
Act 3: Space X runs the table.
In progress.
Act 3 certainly involves the failure of “business models,” but none of them are SpaceX’s.
More effects of disruptive innovation in the LV market … from: http://www.spacenews.com/article/civil-space/40669orion%E2%80%99s-european-service-module-back-on-track
In a [May 20] briefing with journalists, [France’s space minister, Genevieve] Fioraso said France nonetheless has issues with extending its [ISS] participation to 2024 without an indication from NASA that its support for rocket builder Space Exploration Technologies Corp. will not permit SpaceX to proceed with “dumping, because that’s what it is” of cheap SpaceX rockets on the international market where they compete with Europe’s Ariane 5 vehicle.
Sounds like Elon has struck a nerve in France too. Next you’ll see them submit a WTO complaint about dumping. Sunshine is the best medicine.
He’s claiming that SpaceX is selling their launches below costs (dumping). Is there any evidence of that? Or is he just whining that SpaceX is selling their launches cheaper than ESA’s subsidized price?
He’s claiming that SpaceX is selling their launches below costs (dumping).
Genevieve is a she, not a he.
The funny parts are the knee-jerk socialist responses around the world to try to fight this. NASA and USAF will “assemble an office” to supervise RD-180 replacement issue, ESA will call a committee to design a next Ariane, Putin decides to pull all the industry under one umbrella.
Instead of damn, people our rocket boys are losing on international stage, how do we give them the best boost to stay competitive ?
and ….
http://www.spacenews.com/article/launch-report/40655germany%E2%80%99s-budget-straitjacket-complicates-europes-ariane-funding-outlook
Germany has informed the European Space Agency that German spending on launch vehicles will remain flat for the next decade, a decision that complicates the agency’s already difficult attempt to secure funding and design consensus for a new-generation Ariane rocket.
So Ariane 6 is in trouble since Germany (a) wants a liquid 1st stage and (b) then says the budget is flat. Sounds a lot like Ariane 6 is as dead as the Christmas Goose.
The best long term outcome for Europe and ESA as a whole would be to agree to disagree, and for Italy, France, Germany and UK go all their separate ways for launcher development. Italy wants solids ? Germany wants liquids ? UK wants to rebuild Black Arroa ? Go for it !
There is daylight between NASA LV acquisition and DoD LV acquisition, but might there be a hint of daylight between USAF and NSA on LV acquisition?
http://www.spacenews.com/article/military-space/40662us-spy-master-gives-shout-out-to-spacex
“I do want to give a shout out to SpaceX,” Clapper said May 22, offering his support for the competition the upstart company is offering to entrenched government launch services provider United Launch Alliance of Denver …
“The way to drive down cost, typically, is through competition,” Clapper said, noting that “launch costs are a huge part of my budget.” …
Citing recent visits to SpaceX’s manufacturing plant in Hawthorne and its launch facilities at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, Clapper praised the company, calling it ingenious, driven and aggressive.
…
Keep pushing SpaceX. Be ingenious, driven and aggressive as you disrupt the current LV market. Ignore both the nattering nabobs of negativism and the hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of launch vehicle history. We need to see more dragonflies and grasshoppers in the fields and skies of North America. Give warning to the world to watch out for the Californian and American garages. No trampolines are required.
Clapper is a major US government launch customer, not a member of either of the two major US government launch bureaucracies.
Could be a little daylight opening up within the US government on defense launch too, yes.
Worth noting too is the daylight opened for a while now within NASA between the Station launch customer pushing Commercial Cargo & Crew, and the launch development bureaucracy pushing SLS.
If government launch customers are starting to see real problems with relying on the established NASA and DOD launch bureaucracies, we could actually, finally, be arriving at a time when real change is possible.
Not a moment too soon, if so.
Divide and conquer. Fragment the LV acquisition market and pick them off one at a time in a game of commercial-market-inspired hardball.
The Falcon 9 seems like a nice enough idea, but rather silly.
Another fine contender for goofiest comment ever on this blog. Considering how badly Elon’s “silly” rocket has upset various apple carts worldwide, I guess all those folks in Europe, Russia and the legacy U.S. aerospace majors must be damned glad he didn’t do anything, you know, serious!
The Model T and DC-3 were also nice enough ideas.
And comparably silly.
10 engines is a lot to put on a stack. putting 27 is a whole lot to put on.
maybe the cost numbers are good, but, i’d like to see how much a Merlin 1 costs.
The other issue is the probability of failure for an engine is likely 1%.
now if Falcon 9 is still flying in 3 years, well, i guess SpaceX will have proved their
ideas out.
No. Nine engines on a first stage is probably optimal. No engine can be manufactured perfectly every time. If all you have is one, then your mission failure rate will track your engine failure rate. If you have multiple engines, individual failures can be compensated for by running the others harder or longer to get the mission accomplished. It is the same engineering principle behind RAID storage arrays; using multiple components with a given failure rate to build a system that is fault-tolerant and has a much better overall failure rate. SpaceX has already demonstrated the robustness of their design by accomplishing a mission on which one engine failed in flight. Prove their ideas out? Mission long since accomplished.
You assert an engine failure probability rate of 1%. That has been the experience of SpaceX to-date. Do you attribute this rate to SpaceX alone or is it your view that it applies to ULA, Arianespace, the Russians and every other launcher maker? The Russian Proton has a long-term mission failure rate of about 7%, mostly due to upper stage engine problems. Ariane 5’s early history was pretty rocky too. By the time they had launched Ariane 5 as many times as SpaceX has launched both versions of the Falcon 9, Arianespace had racked up three mission failures. That was a 30% failure rate after 10 launches. Obviously, Arianespace has gotten its act together since, but their rocket still has no engine-out fault-tolerance. How many more successful Ariane 5 launches will there be before statistics catch up with Arianespace again? My guess is that statistics will probably still be chasing them when SpaceX renders them economically extinct.
Using more engines also means building more engines. Building multiple engines per launch puts one further down the manufacturing experience curve much faster than building one per launch does. The quality of manufactured items tends to improve as a production process continues and is refined. Mass production also reduces the cost of individual manufactured items. How much does a Merlin cost? I don’t know, exactly. But I do know that the answer is not fixed and is steadily falling. Despite having made only a fraction as many launches as Arianespace, SpaceX has already flown a lot more Merlins than Arianespace has flown Vulcains. The experience curve matters. So does amortization of design effort and manufacturing infrastructure over a longer and longer production run.
your comments about multiple engines is true only as long as the
failures are benign. If you lose an engine and it’s a low enough percent of thrust
you still make orbit, then it’s good. if you lose an engine and it causes a cascading
failure, then it’s bad.
What are the odds of that? Hard to say honestly, it’s so driven by both details
of design that there is no rule of thumb.
Rand, your original post says “Air Force general” but it looks to me like Correll was a civilian employee.
Correct. A civilian official of the Department of the Air Force. Let’s give the actual guys in Blue a break.
if Falcon 9 is still flying in 3 years…
SpaceX isn’t standing still. F9 is heading for the museum. I don’t know how long but they have dozens of new launch vehicles in the idea stage, but several already being worked on to replace the F9. The 13 ton of the F9 will be a cube sat in the coming vehicles.