In this post, some have expressed skepticism about comparisons between marine hardware and space hardware. Fair enough (and amusing that such a minor item out of the post has consumed all of the discussion about it).

Here's one that will be harder to argue with. XCOR Chief Engineer Dan DeLong has experience in both worlds, and offers this little tale:

In the mid 1960s, the U.S. Navy decided to upgrade its capability to rescue crewmen from a stricken submarine. The McCann diving bell had been in service for over 30 years and had severe operational drawbacks. A new program to develop a submersible that would perform far better was started. The Navy contracted with Lockheed Missiles and Space, and the two Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicles were created. The first DSRV was built for $41 million . The two DSRVs performed well in trials (they have never been called to do their primary mission) and are still in service today.

A decade later, the British Royal Navy decided it also wanted such a capability, but it did not have the money to commission copies of the US Navy boats. So the Royal Navy went to Vickers Oceanics (now part of British Aerospace) who were in the business of supporting North Sea oil drilling operations with manned submersibles. Vickers and the Royal Navy agreed to have a new boat built that would serve commercial purposes in everyday life and be reconfigured for the occasional Royal Navy rescue mission. (One could argue that such a dual-purpose boat would be more expensive than a simpler, single purpose boat.) Vickers contracted construction to a U.S. company that built commercial oil field submersibles, Perry Oceanographics. The boat performed well as the Vickers VOL-L1 for both commercial oil drilling support and occasional practice rescue operations for the Navy. Perry?s sale price was $750K including profit .

Why $41 million for DSRV-1 and less than $1 million for the VOL-L1? They perform the same mission, though details are different. DSRV is bigger and dives somewhat deeper, but these are small differences. I firmly believe the difference lies in the types of organizations that designed and built the boats. DSRV was started assuming a particular cost, and the program lived up to expectations. The government customer and its traditional contractors all agreed on the size and scope of the job before starting. The Perry boat came from a different world; a world of commercial profit and loss, a world where getting the job done is the primary requirement. Perry was in the business of building similar boats at the rate of about one per year for the previous decade.

I spent four years designing prototype and one-of-a-kind hardware for the U.S. Navy as an employee of Westinghouse Ocean Research and Engineering Center in Annapolis, MD. I then went to Perry Oceanographics and spent six years doing similar things for the commercial world. I believe that a similar difference exists between the current space launch industry and what could be done if cost and mission performance were the real priorities.

According to the director of the Navy's special project office a lot of the DSRV's costs weren't related to the DSRV at all. They just used it as a cover for some of the 'black' projects. Like RPV's that were operated off of sub's and for little things like tapping underwater Russian telephone cables among others. So in this case the government/private might not be all that clear. Not to say that private development wouldn't save costs though!

But don't miss the main point of what the Brits did. As a government contractor for HHS, I see all kinds of waste and inefficiencies that I would never see in the private sector.

RPS beat me to that point. It is worth noting that several recent books have pointed out that the DSRV's mission was in many ways simply a cover story. Yes, they can rescue crewmen from submarines, but they apparently have a diving capability far greater than the crush depth of American submarines (not really necessary--you cannot rescue anybody after the submarine has crushed). I believe that Blind Man's Bluff made this claim, but it might also be in Dark Waters (about the NR-1, a Navy "research submersible" that also did a lot of spooky things).

So these are not really equal comparisons. You're comparing what is apparently a special operations intelligence submarine with a commercial vessel.

I'm thinking... everyone *says* the US doesn't have the capability to build a conventional submarine for the purposes of selling to (for instance) Taiwan. Do the examples of both the DSRV's and the VOL-L1's mean we still have the capability?

Actually, nobody says that the US does not have the capability. It's just a lot more complicated. First, the US does not have actual designs for conventional submarines. American shipyards could certainly develop the designs given some time. Most proposals for building conventional submarines in the US involve using blueprints from another country, like Germany, and American manufacturing.

The much bigger issue is politics. There is the legitimate aspect of this and the illegitimate aspect. The legitimate aspect is concern that if American shipyards build conventional submarines for export, they would inevitably give away secrets (they could, realistically produce the quietest conventional submarines in the world). The other aspect is the more important one, which is that the US Navy is concerned that allowing American shipyards to build conventional submarines would inevitably lead Congress to force the Navy to adopt conventional submarines.

My answer to RPS is that DSRV operational and test costs (several hundred million $) may have been used to support other programs, but I stand by the initial purchase price numbers as being accurate and valid.

Dan DeLong

According to my Father, light bulbs now contain an inert gas and no longer are an internal vaccum. I would guess 100% nitrogen. Notice the no longer make a satisfying pop when you break one.

CRT's, however, do contain an internal vaccum.

Why $41 million for DSRV-1 and less than $1 million for the VOL-L1? Why indeed. Part of it that today a commercial submersible industry exists, while in the mid-1960’s there simply wasn’t one. (The situation was akin to today in launch vehicles, where you have a few giants and a lot of tiny wannabees.) Another difference, which you handwave away, is that comparing them is like comparing an F-15 and a F-5, one was designed to be capable and one was designed to be cheap. Your claim that they perform similar missions is a smokescreen along the same lines, one is extraordinarily sophisticated, and one is not. One is high performance and one is not. One is a purpose designed special vehicle, one is a mildly adapted standard vehicle… In short, there really is no comparison between the two.

That one turned out to be expensive and one turned out to be cheap should surprise no one. One could equally profitably ask why a 707 is more expensive than a Cessna. The answer has little to do with the type of organization, and much to do with factors you handwave away.

"Part of it [is] that today a commercial submersible industry exists, while in the mid-1960's there simply wasn't one"

No. When the H-bomb was accidentally dropped off the coast of Spain in 1966, the Navy mustered 3 subs to look for it: Alvin, Aluminaut, and one of Perry's boats. All these were designed, built and operated by commercial interests, though Alvin was partially funded by USN when Woods Hole ran short of money. DSRV-1 didn't hit the water until January 1970.

"One could equally profitably ask why a 707 is more expensive than a Cessna" There is no analogy here, as none of Cessna's product line, from the 2-seat piston powered 152 model to the Citation bizjet perform the same mission as a 707.

You are right about needless sophistication and overspecification of imagined requirements adding to cost. I have personally handled Space Shuttle program purchase invoices where we paid $5. each for AN960C-416 quarter inch flat washers. At the same time, I was maintaining my Grumman Traveler airplane. I bought the same washers through FAA approved channels for $4 per hundred. That's 2 orders of magnitude cheaper for the same product.

I also was on the team that paid $17 Million for a quantity of 54 cooling fans for the Space Station. Fans that do the same job as the one inside my computer. One of the requirements in the 1/2 inch thick purchase specification was that they operate in a vacuum. You can buy perfectly capable cooling fans for $20 from commercial sources, and you can buy Mil-Spec fans that survive battlefield conditions for $300 each. But to stir the air in a Space Station equipment rack, you pay $314,000 each. That's 4 orders of magnitude difference between the commercial and NASA hardware.

I repeat: THE TWO SUBS HAD THE SAME MISSION.(ignoring the fact that the Perry boat had a more difficult dual mission) If one had performance requirements that exceeded mission needs, then those very requirements SUBTRACTED from mission goals by making the boat less affordable. The Navy originally wanted 12 DSRVs to be placed around the world, but bought only 2 when the cost escalated. Your statement that the VOL-L1 was just a "mildly adapted standard vehicle" is also incorrect. Perry's designation was PC-15, which was custom designed for this customer and there were no other model 15 boats built.

Dan DeLong