Air Force budget reveals how much SpaceX undercuts launch prices
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Now spacex is starting to compete, costs will come down. Is something not going as expected?
ULA used all of their political connections to keep SpaceX out of the government launch as long as they could, to maintain their monopoly pricing.
So Congress told them to form ULA and they would give them a readiness contract to make it worth it to them even if they weren't launching often. Basically, it was that or lose the heavy launch capability which would have been a huge national security problem.
Obviously, that changes with SpaceX around, but what hasn't changed is that if Congress pulls that contract, they'll just kill ULA and the Delta and Atlas will be gone. Lockheed and Boeing still don't really want to be in this business and there is nothing they can do to make Atlas price competitive with Falcon, since their customer won't let them change anything.
Add to that the real money is in the satellites themselves. If you were a big company like Lockheed it made far more sense to stick to building sats and buying launch services from someone else.
>Obviously, that changes with SpaceX around, but what hasn't changed is that if Congress pulls that contract, they'll just kill ULA and the Delta and Atlas will be gone.
Congress will probably allow Delta to die, but they're not going to be 100% dependent on Falcon. All it takes is a failed launch and nothing goes up for six months while investigators figure out what happened.
Probably not before there's another launch provider with reusable rockets (Looking your way Blue Origin/New Glenn)
Also if the launch savings exceed the total payload costs, in a pinch couldn't they just roll the dice given falcon's success %?
(The last falcon investigation delay was only ~4 months)
They could have done something like the COTS program for rockets.
NASA paid cost-plus to ULA and the ilk initially (think 60's -90s) mainly because rocketry was a very new field and it was near impossible to reliably estimate the final cost the manufacturer would incur in fulfilling the contract, so NASA just said "spend whatever you want and we'll pay your spend plus 6%".
However it's well known now how much researching and building rockets costs, so cost-plus contracts are, essentially a very bad contract cost model. It's mainly because ULA and such have become _far_ too comfortable on their half-a-century monopoly and simply don't want their scam to end.
Do I misunderstand: "SpaceX won a contract to launch another GPS 3 satellite for $96.5 million. These represent "all-in, fully burdened costs" to the government, and so they seem to be roughly comparable to the $422 million "unit cost" in the Air Force budget for 2020."?
but the article that they linked to for the $83m figure says spacex undercut ULA by 40%.. which means ULA was going to charge under $140m for that same launch.
ULA didn't bid on the 96m launch.. so it's impossible to say what it would have charged... but it likely would have been around the same $140m, since it's for the same gps 3 sat.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-spacex-launch-ula-id...
* Yes, I think the writer is being dishonest. They have a link to an article that clearly says 40%.. then the writer discards that number, and finds other data that isn't directly comparable to write an article about it, and waives away the differences with "seems to be comparable to"
SpaceX's <$100m price print is all inclusive -- it is the full price you pay. No extra or hidden fees.
The author is a little deceptive in that they quote the upper estimate rather than the average. They should have quoted the average cost. But to be clear I don't think that's nearly as deceptive as saying ULA's comparable cost is $140m.
The launch would have used an Atlas V which costs $100m.
In any case, I'm sure it's not $282m in overruns on a $140m contract.
Are you saying that the air force ALWAYS pays the maximum for every launch -- no matter the payload?
If not, then clearly the number includes much more than just a subsidy.
While helpful (and shockingly high), it is also misleading due to 2 factors:
1. ULA price spread is quite significant, fully loaded Delta Heavy is super expensive.
2. As per quote above, the number is for all launches done on ULA* .
AFAIK here is the formula used to arrive at 422:
(fixed_cost + number_of_launches * cost_per_launch) / number_of_launches = 422
fixed_cost = $1b/year subsidy
Without knowing number/weight/orbits of things UAF wants to launch it is hard to estimate how much each vehicle costs. Moreover, as per quote above, this price is for all launches done with ULA. If part of the launches are done with other providers amortized price will be higher due to the $1b subsidy.
* Without Falcon Heavy flying some launches must be done with ULA.
(fixed_cost + number_of_launches * cost_per_launch) / number_of_launches = 422
Even with Falcon Heavy, there are missions that will require the Delta IV Heavy.
"Falcon Heavy can lift more than twice the payload of the next closest operational vehicle, the Delta IV Heavy - at one-third the cost."
Additionally, the Falcon upper stage has very limited on-orbit capabilities. It can't coast for a long time in order to insert a payload directly into a high orbit. (Though SpaceX is working on this, and did some tests in that direction on the recent NROL-76 launch)
I would expect that by the time the FH flys the upgrades to the upper stage should be rolled out, so they can fly direct insertions.
There is still the additional problem of vertical integration. SpaceX will start doing that on pad 39A.
The $96.5M is for a single launch.
The $422 million is for each individual launch, plus assured access in a 24-hour window.
That is, the US Government is paying SpaceX for a launch. They're paying ULC for a launch, and a guarantee that if the US Government asks to launch a rocket tomorrow ULC will say "yes".
If the US Government asked SpaceX for a launch tomorrow, they would probably get a response of "No can do. We don't have a rocket fueled, on stand-by, and ready to go."* It costs a lot to maintain a spare rocket, launch pad, and other infrastructure necessary to launch a rocket within 24-hours around the year.
I still think SpaceX is a lot cheaper as a launch provider, but I don't think it's quite as extreme as the article makes it seem. I would imagine if SpaceX had to maintain 24-hour launch capacity their "unit cost" would be significantly higher than their individual launch cost.
* That's actually not quite true. By coincidence, SpaceX has a launch scheduled for June 17. If there were a national emergency the US Government could probably pay SpaceX to commandeer that launch. However, this is just a coincidence. If I were writing this comment on June 18 it would not be true.
Assured access, as defined by the EELV program, just means there are at least 2 launch vehicles in service (in this case, Atlas V, Delta IV, and partially Falcon 9) which are capable and certified to carry the full range of national security payloads, which means problems with a single rocket design will never ground all national security payloads
(There are other capabilities ULA offers that SpaceX still can't match, but those are all about babying the payloads -- mounting them vertically on the rocket, rather than tilting as is SpaceX's current practice; providing clean-room access to payloads already on the rocket, and so forth.)
Edit: this is a better article than the one linked: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-spacex-launch-ula-id...
it's the article for the gps sat, which clearly says Spacex undercut ULA by 40% on that contract -- so 83m vs 140m for ULA
That is a big difference, but much less than the 83m vs 422m in the article
The Falcon 9 (in 'expendable' mode) is roughly equivalent to an Atlas V in the 551 configuration (it's not an apples to apples comparison because the upper stage Atlas uses (Centaur) is _really_ capable).
In reusable mode, it's closer to a 511.
Delta IV Heavy is comparable to the (upcoming) Falcon Heavy (though again, due to the capabilities of Centaur, DIVH will be able to fly missions that FH cannot). It will be interesting to see just how big the price difference is there (I expect it to be pretty significant).
The Delta Cryogenic Second Stage is not a Centaur. Yes, it uses the same propellants and a related (though not identical) RL-10 engine. The tanks are very different, though, and those are arguably the most unique thing about Centaur: pressure-stabilised ("ballon") tanks made of stainless steel, plus a common bulkhead between fuel and oxidiser tanks make for a very good propellant mass fraction.
Vertical integration is something they are still missing.
Link to the part where Elon starts talking: https://youtu.be/IWVZYKGTenE?t=1102
Couldn't they make more profit, to reinvest in Mars plans, by charging something like 90% of competitors for near perpetuity?
Heard here: https://youtu.be/IWVZYKGTenE?t=2876 (and earlier too)
Not sure of the spelling or the definition.
cf [1]: <The Nunn–McCurdy Amendment> "requires notification to the United States Congress if the cost per unit goes more than 25% beyond what was originally estimated, and calls for the termination of programs with total cost growth greater than 50%, unless the Secretary of Defense submits a detailed explanation"
Just imagine how many schools, bridges, cancer treatments, or who knows what else that money could be better spent on.
So in between various clumsy bombings with 75% noncombatant casualties, the military occasionally spends money on things universally good for society & humanity.
(Unless you're ISIS)
That said the civilian government usually gives them nonsensical task that they simply can not do.
Korea was the last time they had a real problem winning the traditional military conflict.
Besides, is it supposed to be hard to use billion-dollar stealth weapons to kill a few malnourished soldiers equipped with 1960s-era Soviet surplus? The worst part about the upcoming war with Russia that we're determined to have might be that we're going to get our asses kicked, from the beginning. Expect to see more airports completely operational within hours of multi-million-dollar missile attacks.
There is not gone be a war with Russia. If there was a war you can be damn sure that the US would whip Russia armed forces of the map. Also, Russia official defense doctrine is nuclear response to a lost in conventional conflict.
Again, yes the military is expensive. They do a good job of fighting traditional military conflict. The reason the US never wins is because of defunct politics, not defunct military. The military is just bloated and expensive, but not defunct.
Piggy-backing stuff onto the military budget that is dual use is a nice fig leaf but it does not reduce the component spent on the remainder: weapons of all sorts, kinds and shapes.
I still remember one discussion on NRO where an user mentioned that it donated a space telescope to NASA [0], built around the same time as Hubble, that had better specs. And that's the spare one!
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_O...
Sure DARPA produces civilian applicable research as a side effect, but what about directly funding civilian research instead?
SpaceX’ concept is about going below $50m in the next years per launch.
The US could have easily contracted to Arianespace for these flights (especially as Arianespace is already a project of a close ally), and could have saved around 300 million USD for every single launch, of which there were thousands over the time frame that this was possible.
We’re seriously talking about dozens to hundreds of billions USD that could have been saved.
The Arian 6 will get like 3 Billion and many of its parts have a history of development by government investment.
Arianespace might come close to competing on price, but they can't compete on cost.