I predict that the program will end after Artemis flies and they have a plan in place for the jobs it creates
https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/10/22/boeing-has-a-delta...
https://spacenews.com/starliner-test-flight-slips-to-early-a...
If they bought ULA it would be for the established cont(r)acts , but it would feel like an odd lateral move after investing so much money and effort into to their own vehicle, and a non reusable one at that.
ULA s next rocket also uses the engine developed by BO for New Glenn, but is also not reusable apart from an optional future possibility of catching the engines with a helicopter.
Massive win for BO if this comes to pass.
However, because Blue doesn't release a lot to the press about things they have that are not flying yet, and because they've had a lot of delays with their engines, pushing the whole project back, there is very little in visible results. It's sort of a running joke among rocket watchers that tomorrow Blue is going to open the doors, roll out a massive rocket and launch it into orbit. It's just that it's always tomorrow, not today.
Given how Bezos is willing to keep investing into Blue, someday that tomorrow will come.
I hope Blue Origin succeeds, but Jeff’s investment and attention by no means guarantees success. The Fire Phone was a similarly enormous, exorbitantly-expensive, and secretive project that ultimately failed utterly. In that case, from my perspective as someone who was there, it was Bezos’s fixation on a particular solution (3D display, hand tracking) and refusal to consider or solicit contrary feedback that doomed the product. I worry about a similar outcome for Blue Origin. I hope I’m wrong.
The Fire Phone seems to have lived a pretty short life from launch to death (it was announced in 2014 and canceled in 2015). Even accounting for a few years of development, it seems a different scale from BO, which has been running for 20 years.
New Shepard's first passenger flight may be this year -- but they've been saying that for a while. As for New Glenn, they've built an enormous factory to manufacture it, but aside from the first-stage engines, they're keeping further progress to themselves, for the moment.
Blue Origin business model now and for years to come is selling Amazon stock.
Of course, disposable launch providers will be even worse off.
So if Blue Origin wants to buy ULA, it has to negotiate with both Boeing and Lockheed Martin to be able to do it.
I have no idea if Boeing and Lockheed Martin would be interested in selling. Both Boeing and Lockheed Martin have their own space businesses separate from ULA, and likely view part-owning ULA as having some synergies with their own space businesses, and selling ULA to Bezos could threaten those synergies. OTOH, as they say, everyone has their price, and Bezos has enough money to pay just about anybody's.
Infusing the existing org with a state of the art rocket/rocket development process has many failure modes (the new becoming "infected" with the stagnant mindset), but it could also work quite well, pairing the "cowboys" who know how to land a rocket stage with skilled "regulation jockeys".
But BO has a much better chance of succeeding without ULA than ULA has without BO and in this situation entering in an alliance of equals would just be silly. The icing on the cake is that the failure mode (stagnancy infection) would also be far more likely in arm alliance of equals.
It is funny saying that ULA might infect BO with a "stagnant mindset", given how little BO has actually delivered so far. BO had a two year head start over SpaceX, but in the same time that SpX has had over 100 successful orbital missions, BO hasn't made it to orbit once. In fact, thus far BO's only paying customer appears to be ULA – BO is supplying rocket engines to ULA's new Vulcan Centaur rocket. Vulcan Centaur is supposed to have its maiden launch by the end of this year; I wouldn't be surprised if it slips to next – but still, for all we know, Vulcan Centaur might make it to orbit before New Glenn does.
They have their own control rooms and the own launch pads.
The literally just spend the last 3 year rebuilding everything ULA already has from the ground up.
All of that would be incredibly stupid if they would want to buy ULA.
Boeing market cap: 126.7 billion
Lockheed market cap: 93.95 billion
Bezos net worth: 197 billion
So he doesn't have quite enough to buy both outright. On the other hand, both are diversified aerospace companies. If he just wanted their space parts, who knows...
There, saved you some time ;-)
Of course if China will manage to put a kind of a permanent base on the Moon, even some years after USA, that will be quite noteworthy.
Boomers were the ones who stopped the space program and turned it into a jobs program.
Gen X graduated at the end of the 80s and brought new energy into the 90s to build the first dot com and the internet economy, and people like Musk and Beck are the ones shaking up the space industry.
Boomers were involved in Viking and Voyager, but their main contribution to space was the Shuttle and the ISS.
As my Chinese coworkers would say, it's an even bigger waste of money. Given the delta-v costs of landing on the moon, putting a base there, landing personnel and resupply would be enormously expensive. If China wants to spend percentages of their GDP building a moon base, sure, why not?
Even with a heavy payload re-useable rocket like Starship, it'll still be really difficult. Alternatively, the US will build out serious orbital infrastructure and a mars base within the decade.
The U.S. spending percentages of their GDP on Apollo got us microchips which lead to the personal computer, etc.
Talk about dividends.
I believe we have to maintain this by law. Which, of course, means throwing money at whoever stands in the #2 spot, even if their product costs ten times more than #1. This means they have to keep throwing money at the likes of Boeing (which is likely one of the things that's helping keep them alive).
Until they can violate this mandate and stop burning cash like it is rocket fuel these inefficient programs and companies are going to keep doing what they do. No incentive to improve when the fitness function always outputs 100% regardless of what you do.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceLaunchSystem/comments/kt1vlf/r...
But while people love to talk about the Shelby thing, its overrated. Congress in general love SLS, its not about Shelby. House Democrats actually pushed for even more SLS budget then the Republican Senate.
Its just a terrible design for a rocket, terrible executed at an absurd price. Everybody involved should be fired and the contractors shouldn't get a new large contract until they prove successful at smaller contracts.
It consumes a perverse amount of NASA budget every year that could be invested in amazing programs that NASA has.
SLS stopped making sense years ago. They need to cut their losses now.
It just doesn't feel like....an advancement. It's not something that can get the general public excited about space.
Edit: it turns out today is the 40th anniversary of the first firing of those rockets while attached to the orbiter (the 'SSME' - space shuttle main engines). https://www.nasa.gov/feature/40-years-ago-two-months-away-fr...
Its original purpose seems to have been a place SLS would be able to get to, and then SLS would have the purpose of getting to it, in the same weird way that the ISS was a place the Shuttle could get to, and the Shuttle was needed to resupply ISS. Until it wasn't; and now the ISS has no purpose or value. Don't need SLS to get to ISS, so make a "Gateway" that does.
Make no mistake, a "Lunar Gateway" is much worse than completely useless. If you want to go to the moon, go to the moon. If you want to go to Mars or an asteroid, go there. Stopping at lunar orbit, effectively halfway, just costs a huge amount of extra fuel to stop and then start again.
Wait, what? The standard "go straight to the moon" mission plan (e.g. Apollo 11) has a required point where you are at a lunar orbit. There's no extra fuel cost to "stop" there; as you're spending fuel to slow down between lunar insertion and lunar landing, at some speed you inevitably are in a lunar orbit and can spend some time there at no fuel cost.
The only useful place for a "gateway" would be in low Earth orbit, with minimal cost to deliver fuel to, and useful for any destination except highly-inclined Earth orbit. Its value there is a result of the radically different character of Earth-launch vs. deep-space transport vehicles, being the natural point to transition between the two. Getting between Earth orbit and lunar orbit is, relatively, trivial, even for a crewed mission in an all-fired hurry.
Finally, the moon is a very specialized destination. There is no value in going or being there, beyond curiosity. Everything of practical interest or value is elsewhere, and a "Lunar Gateway" is useless for those.
What's the actual benefit?
A side trip from low Earth orbit to the gateway takes nearly the same delta-V as to Mars. But unless you are willing to take weeks getting to the gateway, you use up most of a Mars transfer delta-V to stop there, and as much delta-V again to get to your transfer orbit to Mars. In other words, LEO-to-gateway-to-Mars takes almost 3x the delta-V of going directly from LEO to Mars.
So Having a launch vehicle that does a rendevous with a LEO space station, then transfer the astronauts to a vehicle that is optimized just for the function of shuttling back and forth between an Earth space station and a Lunar space station, then have them board another craft that is optimized for landing on the Moon and taking off again, using minimal fuel because it doesn't need to carry the weight of the other components..
It makes designing a mission a lot more complex but at the savings of a lot of components and fuel, makes a lot more reusable components as well. Then when you add the ability to refuel in orbit by capturing asteroids, it really pays off.
Suppose I want to send a mission to land on the moon at a site not on the orbital plane of the gateway station. For an all in one mission this is no problem, I can match my Earth launch plane and transfer plane to line up with the destination. With a gateway station the lander has to do two plane change burns, on on landing and again on ascent back to the gateway. If you play KSP you know just how expensive plane change manoeuvres can be.
ISU is a great opportunity for sure, but we don’t have it yet. That would be a great reason for building a way station and a great reason for going to it on other missions. But without that reason what’s the point?
A plane change can be expensive, but if there's a space station that can supply all the required fuel, who cares?
Once the Gateway is up and running, the PPE element will provide power (in the 60-kilowatt), high-speed communications, attitude control, and Solar-Electric Propulsion (SEP) capabilities. This will allow it to alter its lunar orbit as needed, giving crews greater access to the lunar surface than was ever possible with conventional missions.
Many months is ok, because it can happen in parallel with the spacecraft being prepared on Earth.
The xenon gas is the propellant. This still comes from the earth so it's far from free. It's just more efficient.
Space is like a sports team: the public gets excited when there are wins. The public is excited about SpaceX because of the company's many wins. All ULA needs to do is post some wins to generate excitement.
SpaceX has upended the cost analysis on stuff like this.
The only way forward is reducing launch costs. SpaceX did that, but if that had not happened SLS still would have been pointless.
It's been a huge political boondoggle.
If you assume it’s to benefit NASA, but I think this statement is meant to speak to benefits to politicians