Comments on: More delays for ULA

By: Donald F. Robertson

Donald F. Robertson — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 18:58:33 +0000

Reduced outlays? Really? Certainly not for unit spacecraft actually developed and flown!

— Donald

By: Bill White

Bill White — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 18:53:31 +0000

Unfortunately, the government space market is too small to support enough providers for a healthy industry.

Exactly!

Develop new demand and there are an abundance of people with good ideas for Earth-to-LEO lift. Without new demand, the existing players fight like raptors over what little business exists.

By: Rand Simberg

Rand Simberg — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 16:18:20 +0000

The only benefit has been reduced budget outlays. Unfortunately, the government space market is too small to support enough providers for a healthy industry.

By: Donald F. Robertson

Donald F. Robertson — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 22:57:13 +0000

I’m prepared to be proven wrong, here, but I’m hard put to see a single benefit to the aerospace “consolidation” of this past decade. Have projects become less expensive, more efficient, or more capable? Has it resulted in more innovation by the majors? Has it resulted in more corporate investment in R&D? Has even one promise been kept? Instead, I see it as a major contributor (though not the only one) to the United States’ loss of market share. This is especially so in aircraft, but is it distressingly so in spacecraft and launch vehicles.

If I had any say in the matter, there would be no United Launch Alliance. Companies would be encouraged to concentrate on producing better spacecraft and rockets, rather than playing financial games that benefit no one but top management and (occasionally) shareholders.

— Donald

By: Ryan Zelnio

Ryan Zelnio — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 18:37:10 +0000

Northrup has quite a valid concern here in that NASA has increasingly been awarding contracts out to full system integrators. These integrators are responsible for not only building the spacecraft, but also for building up the ground segment and launching the rocket. This is what they are currently doing wit the GOES-R competition and others. It is making it so only companies of the size of Lockheed, Boeing and Northrup can win these contracts. This is squeezing out the littler guys like Orbital, Ball, Loral, Spectrum, Swales and others from even being able to compete for civil government contracts except as riding on the shirt-tails of the big three aerospace conglomerates.

Soon the commercial space manufacturing segment will look just like the commercial airline manufacturing segment in that only the big guys will be able to survive. Unfortunately, the alt.space community is too fixated on the transportation aspect of space to even look at what is happening here. If the alt.space community ever hopes to build big orbital lift rockets AND have customers for their non-human rockets, they should all be fighting to stop this and not just spaceX.