In an article in this week’s issue of The Space Review, Wayne Eleazer looks at the history of how the US government has approached launch vehicle procurement. One might imagine that the government would want to encourage competition, in order to reduce the government’s launch costs, but Eleazer finds just the opposite: the government has sought to eliminate competition, being satisfied with a single launch provider and often rejecting efforts to stimulate competition from commercial entities. In that respect, the EELV program, with its two companies, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, is something of an anomaly, a result of overoptimistic projections of commercial launch demand that, as Eleazer puts it, “enabled the EELV program office to stop envisioning lynch mobs assaulting their offices” had they been forced to continue with the original plans to downselect to a single provider. In that respect, he argues, SpaceX is fighting an uphill battle in its attempt to block the formation of the United Launch Alliance, the Boeing-Lockheed EELV joint venture. The one thing missing from Eleazer’s analysis is the reason why the government has been so determined to eliminate launch competition for its payloads.
In a separate article in the same issue, Taylor Dinerman reviews a book about the history of NASA’s mission: how the goals of the agency have changed over time. There are no real surprises here, and the review of the book only goes through the 1980s.
One factor in the government’s lack of interest in competition (restated as a lack of interest in lower prices) is that the high cost of launches drives higher-cost satellites. The cycle of building big, expensive, well-tested satellites and therefore requesting expensive, well-tested boosters has been going on for a long time. Later, the lack of need for frequent launches cut any economies of scale and drove the cost up to the next plateau.
I’ll be watching SpaceX’s legal challenge with interest, though it’s tough to estimate their odds.
The why is simple: accounting costs for paying for two production lines and two staffs show up in government spreadsheets. Future higher bid costs associated with sole source contracts do not. Penny wise and pound foolish. Bigelow with multi-sourcing has it right. Space takes too long and has too many late customizations to make a single vendor the most cost effective solution for a multi-year or two decade launcher buy.
[Once again using an office holiday party to make a post…]
The Eleazor article states that “As part of its objective of placing pressure on the Soviet Union from multiple sources, the Reagan Administration even agreed to allow a limited number of US satellites to launch on boosters built by communist China.”
Is this correct? I thought that the deal to allow China to launch US satellites came about in the 1990s as a direct result of US comsat industry pressure. There were simply not enough western rockets available to meet the growing demand.
I also agree with Dr. Foust that the article doesn’t explain the “why” of the lack of competition. This discussion cannot be held unless it focuses upon the national security dimension and the USAF’s desire for “assured access to space.” Simply put, space launch has never been viewed as a “market” by the DoD. It is more akin to an extension of national security requirements. Just as the United States does not compete contracts to transport combat aircraft to a war zone (i.e. there are no commercial naval aircraft carriers), government officials are unwilling to leave a task that they view as vital (delivering national security satellites to orbit) to an unreliable market. All subsequent decisions flow from this fact. So, they need “assured access” and they obtain this not by allowing a free market to flourish from which they will buy the cheapest rocket, but by awarding contracts in lump sums to “reliable” companies. Hence, EELV.
A friend of mine works for a large aerospace company. I once asked him what he through of SpaceX. His response was to ask me to recall the last time his company’s launch vehicle failed, and implied that you get what you pay for. He pointed out that Orbital once tried to dramatically lower launch costs with Pegasus, but when forced to achieve comparable reliability, their cost advantage evaporated. His arguement was, it really is hard and it really does cost that much. While I don’t totally agree with that, I also have to say that the entreprenurial launch industry has left me little ammunition to counter my friend’s arguments. While many of the delays are outside of their control, I have to wonder how much all the reliability-driven delays are costing SpaceX. My not totally uninformed guess would be, a lot!
— Donald
Dwayne Day:
This discussion cannot be held unless it focuses upon the national security dimension and the USAF’s desire for “assured access to space.” Simply put, space launch has never been viewed as a “market” by the DoD. It is more akin to an extension of national security requirements.
From a national security perspective, the flip side of assured access to LEO is the ability to deny access to others.
“Is this correct? I thought that the deal to allow China to launch US satellites came about in the 1990s as a direct result of US comsat industry pressure. There were simply not enough western rockets available to meet the growing demand.”
Back in the 80’s there were a couple of satelites that had PAM failures that left them stuck in LEO.
Both were launched on the same Shuttle mission using 2 PA’s from the same lot with the same fault IIRC.
A later shuttle recovered them and they were refurbrished and relaunched on the Long March Booster IIRC.
The need for “assured access to space” for DoD/national security payloads was made plain by the loss of Challenger; the lack of any discussion of the impact of the shuttle program’s shutdown afterward on the EELV program is a huge hole in Mr. Eleazar’s article.
Of course, when one starts to consider the impact of a foreign-built main engine on the “assured access to space” criteria, Atlas V looks pretty damn suspect, especially given that P&W and LM have yet to meet the basic requirements of the original EELV RFP, namely:
1) US production of all major components;
2) A heavy-lift version of the basic vehicle;
3) Polar launch capability as a requirement of the initial bid.
Now, due to all sorts of reasons, some legitimate and some not, both Delta IV and Atlas V have been re-negotiated (to the ultimate cost of the taxpayer, as opposed to Boeing and LM’s shareholders and management), but the basic truth is that while the Delta IV/RS-68 can do what was asked for in the original EELV RFP, Atlas V/RD-180 can not, both at the moment and for the forseeable future.
The national security aspects of that reality have not been dealt with, and should cause real questions about the Atlas V’s usefulness…