Comments on: How other space-related items fared in the FY14 spending bill http://www.spacepolitics.com/2014/01/15/how-other-space-related-items-fared-in-the-fy14-spending-bill/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-other-space-related-items-fared-in-the-fy14-spending-bill Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway... Wed, 17 Sep 2014 13:35:41 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.0.38 By: Fred Willett http://www.spacepolitics.com/2014/01/15/how-other-space-related-items-fared-in-the-fy14-spending-bill/#comment-456247 Thu, 16 Jan 2014 01:41:18 +0000 http://www.spacepolitics.com/?p=6813#comment-456247 The Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program received $1.5 billion,
The DoD pays this to ensure the EELVs stay in place for US DoD use.
SpaceX doesn’t get this subsidy.
Frank Kendall, U.S. undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, last year said the projected cost of the U.S. Air Force’s Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) rocket program over 150 missions has more than doubled since 2004, to nearly $70 billion.
That works out at $466.6M a flight.
Presumably that includes the subsidy.
SpaceX charges flat $56.5M for a F9 flight.
SpaceX accounts for the paper work of doing a NASA flight separately at about $20M. This would make a NASA flight about $76.5M.
I don’t know what sort of paperwork DoD requires but it would have to be a hell of a lot to push the cost of F9 up to $400M+.
Isn’t it time DoD dropped the subsidy to EELVs?

]]> By: Dark Blue Nine http://www.spacepolitics.com/2014/01/15/how-other-space-related-items-fared-in-the-fy14-spending-bill/#comment-456046 Wed, 15 Jan 2014 14:54:50 +0000 http://www.spacepolitics.com/?p=6813#comment-456046 You have to love the dysfunction of Congress. An unnecessary, duplicative, hyper-expensive, civil HLV with no national security function gets hundreds of millions of dollars more than requested. But multiple, critical path, civil space weather and military space programs upon which literally thousands to millions of lives depend get shafted to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

What a brilliant national space strategy…

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