That business about producing the full record of the process implies the judge found the whole deal smelly enough to do a thorough colonoscopy on the thing. I’m guessing we may be hearing shortly about subpoenas for e-mails and all the kind of stuff that’s been going on in the IRS investigations in DC. And with a lot of the same ultimate results, I suspect. The full record of the block buy deal is probably going to see some people jailed before it’s over. Everyone involved in this execrable farce should spend the rest of their lives paying through the nose for lawyers, doing depositions, responding to writs, standing trial and serving time. They need to be made examples of with extreme prejudice.

Okay, enough of waxing wroth. Time for some more of my favorite things – predictions!

The mediation the judge has mandated is likely to go smoothly. By the time mediation starts, it will be obvious even to ULA and USAF that there will be no more RD-180’s and, hence, no more Atlas V’s beyond the handful buildable with the rapidly dwindling supply of on-hand engines. At that point the block buy will have to be declared dead for ULA’s lack of ability to deliver on it as written. The only question then will be what replaces it.

USAF has birds that need to fly. I suspect a deal will be struck in which SpaceX makes its own block buy offer for all birds on the manifest whose mass and orbital elements are within the Falcon 9’s lift envelope, with reusability margin or without. USAF will entertain a counteroffer from ULA based on Delta IV. SpaceX will win.

ULA will then offer a reduced block buy deal for missions with heavy birds based on a combination of Atlas V configurations they still have engines enough to build and upper-end Delta IV Mediums or Delta IV Heavies for the remainder. SpaceX will agree to this deal provided the missions involved are to launch before Jan. 1, 2017, the latest date by which they expect to achieve EELV certification for Falcon Heavy. ULA will object that Falcon Heavy could fail in either testing or certification reviews and miss this date. SpaceX will agree that, in such a case, it will make no objection to ULA getting an additional year of sole-source awards for heavy bird launches. SpaceX will also agree to a contingency version of ULA’s block buy deal that will cover the extra year should ULA be able to offer more savings to the government in this way. There will be a bit of pro forma wrangling about minor points and then all three parties will agree to the pair of agreements, plus the contingency agreement, and everyone will go back to work bending metal and launching satellites.

In the interim, USAF will find that it likes block buys but not multi-year ones. By Jan. 1, 2017, it will have negotiated new ones for the coming year with both EELV certified suppliers. As preserving alternatives was the original rationale of the EELV program, USAF, using a formula similar to that NASA uses to award CRS and CC contracts – the cheapest supplier gets the most work but all certified bidders get at least some – will award a certain amount of business to the Delta IV division of Boeing, ULA having disintegrated after the end of Atlas V production in early 2016. Boeing will have incentives to get its costs and prices down by being awarded more business as it does so.

SpaceX will still get the lion’s share of heavy satellite launch missions based on the low cost and generous boost margins of Falcon Heavy. It will get even more of the small and medium payloads for Falcon 9. The main price competition for future USAF annual block buys is going to be between SpaceX and Orbital Sciences-ATK for small and medium payloads.

Taking a page from SpaceX’s book, Orbital will surprise everyone by making its Antares Mk2 launcher reusable in a way similar to SpaceX’s Falcon 9, but different too. The new Antares 1st stage will feature a cluster of seven ATK solid rocket engines, each putting out 250,000 lbs. of thrust. The first stage will also have a half dozen small, steerable, pressure-fed, LOX-Methane liquid fueled engines producing 8,000 lbs. of thrust each around its periphery.

On ascent the liquid-fueled engines provide modest extra thrust plus steering control. At MECO, all seven solid-fueled engine casings, now spent, are ejected rearward and discarded. The remaining lightened 1st stage mass now flies a somewhat SpaceX-like return-to-launch-site trajectory using all six liquid-fueled engines during re-entry and three to land vertically with on fold-down, tripod legs.

ATK’s expertise making ammunition, tactical rocket motors and large solid-fueled rocket engines are combined to make the Antares 1st-stage main engines cheap and disposable, but also of high quality. The Orbital-ATK ammunition and tactical rocket motor engineers get to design the production line.

Orbital-ATK will only have a single test mission for the revamped Antares under its belt as of Jan. 1, 2017, but the coming year will see it launch three more CRS missions to ISS with this vehicle, plus a CC mission pushing a Dream Chaser per its recent agreement with Sierra Nevada Corp. The vehicle, already in the preliminaries of EELV certification, will receive that imprimatur by Jan. 1, 2018.

Old and tired or not, the “nasty” (or at least competent) lawyers do not appear to be working for ULA:

“Braden denied a motion from ULA to dismiss the lawsuit… Braden said ULA ‘has no basis to challenge’ SpaceX’s standing”

http://www.spacenews.com/article/military-space/41391judge-orders-mediation-for-spacex-us-air-force

U.S. currency isn’t the end-all, be-all consideration for the Russian leadership. If Putin & Co. need to strike back against U.S. sanctions or simply appear strong to challengers domestically, the RD-180 income stream may be traded away.

And with the new sanctions the White House imposed on certain Russian aerospace/defense design bureaus the day _before_ MH-17 was shot down, U.S. leadership may decide it’s more important to cripple specific Russian manufacturers or send stronger messages to Russia’s leadership than avoiding the costs of transferring Atlas payloads to other launchers.

The threats to RD-180 imports have multipled this month, not dwindled.