By Jeff Foust on 2014 June 21 at 9:43 am ET Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) opened on Friday a new front in the ongoing debate about the availability of the RD-180 engine and proposals to develop a domestic replacement. McCain’s office announced that the senator sent a letter to Frank Kendall, undersecretary of defense fo acquisition, asking questions about how much the RD-180 engines cost and who profits from sales of those engines.
McCain in particular appears concerned in the letter that RD AMROSS, the US-Russian joint venture that imports the RD-180 engines from NPO Energomash and sells them to United Launch Alliance (ULA), may be marking up the price of those engines significantly. “I am aware of claims that the engines have been sold by NPO Energomash to RD Amross at a much lower price than RD Amross charges ULA for them,” McCain notes in his letter to Kendall.
McCain’s letter included a list of nine questions for Kendall about RD-180 procurement and related issues. McCain even asks what role RD AMROSS plays in the process: “what do you understand RD Amross’s business purpose to be and what value, if any, does it provide in connection with the manufacture of the RD-180?” He also asks Kendall about the department’s cost estimates to both produce the RD-180 domestically and to develop an entirely new engine to replace it.
McCain’s letter comes as another American company is showing interest in the RD-180. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Orbital Sciences Corporation is in discussions to acquire RD-180s to use on its Antares launch vehicle, replacing the Aerojet Rocketdyne AJ26 engines (“Americanized” versions of the Soviet-era NK-33 engine) that Antares currently uses. A decision on whether to use the RD-180, a solid motor provided by ATK (which is merging with Orbital), or continue to use the AJ26 is expected in the next two months.
Orbital has shown interest in the RD-180 in the past, and clashed with ULA regarding access to it. Orbital filed a suit against ULA and RD AMROSS in federal court a year ago, alleging that the two companies monopolized supply of the engine. Orbital dropped the suit in March but left open the option to refile. (The WSJ article notes that Orbital appears to be in discussions now directly with NPO Energomash, and not RD AMROSS, about acquiring RD-180s.) Last month, the Russian news service Itar-Tass reported that Orbital was in negotiations with Energomash to buy not the RD-180 but a variant, the RD-181.
By Jeff Foust on 2014 June 19 at 6:36 am ET As debate on the Senate floor started—slowly—Wednesday on several appropriations bills, including the Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) bill that funds NASA, one senator defended language in the report accompanying the bill about commercial crew cost data while another senator hinted he would seek to change that language before the bill becomes law.
At issue is a provision in the report regarding the commercial crew program that requires “certified cost and pricing data” from companies that receive commercial cargo and crew contracts. That language was inserted by Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, on the argument that it provides needed “transparency” to ensure taxpayers’ money is being spent wisely.
“Those efforts must continue in a transparent way, I believe, to ensure that the government is not saddled with mounting bills and no recourse,” Shelby said on the Senate floor Wednesday morning, referring to NASA’s commercial crew program. He said the requirement for certified cost data, usually applied to cost-plus contracts, was not an attempt to change NASA’s plans to use fixed-price contracts for the program’s next phase.
“The goal of the language is not to upend a fixed-price contract. Rather, the goal is to make certain that the price NASA has agreed to pay for vehicle development matches actual development expenditures,” he said. “NASA and its contractors have a history of cost overruns and schedule delays, whether the contract has a fixed price or not. With no other US-based options to get to the space station, I believe we cannot find ourselves at the 11th hour with an overburdened program that requires a bailout to succeed.”
That provision has been criticized by many commercial space advocates and others, from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget to the conservative editorial page of the Washington Times. In his own comments on the Senate floor later Tuesday, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) suggested he would seek to change the report language at some point before the bill becomes law.
“But we’re going to need to continue to work, and I would like to, with Sen. Shelby and Sen. [Barbara] Mikulski, as the bill goes to the conference committee, to make sure we have the right mix of oversight and innovation in how NASA contracts for this competition with the competitors,” he said. He didn’t elaborate on those comments, but the language strongly suggests he was referring to the “certified cost and pricing data language” in the report.
Nelson made those comments while also praising Sens. Mikulski and Shelby for funding commercial crew at close to the administration’s request: $805 million versus the $848 million requested. “This bill gets it close,” he said. “I can’t overstate the importance of commercial crew in the long-term viability of the space station.”
By Jeff Foust on 2014 June 18 at 6:52 am ET As the House of Representatives prepares to debate the fiscal year 2015 defense appropriations bill this week, the White House has come out in opposition to one of the bill’s space-related provisions: $220 million to start development of a large rocket engine to replace the Russian-built RD-180.
“The Administration objects to the unrequested $220 million for a new rocket engine,” the Statement of Administration Policy (SAP) about the defense appropriations bill, released late yesterday, states. “This approach prematurely commits significant resources and would not reduce our reliance on Russian engines for at least a decade.” The SAP also cites an unnamed “independent study” that claims development of such an engine would take eight years and cost $1.5 billion, plus “another $3 billion needed to develop a suitable launch vehicle.” (The SAP doesn’t identify this study by name; the summary of the “Mitchell Report” about the RD-180 that leaked last month doesn’t include those specific cost estimates, although it does state a new liquid oxygen/hydrocarbon engine should be ready by fiscal year 2022, or eight years from now.)
The SAP indicates that the Obama Administration is looking at other options to develop a new large domestic rocket engine. “With a goal of promptly reducing our reliance on Russian technology, the Administration is evaluating several cost-effective options including public-private partnerships with multiple awards that will drive innovation, stimulate the industrial base, and reduce costs through competition,” it states.
At an event hosted by The Atlantic Council in Washington last week, William A. LaPlante, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, said no decision had been made on whether to develop a large hydrocarbon engine. He added that the Air Force was open to alternative approaches, including the use of public-private partnerships, to develop one if they decided to go forward with that effort.
By Jeff Foust on 2014 June 17 at 12:17 pm ET It’s rare to get the Obama Administration and the conservative editorial page of the Washington Times in agreement on something. Yet, both have spoken out in opposition to report language in the Senate’s Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) appropriations bill—due to be considered by the full Senate this week—regarding cost and pricing data for commercial crew and cargo providers.
“Requiring private spaceflight contractors to calculate this additional, irrelevant set of numbers would consume thousands of man hours to calculate the complex, esoteric cost-plus system,” argues the Times in its editorial, referring to the “certified cost and pricing data” those companies would have to provide NASA for commercial crew and cargo contracts. Several commercial space advocacy groups have spoken out against the language in the CJS report requiring that information.
The Times editorial also includes a dig at the Space Launch System (SLS). “Launching this ‘Rocket to Nowhere’ will cost taxpayers at least a half-billion dollars every time it lifts off — if it ever does,” the editorial argues. “It’s only fair, and in the long run more efficient, that private firms get a fair opportunity to compete for America’s space business.”
Tuesday morning, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued its Statement of Administration Policy (SAP) on the Senate CJS appropriations bill. “The Administration appreciates the Committee’s support for the Commercial Crew program,” it states in the NASA section of the SAP, “but has concerns about language that would seek to apply accounting requirements unsuitable for a firm, fixed-price acquisition, likely increasing the program’s cost and potentially delaying its schedule.”
The SAP also addresses a couple of other issues with the CJS bill. The administration is “concerned,” it states, about the reduced funding for NASA’s Space Technology program, which gets $580 million versus the administration’s request of $705 million. It also criticizes the Senate for specifying that any future Europa mission use the SLS as the baseline launch vehicle, and warns that the Senate’s “proposed approach to a follow-on Landsat mission is not feasible within the bill’s proposed cost cap of $650 million.”
By Jeff Foust on 2014 June 17 at 11:54 am ET Although legislation making its way through both the House and Senate would support the development of a large hydrocarbon rocket engine that could, in principle, replace the Russian-built RD-180 used on the Atlas V, United Launch Alliance (ULA) appears to be moving to take matters into its own hands. The company announced late Monday that it’s signed “commercial contracts with multiple American companies to investigate next-generation liquid oxygen/hydrocarbon first stage propulsion concepts.” That work will cover feasibility studies as well as analysis of cost, schedule, and technical risks for designs that would be ready by 2019.
The company did not disclose how many contracts it’s awarded beyond “multiple,” nor who the companies are. There are, though, only a handful of companies in the US that have the expertise to develop such a large engine. It would be surprising if ULA’s contracts did not include Aerojet Rocketdyne, which has recently stepped up marketing of its proposed AR1 LOX/kerosene engine to ULA, Orbital Sciences, and even SpaceX. (On the other hand, despite SpaceX’s work on the Merlin series of LOX/kerosene engines and plans for even larger LOX/methane engines, the current animus between the two companies makes it an unlikely awardee.)
In the meantime, ULA said in the release it will continue to work with RD AMROSS, the US-Russian joint venture that provides ULA with the RD-180, to evaluate continued long-term use of the RD-180 in lieu of a new engine. Those discussions, ULA said in the release, include “evaluating product improvements, U.S. production and other enhancements to enable its future viability.”
ULA, in its release, said it plans to select “its future concept and engine supplier” by the fourth quarter of this year. As for how that new engine—if any—would be paid for, the release referred to “both private investment and the potential for government–industry investment” options. That could clash with proposals currently in Congress, such as in the House’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act, which calls for “full and
open competition” for the development of a government-funded next-generation liquid rocket engine that would be “available for purchase by all space launch providers of the United States.”
Meanwhile, in an op-ed in The Hill today, Peter Marquez, former director of space policy at the National Security Council, argues for a “pragmatic” approach to the future of the RD-180 engine and development of a domestic replacement. “[I]t may be more beneficial for the U.S. to evolve its own capabilities to increase independence and use such capabilities to alter the U.S.-Russia relationship to identify and increase the opportunities for true mutual benefit,” he writes, referring to use of the RD-180 as well as US-Russian cooperation on the International Space Station. “The best way ahead is a pragmatic path where the United States can utilize the RD-180 in the near term, while developing our own propulsion capabilities.”
By Jeff Foust on 2014 June 14 at 10:10 am ET Next week, the Senate is expected to take up the Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) appropriations bill that the Senate Appropriations Committee approved earlier this month. The CJS bill may be combined with two other appropriations bills in a “minibus” on the Senate floor.
What has attracted the most attention about the bill is not its funding levels but language in the report accompanying the bill that would require “certified cost and pricing data” from commercial crew and cargo providers. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) said the language provided needed “transparency” for those contracts. “I believe we must ensure that the taxpayers are getting the best value for their dollar, and I believe the language here will help make that happen,” he said in a markup of the CJS bill earlier this month.
Commercial space advocates see something different. “We believe this is actually about control,” claims the Space Access Society in a policy alert earlier this week. “Specifically, about bringing control over all NASA space transportation development back to the Alabama-based NASA old guard faction that’s running SLS, about bringing control over all NASA space transportation funding back under Senator Shelby’s thumb, and also about maintaining his control over Defense space transportation funding.”
The argument the Space Access Society and other space advocates make is that requiring certified cost and pricing data,” a provision usually reserved for cost-plus contracts, is inappropriate for the fixed-price contracts that are being used or contemplated for commercial cargo and crew. The organization earlier claimed that shifting to “cost-plus contract-type accounting controls on a commercial-style operation increases costs from 50% to 200%.”
Another pro-commercial space organization, the Space Frontier Foundation, also has expressed its concern about the report language. “These rules are designed to protect the old, traditional system that has kept us from doing anything exciting with humans in space for decades – and will slam shut the door to space for decades more if allowed to become law,” said Foundation co-founder Rick Tumlinson in a press release earlier this week, referring to the report language. “If we ever want to return to the Moon, go to Mars, mine asteroids, or even be able to afford to get to and from our own space station, this language must be removed from the congressional bills right away.”
While the CJS bill will be debated next week, either alone or as part of a minibus, any resolution to what these advocates consider to be unfavorable language may take longer to resolve. The report language, which is not part of the bill itself, will likely not be debated on the Senate floor, although there may be changes behind-the-scenes. And, the CJS bill and report that do pass will have to be reconciled with the version the House passed late last month. The report tied to the House bill does not include the certified cost language, but does direct NASA to downselect to a single commercial crew company in the competition’s next round.
By Jeff Foust on 2014 June 13 at 1:22 pm ET A top Air Force official said Friday that the Defense Department is implementing the near-term recommendations of a recent study regarding the availability of the RD-180 engine used by the Atlas V, but would not yet commit to that study’s long-term recommendation of developing a domestic replacement.
“I think it’s in the mix, but it’s not a done deal that it’s going to happen or not happen, because to go ahead and do it is a very expensive proposition,” said William A. LaPlante, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, during a question-and-answer session at the end of a talk Friday morning at The Atlantic Council in Washington.
In some of the first on-the-record comments made by DOD officials about the “Mitchell Report” (which was leaked to the media last month but has not yet been formally released by the DOD), LaPlante praised the work by the committee, chaired by retired Air Force Maj. Gen. H. J. “Mitch†Mitchell with former NASA administrator Mike Griffin as the deputy chair. “They did a great job,” LaPlante said of the RD-180 study committee. “They basically gave me and the leadership of the department and also the administration some recommendations.”
LaPlante said the Air Force is already “basically doing” the report’s near-term recommendations. That includes reviewing the current launch manifest to see what missions could be moved off the Atlas V to the Delta IV if the supply of RD-180 engines was restricted. “That happening right now. It’s actually almost done,” he said of that work.
The report’s long-term recommendation called for the development of a new liquid oxygen (LOX)/hydrocarbon that could serve as an eventual replacement for the RD-180. “We’ve taken away from this that the Air Force, along with our partners in OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] and the administration and across the space enterprise, including NASA, have to take another serious look at the future of domestic engines.”
However, LaPlante stopped short of endorsing the development of a new LOX/hydrocarbon engine. “I don’t think we know enough yet,” he said. He said that he was open to alternative technical and programmatic concepts, including the use of public-private partnerships to develop such an engine. He also suggested that such a new engine could use different propellants. “There’s some very interesting concepts out there. The Mitchell Commission recommended a LOX/hydrocarbon [engine] as what they thought” should be developed, but “I wouldn’t even box it in at that. I think there’s enough interesting concepts out there.” He didn’t elaborate on what those “interesting concepts” are.
While the Air Force might still be reticent to endorse development of an RD-180 replacement, Congress has been moving forward with legislation that would do just that. Versions of defense authorization bills in the House and Senate would direct work on such an engine, although at different authorized spending levels: $100 million in the Senate but $220 million in the House. Language in the report accompanying the defense appropriations bill passed by the House Appropriations Committee earlier this week would provide $220 million to start that engine work, and require that the engine be ready for launch no later than fiscal year 2022.
By Jeff Foust on 2014 June 13 at 10:26 am ET NASA’s Kennedy Space Center is embarking on a long-range master plan that, over the next two decades, foresees major changes to the center as it evolves from one that primarily supported the Space Shuttle to one that is a “multi-user” spaceport. The master plan includes, among other features, a proposed second runway and as many as three additional launch pads, as well as an area for the vertical landing of reusable vehicles.
KSC officials started last week a series of public hearings about the plans, which received a mixed reaction, Florida Today reported. Some of the negative reaction is about the environmental impact of those additional facilities, while others wondered if the plans conflicted with a separate master plan for Cape Canaveral developed by Space Florida, one that includes development of a new commercial launch pad at a site north of KSC called Shiloh. The FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation has started an environmental impact study of the proposed Shiloh site, including public hearings later this year that attracted large crowds both in favor and opposed to the site.
KSC’s long-term plans have also attracted the attention of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL). In a statement issued by his office Wednesday, Rubio said he met with KSC director Robert Cabana at his Washington office that day to discuss KSC’s master plan efforts. “It’s important that NASA and the commercial space industry coexist in a way that benefits our nation’s space and science goals, as well as Florida’s long-standing role as a hub of space-related job creation,” Rubio said in the statement.
The senator, though, also expressed concerns about how the plan might affect the state’s competitiveness in commercial space. “My hope is that NASA’s management plans for Kennedy do not put Florida at a competitive disadvantage, or deter or hamper commercial space entities from making full use of the facility and other potential launch sites in Florida,” Rubio said in the statement, adding that he received assurances from Cabana that would not be the case.
However, those efforts might be too late for perhaps the biggest target of Florida’s pursuit of additional launch business. Last week the FAA formally announced the availability of the final environmental impact assessment for the proposed spaceport near Brownsville, Texas. The FAA will publish a record of decision on the environmental assessment no sooner than 30 days after the Federal Register notice; that is likely the last major milestone before the FAA makes a decision on the spaceport license application itself.
The Brownsville site is designed exclusively for SpaceX, and while the company has made no formal decision, it’s been clear in recent weeks that the site is the leading contender to take over the bulk of SpaceX’s planned commercial launches. The company will continue to launch from Florida, such as NASA commercial cargo and (if selected) crew missions, as well as other government work, but launches like the Falcon 9 ORBCOMM mission slated to take place from Cape Canaveral in the coming days would shift to Texas in a few years, regardless of how KSC’s or Space Florida’s master plans turn out.
By Jeff Foust on 2014 June 12 at 5:56 pm ET At a Capitol Hill luncheon Wednesday, NASA officials provided a standing room only audience with an update on the development of key elements of the agency’s exploration plans: the Orion spacecraft, Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket, and ground systems to support those vehicles. And while officials gave the message that development of all three was going well, there was uncertainty—or, at least, confusion—about one longer-term element of the plan.
“We believe we are on a mission. We have a deeper purpose,” said Dan Dumbacher, deputy associate administrator for human exploration and operations, after providing a quick overview of those three programs, including this fall’s test flight of the Orion spacecraft, designated Exploration Flight Test 1 (EFT-1). “Step one is coming up this fall, December 2014, EFT-1, and what we get to be doing with Orion. So be watching for that, watch us make the progress.”
The message that Dumbacher and the NASA managers of Orion, SLS, and ground systems provided the audience at the Space Transportation Association event was that all three programs were making good progress. “In SLS, we’re kind of in blocking and tackling mode right now,” said SLS manager Todd May. He said they kicked off last week a critical design review for the core stage and the booster stage last week, and currently have five months of slack on their critical path.
Dumbacher said that there “standard hardware development kind of things” the Orion program has had to work through as it prepares for EFT-1. “You always learn when you do hardware,” he said. Budget issues, including sequestration and the government shutdown last October, also complicated matters. “The bottom line is that all three—ground systems, Orion, and SLS—will be ready for EM-1″ in late 2017, he said.
What happens beyond EM-1 has been the subject of some speculation in recent weeks, which Dumbacher addressed in his opening comments. “Despite what some people might want to say in the blogosphere, [EM-2] will be crewed,” he said. “There’s word out there that we’re not going to fly crew until EM-3. Don’t believe it. The baseline plan continues to be the baseline plan of crew on EM-2.”
That “word out there in the blogosphere” was actually also in trade publications like Space News, which reported last month that EM-2 might not carry crew since industry was expecting it to be the first flight of a new, more powerful Exploration Upper Stage (EUS) that would replace the Delta IV-derived Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) that will fly on EM-1. Boeing executives at the 30th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs last month said that the EUS could be ready in time for EM-2, although as Boeing vice president John Elbon said there, “the architectures haven’t been laid out yet” for its use for EM-2 or beyond, including whether its first flight would carry a crew.
Asked later in the event about the use of the EUS, Dumbacher said NASA had made no decisions yet about when and how to fly the upper stage. “Our baseline plan, and I will start there, is the ICPS on EM-1 and EM-2,” he said. “We are looking at the upper stage and when we can bring it in to the program, what’s the place to do it. Todd [May] and his team are doing all the trades, including trades on the engines. We’re still working through all that.”
Dumbacher confirmed after the luncheon that the “trades on the engines” includes whether to use RL10 engines for the EUS, as has been widely reported, or the J-2X engine that NASA has been developing since the Constellation program. He added that NASA was looking at a range of opportunities to first fly the EUS, from EM-2 to as late as EM-5.
By Jeff Foust on 2014 June 11 at 7:07 pm ET In recent years, the commercial remote sensing industry has been lobbying the federal government to change rules that prevented companies from selling imagery with resolutions sharper than 50 centimeters per pixel. DigitalGlobe in particular argued that its current and planned satellites could already provide imagery with better resolutions than that, and that the capabilities of foreign systems not subject to US resolution limits could it make less competitive in the commercial market. It appears that, this week, DigitalGlobe got its wish.
The company announced Wednesday that it received notice from the Commerce Department that the agency had approved revised resolution limits for existing and future spacecraft. The company’s current satellites will, effective immediately, be able to sell images as sharp as technically possible by them: 41-centimeter resolution for GeoEye-1 and 46 centimeters for WorldView-2. Imagery from the company’s WorldView-3 satellite, slated for launch in August, can be sold at resolutions of as sharp as 25 centimeters starting six months after it’s declared operational. (The spacecraft is capable of 31-centimeter imagery, according to the company.) GeoEye-2, a satellite developed for GeoEye prior to its acquisition by DigitalGlobe, will also be able to provide similarly sharp imagery when it’s launched at an unspecified future date.
“Our customers will immediately realize the benefits of this updated regulation, as for the first time, we will be able to make our very best imagery available to the commercial market,” DigitalGlobe CEO Jeffrey Tarr said in a company statement announcing the revised resolution limits. He also thanked Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and officials from the Departments of Defense and State, and the intelligence community, for “this forward-leaning change to our nation’s policy.”
Curiously, those officials are silent about the change. The Commerce Department, which regulates commercial remote sensing satellites, made no public announcement of the change, nor did other administration officials. It’s thus not clear if the revised resolution limits apply only to DigitalGlobe or to any US-licensed satellite company. In practice, no other company licensed by the US government is operating or developing satellites that could run afoul of the earlier 50-centimeter limit. Skybox Imaging, the company that Google announced Tuesday it was acquiring for $500 million, can provide images as sharp as 90 centimeters, according to company literature.
Earlier this year, some government officials signaled a willingness to accept revised resolution limits for commercial remote sensing satellites. At a conference in April, both Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency director Letitia Long said the intelligence community supported changes to allow companies to sell higher-resolution satellite imagery.
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