Note it's a preliminary injunction (http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/business/spacex/9...), which is basically a device that keeps the status quo from changing irreversibly while the parties figure out the merits of the suit. This doesn't mean that SpaceX has "won" but it does mean that they have demonstrated at least a "substantial likelihood for success on the merits" of the case.
It also only applies "until the court receives the opinion of the United States Department of the Treasury, and the United States Department of Commerce and United States Department of State, that any such purchases or payments will not directly or indirectly contravene Executive Order 13,661."
After reading the injunction it seems that the court believes that the test is "a reasonable likelihood of success on the merits" not "a substantial likelihood for success."
"In a statement issued this week, ULA said it is “the only government certified launch provider that meets all of the unique . . . requirements that are critical to supporting our troops and keeping our country safe.”"
Wow. Unique requirements that were no doubt co-written by the only party that can provide them.
If the requirements are unique that is still no reason to go no-bid, after all it might be possible for another party to re-tool and/or adapt to those requirement and still beat the only party currently able to supply.
Elon Musk makes a good point when he says that he's willing to lose but he wants the right to bid.
as a former department of homeland security employee this is business as usual. you think it was an accident that these were no-bid or that some random canadian company got the healthcare website contract when there are thousands of americans who could have done it better? just scratching the backs of their donors. nothing to see here.
Agree completely, with the minor nitpick that its not donors to politicians here so much as the revolving door between military/bureaucracy of the government and the industrial complex.
Conclusion
There is no evidence that Townes-Whitley’s connection to the first lady,
or CGI’s campaign contributions, had anything to do with the contract being
awarded to CGI Federal as viral emails suggest.
Company and government officials say the contract was awarded through a competitive
— yet limited — process, and that Townes-Whitley was not involved.
> In reaction to the sanctions, Rogozin tweeted: “After analyzing the sanctions against our space industry, I suggest the U.S. delivers its astronauts to the ISS with a trampoline.”
In Russian there's an expression - to scare a hedgehog with a naked ass - which is exactly the case here, except it's really a shame that it's the space exploration that ends up suffering because of some bullshit political games.
This is not space exploration, its a jobs program for missile scientists -- you know keep them off the streets, keep them from joining gangs, kind of like Boys Clubs or something.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2013/09/14/the-ski...
"The collapse of the Soviet Union created the final incentive to go forward. U.S. officials worried that Russian rocket scientists would go to work for rogue nations, spreading missile technology. In 1993, the United States and its allies brought the Russians into the fold for what would now be called the international space station. The international agreements ensured that the funds would keep flowing to the project despite changes in administrations and turnover in Congress."
In retrospect seems like as good an idea as arming the mujahideen in the 80's or putting Lenin on the train from Zurich.
And that's of course the US version of the story. Very cute, but I can tell you from lots of anecdotal evidence that all that ISS work was a drop in the ocean as far as Soviet space program was concerned.
Rocket scientists didn't go to work for rogue nations. You have to understand that Soviet space industry was (and still is) veiled in secrecy. Think of it as SkunkWorks but on a massive scale and with 100x of security officers. You couldn't just hand in your resignation and go work for Iran. It just didn't work this way (it still doesn't by the way). For example, people with a security clearance were required to keep their travel passports with HR and they were not generally allowed to leave the country unsupervised. That's if they could get passports issued to begin with. Perestroika or not, all this security scaffolding was still in place and you bet it was functioning. The state was still guarding its secrets and know-hows. Granted, it neglected people behind them, but it wasn't going to let others access its technology.
In my personal opinion, manned space flight (launchers, spacecraft, in space operations) has little technical overlap with solid fueled ballistic missiles.
This is mixing up multiple things: the injunction concerns engines for launches of American defense satellites (GPS, spy sats, communications satellites), etc., which don't go to the space station and don't have much to do with it. (ISS is a NASA program, not military.)
Of course, we all knew it was coming. Human spaceflight inside Dragon has always being a goal. The unmanned resupply missions are steeping stones to certifying the rocket and capsule for human flight (though unmanned resupply missions and other launches will continue of course).
"Not sure what Rogozin thought about them apples, but this sure isn't boring!"
Probably nothing.
The Soyuz rockets they use are so old they are literally still named after the Soviet Union. This might seem like a bad thing but in rocketry old means reliable and new means "Your payload will probably explode in one of the first 5 missions. Hope it wasn't important!"
In short, it won't be sometime before 2018 before the Dragon Mk 2 rockets become safe enough for Astronauts to use regularly to get to the space station.
They can fly Falcon 9 with cargo Dragons as well as unmanned Dragon 2 capsules many times before 2018. Demonstrated safety is hard to argue with.
There have been relatively recent failures with Soyuz launchers as well (though none with Soyuz FG). Russians have also been developing new things, both as upgrades to the Soyuz launcher and Soyuz spacecraft but also new developments. (Soyuz-2-1v and PTK)
Space exploration always had political motivation driving it or inhibiting it. The great progress done during last 40-50 years wouldn't have as much without cold war and its associated factors.
In this case, even if you exclude the Russian factor, the point that ULA was awarded such a huge contract without any competition, most probably didn't happen without political (and/or financial) influence.
The history behind the engines we are talking about is just crazy. Basically they were incredibly superior to the american ones but politicians lost interest in them (because the race to the moon was lost), and they scrapped the program and asked the engines to be destroyed. They were hidden in the middle of nowhere in Siberia. After the cold war, some Russians in the know wanted to sell them to US companies, the specs were so incredible (particularly the inner pressure) that the prospective buyers thought there was a translation problem or that it was false. They had created a new alloy, they had used an incredibly dangerous technology in them etc. I don't know very well history, but I think this complexity and technological ambition might be a factor in the USSR losing of the race to the moon.
edit: nice story, but it's the wrong engine, see below.
Different Russian engines. The engines that ULA is banned from buying are RD-180s; they are being newly built to, effectively, American specifications, though most components are derived from the RD-170 which was originally built for Energiya.
You're describing this history of the NK-33 engines, which were originally built for the Soviet lunar program, and then (as you say) hidden in a warehouse after that program was terminated. Some of those were later bought by Aerojet, which then sold them to Orbital for use in their ISS cargo delivery program; neither company is party to the suit, and the injunction doesn't cover them. (Nor could it; Aerojet's stock of NK-33s was bought and paid for quite some time ago now.)
Sure, just like Pearl Harbour helped to rebuild US Navy. Not a very productive way to go about it ... though if it helps getting Musk more money for his pet projects, who am I to object? :)
I think that leaves only China (maybe India ? I don't remember where they are space-wise) with a capacity to send people into space.
I don't think Ariane can be fitted for people.
And Russia, of course; American astronauts have been going up on Soyuz since the end of the Shuttle program.
If you're suggesting that the US could go to China for replacement transportation services: not likely. NASA is currently barred by Congress from any cooperation with the Chinese at all on space exploration. At least one of the US commercial crew competitors are likely to have working hardware long before that attitude changes.
He's one of the Russians targeted by US and EU for the activities of Russia in the Ukraine. Basically you can't do business with him or send him money.
> targeted by US and EU for the activities of Russia in the Ukraine
Ah, I didn't know exactly what those sanctions were. So, does it mean that, as a government official, he's threatening sanctions for a country, because of sanctions that were applied to him personally?
Given the circumstances, why would the USAF not bid out the launches? My thought is that they see Lockheed and Boeing as American companies and don't really care where the parts come from. In the end, SpaceX has shown a competive price and should have a chance to bid these launches.
On another hand, the US/Russian space programs and teamwork with the ISS is largely separated from the political issues in Ukraine. There is too much to lose on either side.
Are you kidding? The USAF has a very cozy relationship with the ULA. It was obvious to any non-naive observer at the time that the block buy was designed to lock in billions of dollars in government spending to the ULA before SpaceX would come along and smash the existing pricing structure, offering launches that ULA couldn't hope to compete with.
Even if SpaceX's prices go up with EELV launches, and even if they would never incorporate reusability into EELV launches, they would still be able to offer launches for every possible EELV payload at prices far below ULA's. Anything ULA could launch on any of their vehicles SpaceX could launch on the Falcon Heavy, and many launches (like GPS birds) could happen on the even cheaper Falcon 9.
With reusability, which SpaceX seems to have a good handle on, those costs get slashed, especially the cost of the Falcon Heavy. Any EELV payload could be launched on a reusable Falcon Heavy, even if it meant forgoing crossfeed. Even if the first stages could only be reused twice (a paltry amount) that would lower the cost of a reusable Falcon Heavy to around the cost of a Falcon 9, around $50 million.
Keep in mind that every ULA launcher uses an RL-10 in the upper stage, and that's a $40 million engine. Even at discounted prices simply having an engine that expensive (to say nothing of the rest of the vehicle) on every launch makes it impossible to offer launches as cheap as SpaceX could.
The Falcon Heavy uses 3 identical cores as the "first stage" of the vehicle. If each of the stages burns at the same rate and burns out at the same time then it's basically just one big stage and the Falcon Heavy would just be a 2-stage launcher. Adding more stages increases payload performance of launchers because you're dumping dead weight. The plan for the Falcon Heavy is to have cross feed between the engines so that effectively the center stage's engines are run off the outer stages' fuel tanks until those tanks are dry. Then the outer stages separate and the center stage fires alone (as a 2nd stage) until it is depleted, then the upper stage fires (as a 3rd stage), massively increasing overall payload.
The Delta IV Heavy throttles down the center core during launch and peels away the outer cores first in a sort of "virtual crossfeed" scenario, though this comes at the cost of liftoff thrust.
The only problem with crossfeed for the Falcon Heavy is that it leaves the center core traveling a lot faster and a lot farther down range than the first stage of a Falcon 9 normally would be, which might make it a lot harder to return to the launch site for reusability. However, as a worst-case scenario the Falcon Heavy could be operated without crossfeed with all lower stage cores burning out at the same time, which would reduce payload significantly but the cost savings would probably make it worthwhile even so.
Falcon 9 (not heavy) has a first stage and a second stage. The first stage consists of one kerosene tank, one oxygen tank and nine engines. This is also called a core.
Falcon 9 heavy (no crossfeed) has a first stage and a second stage. But the first stage consists of 3 cores that run in parallel. All three cores start and stop at the same time. So 27 engines start at the pad.
Falcon 9 heavy with crossfeed has sort of two or three stages, depending how you count. Outwards it looks very similar to the no-crossfeed Falcon 9 heavy. The topmost stage is similar to the two already mentioned configurations. The three cores look pretty similar. All three cores start at the pad (27 engines running), but the propellant for the center core's engines is taken from the outer cores' tanks. This means the outer cores run out of propellants quite quickly. They can then be discarded in flight, and the center core starts using propellants from its own tanks. Now it can fly without the dead mass of the outer cores and as a result the rocket can carry a bigger payload.
Why start the core engine at the pad, and not make it a real second stage that starts up only higher? Because then you get more thrust, the engines are not dead weight during early flight.
Some rockets like Titan IV had a somewhat similar parallel configuration but they did not start their center engine except at high altitude.
Right. OK. So with a simple 2-stage rocket like the Falcon 9 you have the first stage which has the 2nd stage stacked on top of it which has the payload stacked on top of it. During a normal flight the first stage (which is the biggest stage) lights, lifts the whole thing off the ground, and pushes the rocket up into the air and starts getting it up to speed. Then the first stage runs out of fuel, it separates and then the 2nd stage takes over, pushing the payload the rest of the way to orbit.
The Falcon Heavy uses the same "2nd" stage but it uses 3 first stages instead of just one, which are called "cores". Each core is just a Falcon 9 first stage, for the most part. The idea of the Falcon Heavy (similar to the way the Delta IV Heavy works) is that you have three times as many first stages pushing, which leads to increased payload.
With the cross-feed option you end up with effectively a 3-stage launcher. The outer two cores becomes like the first stage, and they are jettisoned when empty, then you have the inner core which now becomes a 2nd stage, and the previous 2nd stage is now a 3rd stage (or just "upper stage", to avoid confusion).
But, as mentioned, when you fly this way the 2nd stage core ends up way faster and way farther away when it's done thrusting, so in the prospect of having it keep around some extra propellant so it can thrust back to the launch site and land so it can be reused becomes much more difficult. But in a worst-case scenario all of the "cores" can be run at the same time, so they burn out the same distance away from land and can each return and be reused (saving a lot of money). You end up with only a 2 stage vehicle (3 1st-stages all running at the same time plus the upper stage) which would decrease performance, but because you recover all of the first stage cores (instead of only 2/3 of them) the cost benefit would probably be worth the payload reduction.
Wow thanks, between this and Gravityloss's comment, I'm really starting to get a clear picture.
So on the Falcon heavy, is the plan for all three cores to return to the launch pad independently? Just landing a few hundred feet away from each other?
Also, I missed a reusability scenario with Falcon Heavy. You use crossfeed, you return the outer 2 first stage cores, and you dump everything else. This is more expensive than reusing all 3 1st stage cores, of course, but it provides a considerably amount of payload for the cost of essentially an expendable F9 plus the use of the reusable boosters. So you'd get very heavy lift capacity (I dunno, maybe 30+ tonnes to LEO) at well under $100 million, which in the current launch market is a crazy price.
Usually, with aircraft or spacecraft, this is a reconfigurable plumbing setup that allows engines/jets to use the fuel source from a different engine on the fly. For instance, the Shuttle could perform OMS to RCS crossfeeds.
> Given the circumstances, why would the USAF not bid out the launches?
For the same reason a company that sells a CRUD app might only support Oracle and not other databases. Always working with the same vendor each time reduces technical complexity. People will knee-jerk and say "corruption" but an engineer should be able to at least see where the USAF is coming from.
Given that this is national-security grade stuff, there's also some political and practical considerations. The DOD can't really allow a true market for defense equipment and services. Markets are messy, they go through transition and disruption. That's not acceptable in a national-security context.
>Markets are messy, they go through transition and disruption. That's not acceptable in a national-security context.
Then we should not beat around the bush and pretend we live in a Capitalist system when we clearly must make exceptions for only the private, for-profit contractors that we spend billions of dollars and the majority of the federal budget on.
The USAF has a history of relying solely upon firms that they have bid out to in the past. There's some logic to this (military technology should be reliable and sourced to trusted parties, so companies that have already proven reliability and have a pre-existing trust relationship have a massive advantage).
But if you look at that scenario and smell the possibility for corruption, you're probably not wrong. ;)
This is very ironic. IIRC when the EELV rockets were bidding for first launch batches, Boeing used some insider price information to win the majority for Delta IV. There was a big lawsuit about that and Lockheed Martin's Atlas V ended up getting more launches.
The US Government attempted to create competition and a "market" with two competing launch providers. Boeing didn't play fair, and it was a big scandal. Finally when everything was put in proper order,the EELV providers couldn't compete with foreign launchers on the commercial market (commercial use was envisioned to lower costs for government launches as well). So the two competitors merged their rocket operations to form ULA.
So despite the best efforts of the government, they just couldn't get the independent providers and free market thing to work.
But now SpaceX comes along. It's offering just what the government has been trying to create for decades.
Yet SpaceX has to sue the government, to get to play on a level field.
So the government had trouble with the companies trying to tilt the field. Now a new company has a problem with the government.
I watched this a few weeks ago when the lawsuit was first publicised. Senator Shelby from Alabama is so infuriatingly transparent. I mean it's so obvious he has no real interest in lowering spending. ULA is effectively a jobs programme for his constituents and the rest of the nation pays dearly for it.
As long as "head to head" includes interaction mediated by the Senator currently recognized and the chairman of the committee. In my opinion this mediation eviscerates any "direct conflict" between two people who are not senators.
Agreed. However the "experts" are not allowed to address each other individually. Senators ask a question to an expert and the expert addresses his or her answer to the Senator.
Launch vehicles would probably be the more interesting one here, 'rocket engines' is not really what they're buying, the article talks about 36 rockets, not just engines.
Parties realistically capable of supplying those are few:
- Oribital Sciences
- SpaceX
- Sea Launch
- Starsem
- United Launch Alliance
- EADS/Arianespace
- ILS
- ISC
Rocket engines is what they're buying in this instance (or rather, what ULA has been prevented from buying by the injunction): specifically, RD-180 engines, built by the Russian firm NPO Energomash for use on the first stage of United Launch Alliance's (otherwise) American Atlas V.
(BTW, quite a few of the rocket makers you named buy their engines from others. ULA also buys engines from Pratt and Whitney, and Orbital has several suppliers for its various launchers.)
The larger suit does concern a block purchase of whole rockets from ULA, but the injunction does not interfere with the block buy, just payments to the Russian subcontractor.
Interesting, ok so what special requirements could there be attached to Russian engines that US built engines could not supply?
I can see how if they are dimensioned in such a way that they will fit only a launch vehicle by a single party how that might be usable as a trick to lock out competitors (first order launch vehicles without engines, then order engines without launch vehicles). Both of those would be harder to compete with than ordering whole rockets!
Among kerosene/oxygen rockets, the RD-180 gets an unusually high amount of propulsive kinetic energy per unit of fuel (technically, high specfic impulse), in part due to a more efficient combustion cycle (staged combustion), and in part due to very advanced materials science the Russians have, that the US hasn't matched. (And other engines with similar performance are also Russian: the RD-170, which is signficantly larger than the RD-180; the NK-33, which is quite a bit smaller...)
There is an American manufacturer that has licensed the RD-180 design, and technically has the rights to build them here, but they haven't --- and since that would involve duplicating Russian metallurgy, there's some skepticism that they could. (At a recent Senate hearing, it was the head of ULA(!) who said the Russian design did "things we found that our textbooks said were impossible".)
If you're asking why ULA can't just buy something else from, say, Pratt and Whitney, then the short answer is, "they don't sell anything that fits on an Atlas V". Think about trying to use the engine from a VW bug (or a large truck) to replace the engine in a pickup: even if the fuels are the same (and you can't take that for granted!), the fittings and performance characteristics are different enough that the combined thing just wouldn't work.
The Chinese are developing an engine, the YF-100, based on the Russian RD-120. It's a staged combustion engine with an oxygen-rich preburner -- very similar technology to the RD-180.
The YF-100 has already gone through a full-length test firing on the ground, and the CZ-7 rocket that it's mounted on is scheduled for a test flight later this year.
If the Chinese have been able to make it, then I see no reason why we can't.
P.S. Does Pratt & Whitney still make rocket engines? I thought they sold Rocketdyne to Aerojet?
About the engines: heck, the Space Shuttle Main Engine was staged-combustion Oxygen-Hydrogen. The question isn't whether the US could produce such an engine. It's how soon, and how reliably. ULA has laid in what they say is a two-year stock of engines as a hedge against ... hiccups in the supply chain, but they'd need new engines after that. For a clean-sheet design, that would be a crazy aggressive schedule. With RD-180 design docs in hand, well... we may soon see.
In a hydrogen engine, you can do fuel rich staged combustion.
With kerosene, you must go oxidizer-rich. Nobody has mastered that except Russia. Nobody really knows how much it costs, or how they came up with it.
SpaceX uses the far simpler gas generator cycle.
In staged combustion, you pump some of the propellants to some absurd pressure like 300 bars, burn them, put them through a turbine that extracts some power that lowers pressure to 250 bars or so. Then the turbine exhaust is put into the main combustion chamber, together with the other propellants that were pumped up to 250 bars. All propellant contributes to thrust.
In a gas generator, you pump all propellants to perhaps 70 bars, divert some small part to a gas generator that burns them, the exhaust is put to a turbine that exhausts to ambient air. The turbine powers the pump. So that part of the propellant flow does not contribute directly to thrust.
If you go to higher pressures with a gas generator engine, you waste a larger portion of the propellant to run the pump and it's just not worth it. So gas generator engines are limited to much lower pressures than staged combustion engines.
Lower pressure means bigger engines are needed for the same thrust. Also the efficiency is worse. A large (tall) rocket can have problems with limited base area per mass, hence for example the low pressure engined Saturn V had an expanded base.
Space Shuttle's main engines ran with high pressure and could fit on the back of the relatively small reusable orbiter vehicle.
Not as many as you'd think. If we restrict the field to merely high power liquid fueled rocket engines that are potentially for sale (to be differentiated from makers of rocket engines that are an integral part of, say, a nationalized launch vehicle, and not for sale as parts) then you have: NPO Energomash, RKK Energiya, Aerojet-Rocketdyne, and maybe SpaceX.
Other than those companies, if you want a liquid fueled rocket engine with more than 100 kN of thrust then you'll have to make one for yourself or go begging to one of the vertically integrated rocket makers (Snecma makes the Ariane 5 first stage engine, China, India, and Japan have their own launchers, as do a few other countries).
it depends on the power braket we are talking about, maybe 2-3 in the US, 2-3 in Europe (but only one big), 1-2 in Russia, plus maybe 5 in various nuclear/spatial states in the world (China, India, Pakistan ...)
Related: US House now submits a draft bill that would require the Pentagon to build a replacement, US-made engine. [1]
Alternatively, they could take a leaf from NASA's book and embrace the COTS approach that seems to be working for NASA already, so much of the development time is already resolved?
