
Air Force study say Government should get serious about reusable rockets - ChuckMcM
https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/05/air-force-study-says-us-government-should-get-serious-about-reusable-rockets/
======
valuearb
Remember the last time the Airforce butted heads with NASA? They almost lost
their entire space program. To better justify the Shuttle during its
development, NASA demanded that all air force payloads ride on it. The air
force pushed back because they needed polar launch and wider landing
capabilities. NASA knew the Shuttle design would fail to meet its performance
and cost promises, so it agreed to modify the Shuttle design (making it worse
in most ways) for the Air Force in return for locking down Shuttle political
support.

The airforce was forced to wind down its space program until, the Challenger
explosion. Then they were forced to scramble to restart it.

Now the Airforce is advocating for a technology that is directly counter to
the interests of NASA, its funders in the Senate, and the SLS, which is the
main reason for that funding. NASA and its congress critters aren't going to
like this, they still want to pour massive amounts of pork into their
districts with the SLS and any government employee publicly pointing out its
missions could be done far cheaper is going to get whacked.

~~~
kiba
Excuse me, NASA ran the COTS program for commercial resupply contract to the
ISS, and they also ran another program for commercial space vehicle.

After all, NASA help made what SpaceX is today.

Of course, there's probably a faction within the NASA and aerospace contractor
community that don't like SpaceX, but it is inaccurate to say that it run
contrary to the interest of NASA as a whole.

~~~
erentz
Right, wouldn't NASA be SpaceX's largest customer? They gave them $1.6 billion
for those resupply missions (right when SpaceX needed it to stay alive) and a
further $3 billion for that crewed vehicle development you mention.

~~~
greglindahl
Commercial Crew was $2.6 billion to SpaceX and includes 6 flights, I believe.
Yes, NASA is SpaceX's biggest customer, but SpaceX also gets a lot of revenue
from launching commercial communications satellites to GEO -- a business that
US launchers have not been price competitive at for a long time.

------
gozur88
It probably makes more sense for the Air Force to stay away from subsidizing
particular systems and just buy whatever is cheapest for a particular level of
demonstrated reliability. If reusable rockets pan out economically (which
looks like a pretty safe bet, at this point), that's what launch providers
will build.

The problem, over the last 50 years or so, is Congress wants to dictate which
companies get contracts (and subcontracts) so the right districts get jobs. If
that doesn't stop the subsidization of this or that technology isn't going to
make much difference.

~~~
greglindahl
If NASA had done that for commercial resupply or commercial crew, they would
have spent more for less. Because they instead competed pre-buying launches,
essentially, 2 new less-expensive launch vehicles were created.

It would be smart for the Air Force to compete pre-buying heavy launches. It
would remove a lot of the uncertainty in today's market.

~~~
gozur88
>If NASA had done that for commercial resupply or commercial crew, they would
have spent more for less.

I don't see why you think this is true.

~~~
greglindahl
The numbers speak for themselves: these block buys paid for development of F9
and Antares plus their flights. ULA lost round 1 of the cargo contest and won
1/3 of the second cargo contest.

~~~
gozur88
How is this not covered by the statement "...just buy whatever is cheapest for
a particular level of demonstrated reliability."

~~~
greglindahl
It makes a huge difference whether you buy 1 flight at a time, or a bunch.
Which is the point I was making.

------
ChuckMcM
From a historical perspective, it is important to remember that the military
has _always_ wanted low cost access to space. Back in Reagan's 'star wars'
program one of the key technologies was 'single stage to orbit' or SSTO. Also
re-usable craft. Then the Space Shuttle came along which was supposed to be a
'space truck' mostly re-usable and flying up and down into space so often and
regularly that you could decide to build a satellite and get it into orbit a
month later.

If SpaceX can work out a plan to get the second stage of the Falcon 9 back on
the ground in an undamaged state, it really sets the stage for relatively "low
cost" missions.

In some ways it is a stronger capability than having weapons in orbit, as you
don't expose what you can do until one day suddenly you install them up there
because you need or want them.

It will be interesting to see how this stuff works its way into the whole
space launch fabric of things.

