SpaceX vs. Everyone - ULA, NG, Boeing, Lockheed, etc.

[Grendal]

Yes, the BO lobbyists have been busy on Capitol Hill touting the capabilities of a rocket that has yet to even reach the launch pad, let alone orbital velocity.

I had to agree with one of the commenters. I expect it will end up being 70% SpaceX, 20% ULA, and 10% BO. I've learned from hanging around here and all the space sites that certain rockets have advantages in certain aspects of getting satellites into place. The Angry Astronaut gives an interesting take on ULA and BO issues.

 

[scaesare]

Yes, the BO lobbyists have been busy on Capitol Hill touting the capabilities of a rocket that has yet to even reach the launch pad, let alone orbital velocity.

Now, now... BO is just looking our for the gov't, when the article says the decision was based on things like things like:

"based on industry feedback ..." (hmm, who caould THAT have been?)

Just because "Space Force and Air Force officials in the past pushed back on these proposals and insisted that only two providers were needed.", doesn't mean that a 3rd wouldn't be profitable useful.

I mean after all, the other referenced article quoting Space Force officials saying things like : "A third provider would likely increase costs by more than ~$5B. That $5B could be used to buy ~330 SDA satellites instead. Likely only three bidders, so three awards won’t incentivize industry to bid best prices" doesn't mean anything!

Or that "it has also made it clear that expanding the NSSL Program for high-risk missions to new, unproven providers in the manner that the committee is advocating would unnecessarily increase the potential for mission failure and added national security vulnerabilities."

Just skip this part: "It seems that Congress is dismissing these concerns and pushing this procurement change to benefit Blue Origin, which has spent years lobbying legislators for the chance to do exactly what the NSSL requires. "

</s>

Such a circus...

 

[adiggs]

Whether its just me seeing what i want to see, I'm thinking that a 3rd provider is a good idea. ULA and SpaceX as the current 2 providers - if I were space force, I would not want to be reliant on ULA to be my 2nd provider. They're not exactly hitting it out of the park on current performance.

A 3rd provider could also, easily, perform just as badly as ULA. But at least this way you've got 2 bad opportunities for somebody to work out, instead of only 1 bad opportunity. All of this assumes that SpaceX will continue performing. I think continued SpaceX performance is a good assumption, and it certainly takes the pressure off of the rest of the RFP. They can go in with a 70/20/10 planned split, or any other, knowing that a 100/0/0 will also work.

 

[scaesare]

Whether its just me seeing what i want to see, I'm thinking that a 3rd provider is a good idea. ULA and SpaceX as the current 2 providers - if I were space force, I would not want to be reliant on ULA to be my 2nd provider. They're not exactly hitting it out of the park on current performance.

A 3rd provider could also, easily, perform just as badly as ULA. But at least this way you've got 2 bad opportunities for somebody to work out, instead of only 1 bad opportunity. All of this assumes that SpaceX will continue performing. I think continued SpaceX performance is a good assumption, and it certainly takes the pressure off of the rest of the RFP. They can go in with a 70/20/10 planned split, or any other, knowing that a 100/0/0 will also work.

My issue has more to do with it (appearing) to be due to corporate lobbying efforts and the resulting likely rise is costs. it seems that Space is a prime opporrtunity for contractors to extract pork.

In principle I agree that competition is good. In practice that seems to have become a pocket-lining vehicle.

 

[ecarfan]

it seems that Space is a prime opportunity for contractors to extract pork

Sorry, not sure what you mean by that.

Do you mean that because SpaceX has become such a reliable and relatively low cost means to get to orbit, and the competition is so expensive, that is apparently going to result in not one but two high-priced competitors will get government funds instead of just one?

 

[scaesare]

Sorry, not sure what you mean by that.

Do you mean that because SpaceX has become such a reliable and relatively low cost means to get to orbit, and the competition is so expensive, that is apparently going to result in not one but two high-priced competitors will get government funds instead of just one?

I meant that in general it seems that contractors to the gov't/NASA have been able to use their space programs to extract $$$ from the government thought things like cost+ contracts, getting congressionally-mandated architecture approved, etc...

Of course Govt't contracting is a for-profit enterprise, but it feels like traditional space contracting has honed the extracting of gov't funds for the least amount of product/service in to an art form.

 

[JB47394]

it feels like traditional space contracting has honed the extracting of gov't funds for the least amount of product/service in to an art form.

Cost-plus contracting will do that to an organization. It is a symptom of a directionless national space program and a root cause of rot in the aerospace industry. Traditional aerospace has been a dead man walking since about the time Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. That's because the entire thing was created to enhance the West's prestige on the world stage. Once that was complete, aerospace companies had no goals of any substance (apart from launching satellites). They badly needed a real reason to do something in space, and now Elon has said that settling Mars is the reason. That's what motivates him, and that's what makes SpaceX what it is.

I think settling Mars is rubbish, but if there's any hope of doing anything useful off-planet, I figure Starship is the way we'll find out.

 

[Grendal]

SpaceX will probably get some, if not most, of the launch contracts. But others are building most of the satellites.

Space Development Agency’s data-transport satellites get more complex

Space Development Agency’s data-transport satellites get more complex

spacenews.com

 

[scaesare]

SpaceX will probably get some, if not most, of the launch contracts. But others are building most of the satellites.

Space Development Agency’s data-transport satellites get more complex

Space Development Agency’s data-transport satellites get more complex

spacenews.com

I have no doubt there are some indeed significant technical hurdles to overcome for the "Transport Layer" requirements the military has, such as direct sat-to-weapon communications. I have to think being able to talk to a missile travelling at Mach 6 is tricky.

That having been said, so is building a constellation of 1000's of LEO sats providing meshed coverage to a significant portion of the planet. Yet, that's what SpaceX is doing, At scale. And extremely quickly. And apparently relatively inexpensively. And they are rapidly iterating to add advanced capability with intra-sat laser links, something I don't believe has been done at anything like this scale.

So.. given SpaceX's approach to sats, rockets, engines, etc... , I wonder what efficiencies in terms of cost and schedule could be gained if they decided to get in to the sat building business...

 

[nativewolf]

And what's neat is that by doing this spaceX is providing opportunities for others to follow. Rocketlabs in launch is a good example and Kepler in space. Interesting that both of these are not from a "space" power which to me indicates the key benefit here of democratizing space. By doing so all kinds of innovation will spring forward and we'll finally start delivering on access to space. Who knows what the future holds for space but it is the most exciting time since the 60s and for much better reasons.

 

[Cosmacelf]

I have no doubt there are some indeed significant technical hurdles to overcome for the "Transport Layer" requirements the military has, such as direct sat-to-weapon communications. I have to think being able to talk to a missile travelling at Mach 6 is tricky.

That having been said, so is building a constellation of 1000's of LEO sats providing meshed coverage to a significant portion of the planet. Yet, that's what SpaceX is doing, At scale. And extremely quickly. And apparently relatively inexpensively. And they are rapidly iterating to add advanced capability with intra-sat laser links, something I don't believe has been done at anything like this scale.

So.. given SpaceX's approach to sats, rockets, engines, etc... , I wonder what efficiencies in terms of cost and schedule could be gained if they decided to get in to the sat building business...

Personally, I’ve always thought that the US taxpayer would win massively if SpaceX decided to go whole hog into the military contracting business. Start with advanced military communications like the tracking layer sats, but then branch into things like drone communications and then the drones themselves.

 

[nativewolf]

Personally, I’ve always thought that the US taxpayer would win massively if SpaceX decided to go whole hog into the military contracting business. Start with advanced military communications like the tracking layer sats, but then branch into things like drone communications and then the drones themselves.

I do not believe the military is too keen on that though it may deliver savings

 

[spacerfc]

So.. given SpaceX's approach to sats, rockets, engines, etc... , I wonder what efficiencies in terms of cost and schedule could be gained if they decided to get in to the sat building business...

They already are, their military constellation offering is called Starshield: SpaceX - Starshield

There's a unconfirmed rumor that they're offering DoD an 800 Starshield constellation for $2B. This would be a separate constellation from the Space Development Agency (SDA) constellation, as you can see the SDA constellation is already becoming a handout to old space military contractors.

 

[scaesare]

They already are, their military constellation offering is called Starshield: SpaceX - Starshield

There's a unconfirmed rumor that they're offering DoD an 800 Starshield constellation for $2B. This would be a separate constellation from the Space Development Agency (SDA) constellation, as you can see the SDA constellation is already becoming a handout to old space military contractors.

I took that as offering service, using the Starlink sats with some additional security/QoS. From the site:

"Starshield leverages SpaceX's Starlink technology and launch capability to support national security efforts."

"SECURITY: Starlink already offers unparalleled end-to-end user data encryption. Starshield uses additional high-assurance cryptographic capability to host classified payloads and process data securely, meeting the most demanding government requirements."

So I suppose it could be a completely sperate constellation, as the site does refer to them as "Starshield Satellites". But even if so, it's largely using thier own existing design(s) and layering some functionality on top of it.

I was talking more about SpaceX getting in the "build to spec" sattellite business, i.e.- building that transport layer military sattelite for gov't use.

 

[TunaBug]

Personally, I’ve always thought that the US taxpayer would win massively if SpaceX decided to go whole hog into the military contracting business. Start with advanced military communications like the tracking layer sats, but then branch into things like drone communications and then the drones themselves.

That's certainly attractive from a cost standpoint. But I think we have way too few companies delivering to the military as a result of decades of mergers. Having the military dependent on a communication layer that is owned by a single company seems like a non starter. Perhaps if starlink's intersatellite protocol was open, and multiple companies build the sats, and launched the sats, and operated the service. Otherwise no.

 

[spacerfc]

I took that as offering service, using the Starlink sats with some additional security/QoS.

Not exactly, it would leverage the Starlink technology, but it doesn't just offer secure communication, as the page says the current focus of Starshield is 3 areas: Earth Observation, Communications and Hosted Payloads. Note: a. Currently Starlink constellation doesn't do Earth Observation; b. the Hosted Payload could be anything, ultimately everything DoD wanted could be a hosted payload.

Whether this will be a service is not clear, I don't think giving control of the Starshield constellation to DoD is out of the question. It could be on-orbit delivery of satellites, and then train DoD personnel to use SpaceX built ground systems.

I was talking more about SpaceX getting in the "build to spec" sattellite business, i.e.- building that transport layer military sattelite for gov't use.

They built 4 prototype missile tracking satellites for the SDA constellation, I assume this is what you mean by "build to spec", but they told SDA they're not interested in doing this anymore.

"Build to spec" is not SpaceX's MO, they're more interested in coming up with their own spec and controlling everything end to end (i.e. vertical integration). Remember Elon's first step in design process is "Make the requirements less dumb", hard to do this in "build to spec".

 

[Cosmacelf]

They built 4 prototype missile tracking satellites for the SDA constellation, I assume this is what you mean by "build to spec", but they told SDA they're not interested in doing this anymore.

"Build to spec" is not SpaceX's MO, they're more interested in coming up with their own spec and controlling everything end to end (i.e. vertical integration). Remember Elon's first step in design process is "Make the requirements less dumb", hard to do this in "build to spec".

Interesting! Man, Elon sure knows how to stay true to his processes. Impressive.

 

[scaesare]

Not exactly, it would leverage the Starlink technology, but it doesn't just offer secure communication, as the page says the current focus of Starshield is 3 areas: Earth Observation, Communications and Hosted Payloads. Note: a. Currently Starlink constellation doesn't do Earth Observation; b. the Hosted Payload could be anything, ultimately everything DoD wanted could be a hosted payload.

Whether this will be a service is not clear, I don't think giving control of the Starshield constellation to DoD is out of the question. It could be on-orbit delivery of satellites, and then train DoD personnel to use SpaceX built ground systems.


They built 4 prototype missile tracking satellites for the SDA constellation, I assume this is what you mean by "build to spec", but they told SDA they're not interested in doing this anymore.

"Build to spec" is not SpaceX's MO, they're more interested in coming up with their own spec and controlling everything end to end (i.e. vertical integration). Remember Elon's first step in design process is "Make the requirements less dumb", hard to do this in "build to spec".

Ah, interesting... thanks...

I wonder if the "one-off design" model doesn't mesh well with Elon's typical "drive efficiencies into the mass production" tenet he tends to focus on.

 

[Cosmacelf]

Ah, interesting... thanks...

I wonder if the "one-off design" model doesn't mesh well with Elon's typical "drive efficiencies into the mass production" tenet he tends to focus on.

Yes. At his core, Elon has always worked to reduce costs, of everything. That’s it. That is actually his number one optimization. It’s actually kind of funny that people don’t see it.

SpaceX: reusability and mass manufacturing to reduce cost of access to space.
Tesla: Reduce cost to improve affordability of EVs.
Boring: Reduce tunneling costs to build underground expressways.
Neuralink: Reduce implant costs so that we eventually all could use it.
Teslabot: mass manufacture humanoid robots to reduce cost to make them useful in more places.

And mass manufacturing is obviously a core way to reduce costs. So, yeah, while SpaceX could eventually become more of a military contractor, it’ll be through the mass manufacturing route somehow.

 

[HVM]

Lawsuit claims Amazon’s board erred in awarding Kuiper launch contracts to Blue Origin and others

A pension fund has filed suit against the board of directors of Amazon, claiming they “acted in bad faith” in approving launch contracts for Project Kuiper.

spacenews.com

“Given their bitter track record, Bezos had every reason to exclude Musk’s SpaceX from the process entirely,” the suit states. “And Bezos, it must be assumed, could not swallow his pride to seek his bitter rival’s help to launch Amazon’s satellites.” ; P