Blue Origin thread.

[MaverickSawyer]

Vulcan will have a Centaur upper stage to start with, then switch to an advanced upper stage down the line.

 

As for the market for Vulcan... I'm kinda scratching my head at that, too, but I'll chalk it up to institutional inertia for now.

[_Augustus_]

18 hours ago, tater said:

Yeah, I am wondering if they go with AJ just to not be tied to BO.

Aerojet Rocketdyne is practically a swindling operation with the prices they charge for engines, and Atlas VI is a stupid idea. ULA might stay in business a little longer if they buy BO engines - they're doomed anyways.......

[sevenperforce]

53 minutes ago, _Augustus_ said:

Aerojet Rocketdyne is practically a swindling operation with the prices they charge for engines, and Atlas VI is a stupid idea. ULA might stay in business a little longer if they buy BO engines - they're doomed anyways.......

Atlas VI -- you mean, building Vulcan, but with AR kerolox engines?

[tater]

48 minutes ago, _Augustus_ said:

Aerojet Rocketdyne is practically a swindling operation with the prices they charge for engines, and Atlas VI is a stupid idea. ULA might stay in business a little longer if they buy BO engines - they're doomed anyways.......

Yeah, but ULA needs to seriously worry about BO utterly superseding them. At the time they started looking at the Be-4, they seemed to have an agreement that BO would not be doing anything similar to Vulcan in terms of what customers they might go for. Vulcan is 15 tons to GTO, NG is 13... before the cryo upper stage it was 13. NG now has every likelihood of exceeding all Vulcan variants (how many SRMs) in every way, including price.

ULA needs to decide if they want to subsidize the company that will finish them off (if SpaceX doesn't succeed with that before 2020).

1 minute ago, sevenperforce said:

Atlas VI -- you mean, building Vulcan, but with AR kerolox engines?

Yeah, I think so. ULA is in a nasty position, honestly. BO has basically just said that they are making their own, 7m diameter centaur, lol. If they can add something like IVF, then they can make their own ACES. If ULA buys BO engines, at some point BO can just stop selling engines and ULA is destroyed. Presumably any engine arrangement would guarantee that BO must sell them engines for at least XX years or something, and within a certain pricing regime. Still, it makes ULA totally dependent on their direct competition, and even to the extent they win and sell launches, they are making their competitor a profit.

[sevenperforce]

19 minutes ago, tater said:

Yeah, but ULA needs to seriously worry about BO utterly superseding them. At the time they started looking at the Be-4, they seemed to have an agreement that BO would not be doing anything similar to Vulcan in terms of what customers they might go for. Vulcan is 15 tons to GTO, NG is 13... before the cryo upper stage it was 13. NG now has every likelihood of exceeding all Vulcan variants (how many SRMs) in every way, including price.

ULA needs to decide if they want to subsidize the company that will finish them off (if SpaceX doesn't succeed with that before 2020).

Yeah, I think so. ULA is in a nasty position, honestly. BO has basically just said that they are making their own, 7m diameter centaur, lol. If they can add something like IVF, then they can make their own ACES. If ULA buys BO engines, at some point BO can just stop selling engines and ULA is destroyed. Presumably any engine arrangement would guarantee that BO must sell them engines for at least XX years or something, and within a certain pricing regime. Still, it makes ULA totally dependent on their direct competition, and even to the extent they win and sell launches, they are making their competitor a profit.

It's very clever for BO. SpaceX has never offered to sell Merlins, so it wasn't something I thought seriously about, but there is no reason for BO not to sell its engines. They get an additional revenue stream to help them get up and going, their manufacturing benefits from economies of scale in a way that no single launch provider or engine manufacturer can, and they will always be able to outbid their competitor.

Given that BO has proposed a lunar cargo lander based on BE-3, then it is obvious that they are already planning on something like ACES.

Their switch of the BE-4U for a pair of BE-3Us may mean that the three-stage NG is simply scrapped because they no longer need it.

[_Augustus_]

48 minutes ago, tater said:

Yeah, but ULA needs to seriously worry about BO utterly superseding them. At the time they started looking at the Be-4, they seemed to have an agreement that BO would not be doing anything similar to Vulcan in terms of what customers they might go for. Vulcan is 15 tons to GTO, NG is 13... before the cryo upper stage it was 13. NG now has every likelihood of exceeding all Vulcan variants (how many SRMs) in every way, including price.

ULA needs to decide if they want to subsidize the company that will finish them off (if SpaceX doesn't succeed with that before 2020).

Yeah, I think so. ULA is in a nasty position, honestly. BO has basically just said that they are making their own, 7m diameter centaur, lol. If they can add something like IVF, then they can make their own ACES. If ULA buys BO engines, at some point BO can just stop selling engines and ULA is destroyed. Presumably any engine arrangement would guarantee that BO must sell them engines for at least XX years or something, and within a certain pricing regime. Still, it makes ULA totally dependent on their direct competition, and even to the extent they win and sell launches, they are making their competitor a profit.

Bezos really has conned ULA. He has pretty much locked them into buying BE-4 at this point and obtained some funding from them, but New Glenn now delivers more payload anywhere than Vulcan for a lower price and with a wider fairing. Also, BO completely broke their promise to ULA about not taking government contracts - the only place ULA is remotely safe from competition.

ULA is a dead man walking.

Edited April 5, 2018 by _Augustus_

[tater]

31 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

It's very clever for BO. SpaceX has never offered to sell Merlins, so it wasn't something I thought seriously about, but there is no reason for BO not to sell its engines. They get an additional revenue stream to help them get up and going, their manufacturing benefits from economies of scale in a way that no single launch provider or engine manufacturer can, and they will always be able to outbid their competitor.

Given that BO has proposed a lunar cargo lander based on BE-3, then it is obvious that they are already planning on something like ACES.

Their switch of the BE-4U for a pair of BE-3Us may mean that the three-stage NG is simply scrapped because they no longer need it.

Yeah, I see it this way as well. There's no world where ULA marks up a 3d party engine and can compete with the engine manufacturer's own LV in the unlikely situation where they race to the bottom price wise.

NS, aside from being tall, is pretty much a lunar lander. It must have something like 3km/s of total dv for the what, 8 ton capsule on top? That's really close to a round trip from LLO (just cut the capsule mass). Didn't they also make some noise about tugs as well? Bam. ACES. And instead of a hypergolic xeus kit, just carry the one propellant.

8 minutes ago, _Augustus_ said:

Bezos really has conned ULA. He has pretty much locked them into buying BE-4 at this point and obtained some funding from them, but New Glenn now delivers more payload anywhere than Vulcan for a lower price and with a wider fairing. Also, BO completely broke their promise to ULA about not taking government contracts - the only place ULA is remotely safe from competition.

ULA is a dead man walking.

Yeah, sucks to be Tory Bruno, lol. It's mate in however many moves. I think Bruno can stretch it out, but Bezos is a better chess player (literally and figuratively).

[CatastrophicFailure]

18 minutes ago, _Augustus_ said:

ULA is a dead man walking.

ACES at least shows some promise. Maybe they could completely change their business model and become the first dedicated space tugging company. 

[tater]

ACES would be far, far cheaper with Be-3U engines instead of RL-10s. So still money for BO.

[mikegarrison]

3 hours ago, tater said:

Presumably any engine arrangement would guarantee that BO must sell them engines for at least XX years or something, and within a certain pricing regime. Still, it makes ULA totally dependent on their direct competition, and even to the extent they win and sell launches, they are making their competitor a profit.

In the 1930s, the US government ruled that airplane manufacturers may not own airlines or build their own engines.

If commercial space gets big enough, it's possible we could see that happening again -- some companies would build engines, others would build launch vehicles, and others would run the launch operations.

[Racescort666]

36 minutes ago, tater said:

ACES would be far, far cheaper with Be-3U engines instead of RL-10s. So still money for BO.

ULA is considering the BE-3 for ACES. Frankly, it’s probably the best choice of upper stage engine as far as I see. 

With ACES and IVF, ULA does appear to be the most serious about long duration missions with cryogenic propellants. Now all I need is to figure out how much hydrogen you need to start with to perform a braking burn at Uranus...

[PB666]

23 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

Well, yes, but I was speaking in comparison to the SL-expanded engine. Sorry for not making that clear.

Nozzle area ratio is a function of pressure drop ratio. Given an engine that comes in a SL-expanded variant and a vacuum-expanded variant, the difference in nozzle area ratios (and, correspondingly, the sizes of the nozzles) is going to decrease as the pressure increases.

An engine with relatively low chamber pressure has a moderate pressure drop at SL and a significantly greater pressure drop in vacuum, so its vacuum variant is going to need to be much much larger than its SL variant in order to take advantage. An engine with a much higher chamber pressure has less of a pressure drop between SL and vacuum, and so the nozzles will be closer in size.

All that to say: if the BE-3 was a low-chamber-pressure engine, then we would expect to see a very large vacuum nozzle in comparison to the SL nozzle. But since the BE-3 is deeply throttleable, which means it is high-chamber-pressure, then the vacuum nozzle will not be quite so gigantic, since most of the expansion has already happened in a SL-sized nozzle.

Since when is Vulcan not going to have a Centaur upper stage?

ULA needs Vulcan to remain competitive at all.

Yeah but if it debuts after BFR is operational whats the point. 

[sh1pman]

"Vulcan" with Be-4 on the first stage and Be-3Us on ACES can be pretty capable, too. Basically a smaller NG with up to six side boosters. 

[tater]

17 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

"Vulcan" with Be-4 on the first stage and Be-3Us on ACES can be pretty capable, too. Basically a smaller NG with up to six side boosters. 

Yeah, I don't disagree, I just can't see how ULA stays relevant. Unless BO simply buys them...

36 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

In the 1930s, the US government ruled that airplane manufacturers may not own airlines or build their own engines.

If commercial space gets big enough, it's possible we could see that happening again -- some companies would build engines, others would build launch vehicles, and others would run the launch operations.

Wow, that would be destructive.

I honestly don't see that happening. It's not like ULA is some little player, it's LockMart and Boeing, lol. They have other fish to fry as well, maybe they should stick to aircraft.

[sh1pman]

2 minutes ago, tater said:

Unless BO simply buys them...

Not sure why would they want to. Not the best buy in the store, as I see it.

[tater]

3 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

Not sure why would they want to. Not the best buy in the store, as I see it.

Yeah, there was a time when I saw it as a reasonable play, but aside from some research into IVF for ACES, it's nothing Blue can't just do themselves. NG stage 2 is effectively ACES if they tack on some boiloff mitigation. That leaves nothing for them---I really think Bezos is committed enough to reuse he wouldn't like Vulcan as a BO product).

LockMart owned US launch for a long time. Now it's split a few ways, and when NG is flying, I guess it splits to SpaceX and BO, and the rest come up with something truly novel, or stick to something else.

I think the other providers need to start thinking big, or laterally.

[MaverickSawyer]

ULA's business model seems to have been built around having a practical monopoly on the American launch market. Now, that's gone out the window and they're unable to react fast enough to the changing market to recover.

 

As for other new ideas, RocketLab has it nailed down: Small payload capacity, low cost launchers. That's the next area ripe for development, if you ask me. Smaller sats either have to cluster or launch as a secondary payload and accept whatever orbit they're given, or spring for a slightly more expensive solo launch to an orbit of their choice. Depending on the mission(s), either option is viable, and the market will likely support both, tbh.

[sh1pman]

16 minutes ago, tater said:

Yeah, there was a time when I saw it as a reasonable play, but aside from some research into IVF for ACES, it's nothing Blue can't just do themselves. NG stage 2 is effectively ACES if they tack on some boiloff mitigation. That leaves nothing for them---I really think Bezos is committed enough to reuse he wouldn't like Vulcan as a BO product).

LockMart owned US launch for a long time. Now it's split a few ways, and when NG is flying, I guess it splits to SpaceX and BO, and the rest come up with something truly novel, or stick to something else.

I think the other providers need to start thinking big, or laterally.

Yep. With SpaceX and BO on the market, it's go big or go home for everyone else.

[Ultimate Steve]

1 minute ago, sh1pman said:

Yep. With SpaceX and BO on the market, it's go big or go home for everyone else.

I'd like to see ULA try to "go big." It's 95% not going to happen, but I'd imagine they are at least partially considering a fully reusable large vehicle to stay competitive...

[wumpus]

1 hour ago, Ultimate Steve said:

I'd like to see ULA try to "go big." It's 95% not going to happen, but I'd imagine they are at least partially considering a fully reusable large vehicle to stay competitive...

I'm not sure ULA is capable of "going big" or even taking an initiative at all.  They were created to be the "military industrial complex's" contractor for any satellite launches.  They design things when they are paid to design them, then expect to be paid to fix any mistakes.  The mentality of a government contractor (and the unbelievable red tape involved) is not remotely conductive to grabbing the initiative and success in non-sweetheart deals.  On the other hand, Spacex is discovering that these same customers demand more customer service than he can imagine and aren't remotely interested in his "low fares to space".

I've seen attempts to break into the commercial world by smaller contractors (from the inside).  It wasn't pretty.

[mikegarrison]

2 hours ago, tater said:

Wow, that would be destructive.

I honestly don't see that happening. It's not like ULA is some little player, it's LockMart and Boeing, lol. They have other fish to fry as well, maybe they should stick to aircraft.

I'll just point out that the company that triggered the 1930s decision  about separating airplanes, engines, and airlines was Boeing, which was then split into United Airlines, Boeing, and Pratt & Whitney -- none of which are really small.

I don't see why it would necessarily be "destructive" if that happened to commercial space. It certainly didn't destroy the air travel business.

[Racescort666]

5 hours ago, wumpus said:

I'm not sure ULA is capable of "going big" or even taking an initiative at all.  They were created to be the "military industrial complex's" contractor for any satellite launches.  They design things when they are paid to design them, then expect to be paid to fix any mistakes.  The mentality of a government contractor (and the unbelievable red tape involved) is not remotely conductive to grabbing the initiative and success in non-sweetheart deals.  On the other hand, Spacex is discovering that these same customers demand more customer service than he can imagine and aren't remotely interested in his "low fares to space".

I've seen attempts to break into the commercial world by smaller contractors (from the inside).  It wasn't pretty.

This deserves a like. There are certainly smart people at ULA and their "tribal knowledge" is unrivaled but they suffer from the same problem as every big company, bureaucracy. They can't see past their own shortcomings and the people who have the ability to let the smart people loose on the big problems can't see past the next fiscal year or even the next month. 

Startups don't have this problem but they don't have the same ability to foresee technical problems that allows them to be 100% successful. Take what you can get I guess.

[tater]

5 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

I'll just point out that the company that triggered the 1930s decision  about separating airplanes, engines, and airlines was Boeing, which was then split into United Airlines, Boeing, and Pratt & Whitney -- none of which are really small.

I don't see why it would necessarily be "destructive" if that happened to commercial space. It certainly didn't destroy the air travel business.

Then presumably Google and Amazon should be broken up first, Anything worth more.

[YNM]

10 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

In the 1930s, the US government ruled that airplane manufacturers may not own airlines or build their own engines.

If commercial space gets big enough, it's possible we could see that happening again -- some companies would build engines, others would build launch vehicles, and others would run the launch operations.

What, for a bussiness literally just flinging cans to space ?

I don't think so... Guess what ended Concorde. That form of agreements still exist in airline industry.

 

The only reason to have a diverse rocket option is due to nationality. But seeing that private companies could traverse across it, that diversity might be just a bogus point.

Perhaps Elon could be featured as a Bond villain...

Edited April 6, 2018 by YNM

[CatastrophicFailure]

51 minutes ago, YNM said:

Perhaps Elon could be featured as a Bond villain...

Well, he’s already distributing flame throwers and building a secret underground base... you didn’t think that Boring stuff was actually for the hyperloop, did you?