Today we will first discuss SpaceX's decision
to keep pressing the lawsuit against Air Force,
details shared by SpaceX CEO on some economic
figures promoting reusability, and as many
of you has been asking for some time now,
we will share some updates on other companies
apart from SpaceX.
So today we will discuss ULA's certification
readiness for Vulcan rockets and at the end
we will check what Tory Bruno has to say about
their success story to beat SpaceX for the
big contract early this month.
So let's check what we have for our first
update.
Though SpaceX won a big chunk of the entire
contract from Air Force on August 7th, they
have still decided to pursue the lawsuit against
Air Force they started on 2018 for giving
unfair advantage to the United Launch Alliance,
Northrop Grumman and Blue Origin.
As per SpaceX officials the decision has caused
them "substantial harm".
We have already discussed how SpaceX bagged
40% of launches costing $316 million for mission
USSF 67 but they seemed to be unhappy about
the fact that United Launch Alliance got away
with the larger portion.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has already criticized
the decision on tweeter saying - "Efficiently
reusable rockets are all that matter for making
life multiplanetary & “space power” on
13th August, Thursday.
In a new court filing with the United States
District Court for Central District of California,
SpaceX's attorneys has mentioned - "Although
SpaceX’s successful Phase 2 competitive
actions have mitigated the harm to SpaceX
resulting from the unlawful and flawed LSA
award decisions, substantial harm to SpaceX
remains,” There are arguments released from
SpaceX on the latest contracts as well which
says "an unwarranted advantage that may well
have contributed to ULA winning 60% of the
Phase 2 launches.” and they are also anticipating
that the unfair decision will give ULA an
advantage for the future contracts as well.
While challenging the decision Air Force taken
before to the start of the Phase 2 competition,
SpaceX updated the Aug. 19 filing saying that
- “The August 7, 2020 Phase 2 competition
awards do not impact the substantive challenges
asserted by SpaceX to the competition and
award decision under the Launch Service Agreement.”
It also says “Unlike its competitors, SpaceX
competed in the Phase 2 competition without
the benefit of government investment and technical
information exchanges under the LSAs.”
SpaceX's is finally presented a demand in
court to rule the LSA improper awards, if
enacted Air Force will have to terminate the
$967 million six-year agreement with ULA.
As Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman will not
be receiving any amount as they did not win
a Phase 2 contract, SpaceX has presented their
argument further in the filing saying - “Given
the impending terminations, enjoining the
further use of such LSAs harms no one,”
and ULA having that agreement “may well
have contributed to ULA winning 60% of the
Phase 2 launches.”
Now let's see the other version of the story.
As per ULA and Air Force's argument, at the
outset SpaceX proposed to use their Big Falcon
rocket also recognized as Starship to receive
development money through LSA but at the time
of closing bidding for the Air Force selection,
SpaceX presented to use their modern Falcon
9 and Falcon Heavy rockets which eventually
goes against how the application was supposed
to work.
“If the Court vacated ULA’s LSA, the unplanned
deficit in federal development funding under
the LSA could delay the readiness for ULA’s
Vulcan to perform Phase 2 launches” was
mentioned in the ULS statement challenging
SpaceX's latest assertion stating “there
would be no disruption to national security
if ULA’s LSA agreement were terminated since
Phase 2 contracts has been awarded”.
Air Force and ULA wrote in a statement in
their filing stating “The LSA program is
designed to support vehicles that would be
bid for Phase 2,” and they also added: “It
is unclear how any remedy would work in practice
given that SpaceX’s current proposal is
incompatible with that requirement and any
re-submitted proposals would involve a fundamentally
different environment than a pre-Phase 2 submission.”
Now let us a take a look at Elon Musk's tweet
on the economics of the savings SpaceX has achieved.
Last week SpaceX's CEO Elon Musk shared some
financials details of the savings achieved
by reusing rockets and its parts to make a
point why in long term it’s going to be
fruitful.
SpaceX designs rockets which will be returning
back carrying less and it will be requiring
to utilise the remaining fuel for its return
trip.
SpaceX also invests some money on their refurbishment
process so they can reutilize as much as possible.
With time SpaceX has made remarkable improvement
in their expertise to land Falcon 9 booster
after missions, from landing two boosters
in 2014 to the landing of 15 boosters in 2017
and so on.
NASASpaceflight reporter Michael Baylor mentioned
on Twitter that a rocket needs to be reused
at least 10 times to achieve any significant
economical gain according to United Launch
Alliance, the main competitor of SpaceX in
this business.
Baylor also added the information that SpaceX
has already achieved six landings with a single
booster.
In response Baylor's tweet, Musk twitted:
"Payload reduction due to reusability of booster
& fairing is <40% for F9 & recovery & refurb
is <10%, so you’re roughly even with 2 flights,
definitely ahead with 3."
What SpaceX CEO wanted to highlight with these
financial details is that the payload that
can fly on a single rocket gets reduced by
less than 40 percent when send using reusable
configurations.
Also the cost of recovery and refurbishment
process makes up less than 10 percent of the
initial production cost.
The concept makes sense on paper: If you can
reuse a rocket, you're using resources more
efficiently.
Musk has compared it to flying single-use
airplanes.
That's what we had regarding SpaceX today;
now let's get into some updates regarding ULA.
Vulcan, ULA's new rocket is on track to make
it’s first flight on time, all the software
updates required for the launch along with
ground support facilities are also on track
to support the launch next year.
Mark Peller, Vice President of Major Development
for ULA recently said in an interview- “We’re
a year and a half past Critical Design Review.
So we’ve gone through all the design and
analysis phase of the program, and now we’re
in the process of going the other way and
building hardware and going through all the
tests and verification as we head toward first
flight next year.”
As a major part of the development is going
on at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in
Florida where launch facilities are being
prepared for the vehicle rather at Decatur,
Alabama facility where Vulcan is being primarily
constructed.
Regarding this Peller has added “All the
modifications that we’re making there on
the east coast are back compatible to Atlas,
so we can launch a Vulcan and literally within
a day we can reconfigure and start processing
an Atlas or vice versa.
One of the key elements of the architecture
on the east coast is the Mobile Launch Platform.
We decided to build a new one dedicated just
to Vulcan that would really support parallel
operations and could be designed really without
compromise to support the Vulcan rocket.”
In an exclusive interview with Denver Business
Journal“ ULA's CEO Tory Bruno has said that
it has been a remarkable achievement to sell
their two missions for the price of SpaceX
selling one.
He also mentioned that it wasn’t unexpected
that ULA received a much better deal in the
bidding and won 60% of the launches worth
$337 million.
To him winning the first three missions under
the new Space Force contract revealed was
surprising.
US Air Force is anticipating 34 to 50 launches
in total within next five years and going
with the ratio it is expected that ULA will
be catering 20 to 30 of them.
Bruno said “The threats we face from adversaries
in space are getting more aggressive,”
Once the first version of the Vulcan is tested
at Cape Canavera, a fully functional second
version of the Vulcan will be assembled by
early 2021 and should be prepared for it’s
first launch later in the year.
Once the Vulcan is launched ULA will start
the process to get rid of RD 180 engines which
have powered ULA's Atlas V rockets so far.
Atlas V has been used a launch vehicle for
Boeing's Starliner space capsule hired by
NASA to send their astronauts to the International
Space Station.
That's all for today’s episode and we hope
we have been able to keep you posted on the
latest news in a straight and simple manner.
We will soon come back with more updates for
you.
Till then Good Bye.
