of dollars a pop,” explains former NASA
associate administrator Alan Stern.
“[Defense department customers] do
don’t
care whether [the launch cost] is $100
million or $300 million; it’s in the noise.
What they want is a guarantee it’s going
to work.” And, says Stern, the track
records of Atlas and Delta are nearly
flawless. “They’re spectacular…. That
said, they’re very expensive.”
United Launch Alliance, the consortium of
Boeing and Lockheed Martin that
produces both the Delta and the Atlas,
does not make its prices public. But
budget documents show that in 2010 the
EELV program received $1.14 billion for
three rockets—an
an average of $380 million
per launch. And prices are expected to
rise significantly in the next few years,
according to defense department
officials. Why? Musk says a lot of the
answer is in the government’s traditional
“cost-plus”
plus” contracting system, which
ensures
that
manufacturers
make a profit even
if they exceed their
advertised prices.
“If you were sitting
at a n executive
meeting at Boeing
and
Lockheed
and you came up
with some brilliant
idea to reduce the
cost of Atlas or
Delta, you’d be
fired,” ” he says. “Because you’ve got to
go report to your
shareholders why you made less money.
So their incentive is to maximize the cost
of a vehicle, right up to the threshold of
cancellation.”
That’s a little overstated, says Stern. Yes,
rockets are expensive largely “because
the system allows it.” But in today’s
economy, ULA’s military customers are
calling for prices to come down. “I know
that they have an incentive to reduce
their cost,” Stern says, “but it’s at the
margin.” In other words, ULA’s cost-saving
c
efforts are limited by the high overhead
associated with traditional ways of
building and launching rockets.
Musk says that overhead starts with how
the launch vehicle is designed. The
workhorse Atlas V, for example, used for
everything from planetary
pla
probes to spy
satellites, employs up to three kinds of
rockets, each tailored to a specific phase
of flight. The Russian-built
Russian
RD-180 first-
stage engines burn a highly refined form
of kerosene called RP1. Optional solid-
solid
fuel strap-on
on boosters can provide
p
additional thrust at liftoff, and a liquid
hydrogen upper stage takes over in the
final phase of flight. Using three kinds of
rockets in the same vehicle may optimize
its performance, but at a price: “To a first-
first
order approximation, you’ve just tripled
trip
your factory costs and all your
operational costs,” says Musk.
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