The DoD does, and seems to want to see the US retain some of that capability.
DOD Studying Rocket Motor Sustainment
The Pentagon is participating in an interagency integrated team convened to explore how best to sustain the rocket motor industrial base — a mandate made all the more urgent given NASA’s planned cancellation of the Constellation program, according to Brett Lambert, the Defense Dept.’s industrial policy director.
Each of NASA’s Ares V launchers would have required six RS-68 engines, which are common to the U.S. Air Force’s Delta IV Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV). Already, Air Force officials are seeing an uptick in the per-unit price of each EELV because procurement has slowed to keep pace with delayed satellite programs.
This trend is only getting worse with the NASA decision, according to Gary Payton, deputy under secretary of the Air Force for space. “We share an industrial base with NASA — on solids, liquids, range infrastructure and a workforce. So, with the cancellation of the Constellation program… we have got a lot of work to do with NASA to figure out how to maintain a minimum industrial base on liquid rocket engines and solid rocket motors,” Payton told reporters Feb. 4 during a luncheon roundtable.
The end of Constellation/Ares sees the end of ATK-Thiokol as a going concern. Say waht you will about ATK (and I can say rather a lot, little of it complementary), but it’s not like the US is stacked to the rafters with companies that can build large, ICBM-sized solid rocket motors. United Tech/CSD folded half a decade ago. ATK may fold within a year (for all intents, anyway… it’ll probably retain some smaller contracts, and play rocket-hobby-shop).
On the liquid rocket front, things are a bit more confusing. With the dropoff in need for Delta IV’s, far fewer RS-68’sa re being built. With the end of the Shuttle, SSME’s day will be done. On the other hand, the SpaceX Merlin will, hopefully, continue to loft the Falcon rockets, and Xcor will hopefully continue to crank out reliable small rocket engines for the commercial market.
The commercial spacecraft and propulsion industries are America’s great hope. And Obama’s proposed budget theoretically helps cater to them. But for entepreneurs to thrive ina market commanded by Marxists… I dunno. I got a bad feeling about this, Chewie…
15 Responses to “Remember when the US used to make rockets?”
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Admin said:
“The commercial spacecraft and propulsion industries are America’s great hope. And Obama’s proposed budget theoretically helps cater to them. But for entepreneurs to thrive ina market commanded by Marxists…”
Boy, I’d like to see the Chinese try to explain how the concept of “To be rich is glorious!” ties into Marxism someday.
That makes Lenin’s “New Economic Policy” of the early 1920’s look positively
sedate by comparison. 😀
I’m somewhat torn. I was hoping Constellation would be the last of the NASA designed space launch systems, but I just don’t believe private industry’s ready to take up the torch yet.
It always amazes me that college educated morons think you can turn industries on and off like a light. Idiots.
Here in west PA we have a plant that makes resourcinol, and adhesive used to bind rubber and metal together, among many other uses. College educated morons, who know absolutely nothing about anything, period, thought they could just turn it off, and turn it on. People who actiually work in the plant told them you can’t do that. They tried anyway. Nearly blew up the plant, along with 2 square miles of PA. And even after having it explained they STILL don’t get it.
College educated morons abound in government, that is why we are in the hole we are. Once and industrial plant is shut down it is a huge undertaking to restart it. Rocket engine industry included. Once it is gone it is a massive, major, expensive undertaking to rebuild it from the ground up.
Hey, watch who you’re calling a “college-educated moron”. “Liberal-arts educated moron” if you must. Us engineers have to get degrees too, you know.
The hopelessness of this situation is most depressing. Most people either don’t care or grasp why such massive cuts are problematic in the long run. None remember the brain-drain at NASA between Apollo and the Shuttle program, so much knowledge and experience lost and I frear we’re about to tread down that road once more.
Meh… Awful Jackasses.
> the brain-drain at NASA between Apollo and the Shuttle…
And keep in mind, that was a gap of less than a decade (and it was sold as much less than a decade), with a definite goal at the end. But here… we have Shuttle ending in 2010, and *nothing* on the horizon. No vehicle, no program. No reason to stay, except to collect a pension. Those who can go to the private companies, will do so. Leaving behind those who *can’t.*
Guess I’ll have to ramp up my plans for my non-profit to save NASA and the Aerospace Industry’s Methodology. The first and easiest would be to get all the model’s, artwork, engineering reports that are still in old paper form and most important, oral histories of all employees before they disappear.
Cash for Donations will be non-existant, but I know NASA would give me the models since they are expensive to build. I was lucky to be dealing directly with a few of the program managers of projects like the X-33 (Gary Payton) and Dave Ruebush (X-43,Hyper-X)
TwitterMyFace networks might make it helpful to get histories maybe even volunteers. Now’s a good time to get support before NASA is forgotten by America’s Short Attention Span Theatre and artifacts can be gotten from an official instead of a dump owner who believes every piece is worth its weight in gold.
To get people to help, we could use our best talent, modeling, to make and raffle off some Space models signed be the astronauts or the actors who play them?
I want something that I can pass along to my son and future generations that shows how something was designed and built, not the end product itself. I’ll include 3d scuptures of how to biuld a fishing pole, bow and arrow and a magnifying glass, worst case scenenario.
I meant to write, models are expensive to store and most failed programs are stored anyway
As I understand it, when Apollo was ended the plans and models and skills were just discarded. Let’s not do that again. If there’s a way to collect that data and those thoughts, let’s do it.
I was once told by a naval architect that the reason submarines and aircraft carriers are built is partly to maintain the skills needed to design and build them.
Long ago, a Boeing engineer told me about a time when Boeing wasn’t getting the contracts it needed to maintain the work force. So the company laid them off. Six years later, something changed; Boeing called the workers back. Most ex-Boeing types just laughed, and the company got only a handful of the 3200 technicians. The word was that it was going to cost Boeing a billion dollars to train what they needed.
I, personally, have been directed to lay off the One Old Timer Who Knows Everything About How We Built This Thing because, and I quote, “we’re shutting down that product line and won’t need that crabby son of a bitch anymore.” I patiently explained all the way up to the Douchebag-In-Chief why this was an exceedingly bad idea, since Project Whiz-bang still had customers and would need to be maintained, only to be told I wasn’t a team player, and to shut up and execute. (That happens a lot by the way.)
You can see this coming, right? After twelve months, the company in its infinite wisdom, decided this product line, with gross profits approaching 60%, was maybe not such a bad place to be. Unfortunately, the institutional knowledge, including my guy, had moved on to greener pastures. So green, in fact, that they were somewhere between chortling and openly contemptuous when the feelers went out to see if they’d be willing to come back.
Because there might in fact be a God, it transpired that the DIC’s boss ordered HIM to contact the OOTWKEAHWBTT and offer him the inevitable contract/consulting job. At twice the salary. I couldn’t enjoy the schadenfreude too much, since (a) I was on the hook to deliver the output that that OOTWKEAHWBTT carried around in his head, and would have been up Raw Sewage Creek if he hadn’t relented, and (b) the delightful new salary came out of my budget.
However, change twelve months to twelve years . . . and change the scenario from commercial software to critically important national technologies . . and it isn’t so funny anymore.
We got Change® and Hope® though right? Honestly though, that jackass can’t be gone soon enough.
Riiight. Constellation gets cancelled, Delta & Atlas will be needed to fill the gap that Orion/Ares never had a hope in hell of doing, and demand for RS-68 engines is going to go DOWN? Bullshit.
> demand for RS-68 engines is going to go DOWN? Bullshit.
Seems your grasp of the situation is limited. FTFA: “the per-unit price of each EELV because procurement has slowed to keep pace with delayed satellite programs.”
With no Constellation program and no Orion, there will be no need for Atlas/Delta to fill in for Ares. With no Ares V, there will be no need for additional RS-68’s. With satellite procurements delayed, there will be reduced need for Atlas/Delta, and thus less need for RS-68’s. With fewer Atlas/Deltas being needed, fewer will be built. With fewer built, but the few built actually being needed by the government, the per-unit cost of these should skyrocket nicely. Lockheed and Boeing should profit well from them, at least for a while.
The only role for Atlas/Delta for the foreseeable future is launching to odd satellite. Not humans, as there’s no program to do any such thing now.
And all of this COULD have been avoided if certain someones had actually looked at developing an :::gasp::: actual Shuttle Derived Launch Vehicle using off-the-shelf Shuttle equipment….
Now IF the Air Force gets behind NASA on the “promised/implied” SD-HLV along the lines of the DIRECT Jupiter as they are thinking currently it would go a LONG way towards saving face for both NASA and (especially) for Congress.
Currently the idea is to fly a “test” vehicle ASAP using unused ETs, and SSMEs but even though starting a production of dedicated “expendable” SSMEs has been brought up the manufacturer can’t meet even the raised price of the RS-68. In the long-run the RS-68 will offer better performance at cheaper prices than the SSME and also will be more favorable to later expansion of capability for such a launch vehicle.
If I am reading things right while the ARES-I capable “Orion” capsule was still FAR from “ready” for prime time, ULA-Bigelow’s “Orion-Lite” (actually the ORIGINAL Block-1 Orion capsule for LEO) is much closer to being ready for testing. While “Constellation” has been cancled along with “Orion-Development” the wording leaves open a reorganization of the “Orion” development into a vehicle capable of being lofted by current EELV launchers. With the Delta-IV having been the ‘base-line’ manned-EELV (as per discussions between NASA and LocMart before “you-know-who” basically scrapped everything but development and production of the Block-4 {Mars} version of Orion and raised the single-launch-weight requirments) LocMart has done the majority of the “work” to get the Delta-IV “man-rated” and just needs NASA’s sign-off on it, there is a good possibility that we could be seeing manned Delta-IV lift offs within 5 years.
Of course all this has me in “two” minds mode in that while I’d love to see ATK here in Utah survive (I fully understand the military need for them as solid fuel rocket makers) I also want the new commercials to get a bigger slice of the pie. They, (for the most part) are as yet unproven but they are also more open to inovation and a changing market than most of the older aerospace companies.
I guess we’ll have to wait and see… And Hope…
Randy
Brianna? Engineers rarely fall into the college-educated moron, except when they stumble into job slots they are totally unfit for. On that other hand, government/management is chock full of college-educated morons, hence the current situation America and the world finds itself in.
Time for an enema, as Jack so rightly said!