Boeing pulls Delta IV from commercial launch market

http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0307/15boeing/

Way too many rockets, too little market.

Expecting more fallout from Lockmart. Argh.
Maybe if Ariane V blows up some more...

Nah. If launches were free, the market's still
too weak.

--Damon

"Damon Hill" wrote in message
...
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0307/15boeing/

Way too many rockets, too little market.

Expecting more fallout from Lockmart. Argh.
Maybe if Ariane V blows up some more...

Nah. If launches were free, the market's still
too weak.

--Damon

Meanwhile, in another part of town:
"At least seven launches using Proton booster rocket to be made at Baikonur
before end of this year."
http://en.rian.ru/rian/index.cfm?prd...row=11&da te=
2003-07-16&do_alert=0

-kert

If the launch costs were lower, there would be a real market. EELV has done
nothing more then provide the military an alternative to Titan. I don't
think you can look at Delta IV's failure as proof that there is no potential
market.

"Damon Hill" wrote in message
...
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0307/15boeing/

Way too many rockets, too little market.

Expecting more fallout from Lockmart. Argh.
Maybe if Ariane V blows up some more...

Nah. If launches were free, the market's still
too weak.

--Damon

"Jon G" wrote in
:

If the launch costs were lower, there would be a real market. EELV has
done nothing more then provide the military an alternative to Titan. I
don't think you can look at Delta IV's failure as proof that there is
no potential market.

Delta IV is a 'failure'?! HA!!

There is no market, even if launches were free. That's the
economic reality of the moment. Boeing will check back in when
there are launch customers and the launch market isn't so
saturated with launchers looking for payloads.

I doubt Ariane could compete if it weren't heavily subsidized.
I assume Proton and other Russian launchers, and Chinese launchers
simply benefit from cheap labor and certain socialist economic
unrealities.

--Damon

Damon Hill wrote in message . 230...

There is no market, even if launches were free. That's the
economic reality of the moment. Boeing will check back in when
there are launch customers and the launch market isn't so
saturated with launchers looking for payloads.


Could some of this be caused of the extended life of satellites? I
believe a communications satellite use to have a projected life of 5
to 7 years. I saw the other day where a newly launched satellite had a
projected life of 18 years. That cuts the need for launches by about
two thirds.



--
Rusty Barton - Antelope, California

In article ,
Damon Hill wrote:
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0307/15boeing/
Way too many rockets, too little market.

Note carefully that the "pulls Delta IV from commercial market" part is
the invention of the headline writer -- Boeing itself did *not* say that,
as best I can tell. They're aiming their marketing primarily at the
government now, but that does not mean they won't accept commercial
customers, only that they won't make strenuous efforts to seek them.

It's a reasonably natural decision for Boeing, given the lousy state of
the commercial launch market, Delta IV's considerable success (rather more
than Atlas V) at winning government business, and the presence within the
same company of Sea Launch (commercially very attractive but politically
forbidden to fly US-government payloads).
--
MOST launched 1015 EDT 30 June, separated 1046, | Henry Spencer
first ground-station pass 1651, all nominal! |

h (Rand Simberg) wrote in
:

On Thu, 17 Jul 2003 16:27:29 GMT, in a place far, far away,
(Henry Spencer) made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

It's a reasonably natural decision for Boeing, given the lousy state
of the commercial launch market, Delta IV's considerable success
(rather more than Atlas V) at winning government business, and the
presence within the same company of Sea Launch (commercially very
attractive but politically forbidden to fly US-government payloads).

Actually, it's possible that this is also a game of brinksmanship with
the Air Force, because they're about to get sanctioned for military
contracts. They may figure if their only market looks like the DoD,
they'll relent to keep them from shutting down the line and only
having one provider.


It's also plain-jane Accounting 101... they've decided that the
commercial satellite market isn't going to recover very quickly, and
that the commercial launches that they'd factored into their balance and
cash flow statements wasn't going to happen. Once they reached that
conclusion, they'd get into trouble with the SEC if they don't disclose
it.

The main methods for backing out the rosy launch assumption are to
either restate earnings or write off a portion of the costs. Since a
billion dollars over 5-7 years isn't "material" to Boeing's financials,
they won't need to re-state earnings. So they just write-off a portion
of their Delta 4 investment, and add it as a cost to the launches that
still go forward, recording the cost in their financials as the launches
occur.

They also said that they'll try to recover as much of the writeoff as
their DOD contracts allow, which is standard -- but I'll betcha that
these costs will be included as part of the settlement for getting
caught at commercial espionage/theft of the LockMart data.

--
Reed Snellenberger

"Kaido Kert" wrote in message ...
"John Ordover" wrote in message
om...
I assume Proton and other Russian launchers, and Chinese launchers
simply benefit from cheap labor and certain socialist economic
unrealities.

--Damon

All of the above are heavily subsidized.

Bullsh*t. Krunichev hasnt received any significant money from their
government in almost a decade

-kert

Who built their facilities? What is their debt-payment structure or
opportunity cost on the cost of building those facilities? If someone
handed me a satellite launch system complete with all facilities for
free, I could make it work too.

(ed kyle) wrote in
om:

(Henry Spencer) wrote in message
...
In article ,
Damon Hill wrote:
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0307/15boeing/
Way too many rockets, too little market.

Note carefully that the "pulls Delta IV from commercial market" part
is the invention of the headline writer -- Boeing itself did *not*
say that, as best I can tell. They're aiming their marketing
primarily at the government now, but that does not mean they won't
accept commercial customers, only that they won't make strenuous
efforts to seek them.


This seems to be Boeing finally admitting that the ICO launches
on its backlog were not real.

One thing Boeing said was that the Delta IV launch rate would be
half of it's originally predicted rate. This means that the
rocket's production and launch facilities, built for rapid launch
turnaround, are seriously overbuilt ($$$). A lower launch rate
means higher per-flight costs, which makes Delta IV non-competitive
with cut-rate commercial competitors Proton, Ariane 5, and
Zenit 3SL. Boeing didn't say that it was pulling Delta IV from the
commercial market, but it might as well have.

But will help make Delta IV more competitive when the market does
recover, probably towards the end of the decade. Lockmart is in the
same situation, with three models on two production lines; there's
going to be a phaseout there anyway.

No mention of Delta III here, but I wonder if this also means that
we've seen the last of that type.

No doubt; that model had some bad luck and finally fell between
the cracks. Boeing salvaged something out of it by using the Delta
III solids on a Delta II Heavy version. It looks like the III ended
up qualifying the solids, and the cryogenic upper stage for Delta IV,
but that's about it. It was a logical upgrade path at the time but
ended up as the odd man out as Delta IV came online and the market
bottomed out. Delta II seems to be hitting a sweet spot for NASA
launches.

I've been predicting an Air Force EELV and a NASA EELV. Looks
like Delta IV will be the Air Force bird. Now it's NASA's turn.

Ehn, I dunno. Everyone seems to be putting their OSP on a Delta IV
Heavy; I doubt many Heavys will be flown until an OSP is finally
built that requires a Heavy launcher. Atlas V may get just enough
military and commercial launches to keep it alive and the older
models will be retired.

--Damon

"Henry Spencer" wrote in message
...
Problem is, while Atlas V generally has greater lift capability when
compared against a similar Delta IV configuration, only Delta IV currently
has the option of the Heavy configuration. And unless common sense rules
for long enough to get OSP made a capsule, which doesn't seem that likely,
NASA's going to need the Heavy configuration.

NASA will be making use of both Atlas V and Delta IV variants up to and
including their Heavy models. Internal reviews of both boosters' designs is
ongoing. LM has completed significant engineering on their Heavy and is only
waiting for a customer to place an order. It is possible that the OSP
program will be that customer, but that won't be known for sure until next
year.

WRT OSP designs, don't rule out "common sense" just yet. It's alive and well
at this point in the program.

-Kim-