SpaceX - Why Not RS-27A?

On Thu, 15 Sep 2005 02:06:18 -0500, Pat Flannery
wrote:

One thing that will benefit SpaceX is if Delta II gets dropped as a
launch vehicle, as way well happen- that would create a very exploitable
gap on the lower end of the payload market.

If SpaceX can launch reliably, then they could well take over on their
own.

I'm till interested in their plans to make their boosters recoverable
and reusable, which to me seems a little odd for a vehicle designed for
low cost in its construction, as it means you have to lug the weight of
the recovery gear along with you, eating into your payload, and
overbuild it some for multiple use and the stress of landing after its
mission.

SpaceX is not currently depending on their hardware being reusable,
when they could go down either the reusable or expendable route. They
are going to give reusable a try and to find out what option provides
the better value.

And like other aspects of their business then the recovery is aimed to
be low cost and good value.

I still think this is about the cleverest reusable booster design I've
ever seen:
http://www.russianspaceweb.com/baikal.html
http://www.buran.ru/htm/strbaik.htm

Nice, but more advanced and complex. SpaceX is going with a simple
modular system to ensure basic success. Later on they are likely to
branch out a bit.

Cardman.

The Apprentice wrote:
"Ed Kyle" wrote in news:1126724563.896377.307370
@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:

Still, I have to wonder if it might be easier to
develop a rocket powered by four 200,000 lb
thrust RS-27A engines than to create a nine-
engine cluster of smaller engines. Since Boeing
is disposing of Rocketdyne, RS-27A (which is
already a proven cluster machine) should be
available for commercialization beyond the Delta
family.

So why not use smaller numbers of a proven engine?

Crap, I typed this up and lost it... here's the quick answers:

1) Rocketdyne has no incentive/reason to build cheap engines for small
companies. It would only risk tarnishing their image as the premium
rocket engine supplier for the US government.

Rocketdyne, in the process of being sold by Boeing to
Pratt & Whitney, is on the path to oblivion. When
Delta II is shut down the RS-27 production line will
also close, leaving no kerosene booster engines in
production in the U.S. except for Merlin (assuming
start-up SpaceX can survive once Mr. Musk's wallet
is empty). Why wouldn't Pratt (ex-Rocketdyne) want
to sell these engines to anyone willing to pay?
Don't forget that the dominant customer for SpaceX
is also the US government.

- Ed Kyle

wrote:
Ed Kyle wrote:
Still, I have to wonder if it might be easier to
develop a rocket powered by four 200,000 lb
thrust RS-27A engines than to create a nine-
engine cluster of smaller engines.

One of SpaceX's marketing angles is its capability to fly even with the
loss of an engine. This is easier to achieve with nine engines than
with four.

Its original design used five engines instead
of nine, but SpaceX still claimed engine-out
performance. The engine-out abort window for
four is probably only a few seconds shorter
than for five. And unlike Merlin, RS-27 has
a demonstrated engine out performance record
(as H-1 on Saturn I).

Nine engines sounds to me like an attempt to
salvage a design that was veering toward
underperformance.

- Ed Kyle

Ed Kyle wrote:
And unlike Merlin, RS-27 has
a demonstrated engine out performance record
(as H-1 on Saturn I).

What components have changed from the H-1 to the RS-27A? Are any of
these relevant to clustered engine performance? Like... engine
controllers? Nozzle?

Nine engines sounds to me like an attempt to
salvage a design that was veering toward
underperformance.

SpaceX claimed that their customers wanted more payload than Falcon V
was going to be able to provide.

So, they could have either bought an existing engine with a 20 year old
design that already cost more than their in-house engine and that would
at the very least need new engine controllers to be developed more or
less from scratch and probably quite a few different other systems
(hydraulic power? different inlet condition requirements? different
mixture ratio needing new tankage?).

Or, they could add more engines to their first stage and stretch the
tanks a little.

Which one sounds like a lower risk way to meet increased payload
demands?

-jake

wrote:
One of SpaceX's marketing angles is its capability to fly even with the
loss of an engine. This is easier to achieve with nine engines than
with four.

And far more likely to be necessary.

On 15 Sep 2005 06:41:27 -0700, "Ed Kyle" wrote:

Rocketdyne, in the process of being sold by Boeing to
Pratt & Whitney, is on the path to oblivion. When
Delta II is shut down the RS-27 production line will
also close, leaving no kerosene booster engines in
production in the U.S. except for Merlin (assuming
start-up SpaceX can survive once Mr. Musk's wallet
is empty).

You may notice on the SpaceX site the $100 million US Air Force
agreement. I have seen such things before with other space companies,
where it is like pumping additional funding into them.

You can also notice on their site that Elon Musk confirms that $100
million has been spent on this project so far. So it is like he spends
$100 million and he gets the US Air Force giving him an agreement for
exactly the same amount.

This is all because the military wants him to succeed, when this would
greatly reduce their launch costs in the longer term. And so all the
time that he is making progress towards this goal, then his wallet
being empty seems quite unlikely.

And naturally the US Air Force could well get something back out of
this once they are up and running.

Don't forget that the dominant customer for SpaceX
is also the US government.

Yes, where they do have a large space interest.

The military is also very quick to get into any promising new space
company. Like being their first customer and to make use of their
dodgy first generation hardware.

I always thought that it was part of NASA's job to help promote us
more common humans getting into space. And yet here is the military
getting in from the very start, with NASA no where to be seen.

Cardman.

Cardman wrote:
On 15 Sep 2005 06:41:27 -0700, "Ed Kyle" wrote:

You may notice on the SpaceX site the $100 million US Air Force
agreement. I have seen such things before with other space companies,
where it is like pumping additional funding into them.

You can also notice on their site that Elon Musk confirms that $100
million has been spent on this project so far. So it is like he spends
$100 million and he gets the US Air Force giving him an agreement for
exactly the same amount.

This $100 million is only an authorization cap
that allow the government to purchase launch
services, one at a time, within the $100 million
limit. Currently, the SpaceX backlog only shows
about $40 million worth of booked U.S. Government
launches, with the bulk of that coming from one
Falcon 9 launch that won't happen for at least
two years.

I always thought that it was part of NASA's job to help promote us
more common humans getting into space. And yet here is the military
getting in from the very start, with NASA no where to be seen.

NASA is like FEMA in the face of Katrina.
It might get the job done long-term, but it
can't react quickly to immediate needs. The
Dept of Defense can. It led the U.S. into space
at crunch time, with ABMA's Jupiter-C/Explorer 1
launch, with the massive Discoverer/Corona program,
etc. Most of the early satellites and astronauts
were orbited by ballistic missile-based launchers
developed by DoD. The Army even did the initial
work on Saturn development.

- Ed Kyle

"Ed Kyle" wrote in
ups.com:

The Apprentice wrote:
"Ed Kyle" wrote in
news:1126724563.896377.307370 @z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:

Still, I have to wonder if it might be easier to
develop a rocket powered by four 200,000 lb
thrust RS-27A engines than to create a nine-
engine cluster of smaller engines. Since Boeing
is disposing of Rocketdyne, RS-27A (which is
already a proven cluster machine) should be
available for commercialization beyond the Delta
family.

So why not use smaller numbers of a proven engine?

Crap, I typed this up and lost it... here's the quick answers:

1) Rocketdyne has no incentive/reason to build cheap engines for
small companies. It would only risk tarnishing their image as the
premium rocket engine supplier for the US government.

Rocketdyne, in the process of being sold by Boeing to
Pratt & Whitney, is on the path to oblivion. When
Delta II is shut down the RS-27 production line will
also close, leaving no kerosene booster engines in
production in the U.S. except for Merlin (assuming
start-up SpaceX can survive once Mr. Musk's wallet
is empty). Why wouldn't Pratt (ex-Rocketdyne) want
to sell these engines to anyone willing to pay?
Don't forget that the dominant customer for SpaceX
is also the US government.

Rocketdyne's RS-84 contract with NASA was probably somewhere between
$100M to $200M. Why sell engines to SpaceX for just a few million and
give their government customers cause to question why they should spend
so much on technology development.

The government is not giving serious money to SpaceX yet... the $100M
"contract" is just paper.

Default wrote:
"Ed Kyle" wrote in
ups.com:

Rocketdyne, in the process of being sold by Boeing to
Pratt & Whitney, is on the path to oblivion. When
Delta II is shut down the RS-27 production line will
also close, leaving no kerosene booster engines in
production in the U.S. except for Merlin (assuming
start-up SpaceX can survive once Mr. Musk's wallet
is empty). Why wouldn't Pratt (ex-Rocketdyne) want
to sell these engines to anyone willing to pay?
Don't forget that the dominant customer for SpaceX
is also the US government.

Rocketdyne's RS-84 contract with NASA was probably somewhere between
$100M to $200M. Why sell engines to SpaceX for just a few million and
give their government customers cause to question why they should spend
so much on technology development.

RS-84 was cancelled on 19 March 2004. That leaves
Pratt/Rocketdyne with only SSME (the last SSME is
being manufactured now) and RS-68 (the main engine
of the too-low-flight-rate Delta IV). I could see
RS-68 going away before too long, as the superior
Atlas V takes the bulk of the EELV backlog. With
no RS-27, no SSME, no RS-68, and with Santa Susanna
being sold off to condo developers, Rocketdyne seems
to be on its death bed. I would think the company
would be interested in any contracts it could find.

The government is not giving serious money to SpaceX yet... the $100M
"contract" is just paper.

SpaceX does have about $40 million worth of real
U.S. government launch services backlog now, but
most of that is for a single Falcon 9 launch.

- Ed Kyle

Ed Kyle" wrote in
oups.com:

Rocketdyne's RS-84 contract with NASA was probably somewhere between
$100M to $200M. Why sell engines to SpaceX for just a few million
and give their government customers cause to question why they should
spend so much on technology development.

RS-84 was cancelled on 19 March 2004. That leaves
Pratt/Rocketdyne with only SSME (the last SSME is
being manufactured now) and RS-68 (the main engine
of the too-low-flight-rate Delta IV). I could see
RS-68 going away before too long, as the superior
Atlas V takes the bulk of the EELV backlog. With
no RS-27, no SSME, no RS-68, and with Santa Susanna
being sold off to condo developers, Rocketdyne seems
to be on its death bed. I would think the company
would be interested in any contracts it could find.

Yes, RS-84 is dead, and Rocketdyne made more money on it than they'll
ever make selling bargin-bin RS-27's to SpaceX. The PRICE for a Falcon
9 is $35 million. Let's guess 20% of that is profit, and 25% of the
remaining cost is the engines -- $7 million. That what SpaceX could
pay for FOUR RS-27's -- less than $2 million each. Rocketdyne couldn't
build you a coffee-maker at a profit for that.

RS-68 isn't going away -- you're dreaming. If the AF decides to only
keep 1 EELV, it will be Delta -- regardless of Boeing's past sins in
winning contracts, RS-68 is domestic and RD-180 will never be (BS from
P&W about "domestic production" notwithstanding).

NASA plans to *expend* 5 SSME's for every heavy lift launch and 1 SSME
for every CEV launch. Yes, there is a stockpile of surplus SSME's to
use, but NASA's cozy relationship with Rocketdyne has gone on for too
many decades... they will *NEED* *NEED* *NEED* the SSME Block III,
optimized for expendable applications. Don't ask them why... they just
will need it. What the hell did they need the RS-84 for? They had to
make up a paper vehicle just to give them something to interface with.

SpaceX does have about $40 million worth of real
U.S. government launch services backlog now, but
most of that is for a single Falcon 9 launch.

Yeah, and once they have their first failure, how many launches then?
How much money does Rocketdyne make then? Oh, wait, that's right,
SpaceX is different -- they won't have any of the problems every other
government in the world had trying to get into the business (or Kistler
or Beal had). SpaceX is different -- it was started by the guy who
invented PayPal, after all. Can anyone blame Rocketdyne for just
waiting for the next meal to arrive in the government trough?

Actually, I wish SpaceX well... I'm just sick of all their
self-promotion and acting like they've got the whole rocket game figured
out because they found "engine out capability" in a rocket design book
glossary. I'm also sick of all the fanboys who talk about them like
they've already accomplished something. As Henry Ford once said, "you
can't build a reputation based on what you're GOING to do."