РН Вулкан - Vulcan Centaur heavy-lift launch vehicle (Планов громадье в ULA)

[Salo]

http://spacenews.com/aerojet-rocketdyne-ula-win-air-force-propulsion-contracts/

Aerojet Rocketdyne, ULA win Air Force propulsion contracts
by Mike Gruss — February 29, 2016

ULA ultimately plans to replace the Atlas 5 with the Vulcan, but envisions at least a couple of years of overlapping operations between the two vehicles. Credit: ULA
 
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Air Force will invest up to $536 million in Aerojet Rocketdyne's AR1 rocket engine and as much as $202 million in United Launch Alliance's next-generation Vulcan rocket as a way to end dependence on the Russian rocket engine used to launch most U.S. national security payloads, according to a  Feb. 29 announcement from the Pentagon.
Aerojet Rocketdyne will use the money to help develop its AR1 engine. ULA will use the money to develop a prototype of its Vulcan launch vehicle with the BE-4 engine and to work on its next-generation upper stage engine known as the Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage, or ACES.
The contracts are among the Air Force's top space acquisition priorities for 2016.
Aerojet Rocketdyne is developing an engine dubbed the AR1 that, like the Russian RD-180 that powers ULA's Atlas 5 rocket, is fueled by liquid oxygen and kerosene. The Air Force awarded Aerojet Rocketdyne a $115 million contract on Feb. 29 to develop the engine for ULA's Vulcan rocket, but said with all options the potential government investment could reach $536 million. Aerojet Rocketdyne could contribute as much as $268 million to the program.
"AR1 will return the United States to the forefront of kerosene rocket propulsion technology," Eileen Drake, Aerojet Rocketdyne's chief executive officer, said in a press release. "We are incorporating the latest advances in modern manufacturing, while capitalizing on our rich knowledge of rocket engines to produce a new, state-of-the-art engine that will end our reliance on a foreign supplier to launch our nation's national security assets."
Aerojet executives say they plan to test the first AR1 development engine in 2017, followed by additional testing in 2018 and to provide a certified engine in 2019.
However, ULA announced in September 2014 that its first choice for a new engine for its Vulcan rocket is the BE-4, a liquid-natural-gas fueled engine that cannot be used on the Atlas 5 as currently designed. Blue Origin of Kent, Washington, owned by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, is developing that engine using its own funds.
The Air Force also awarded ULA a $46 million contract on Feb. 29 to develop the upper stage engine and a prototype of the Vulcan rocket using the BE-4. With all options the potential government investment could reach $202 million. ULA, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, could contribute as much as $134 million.
ULA has said the Vulcan could be certified for national security launches around 2022 and that the ACES upper stage engine could fly as early as 2023. Last year, ULA officials said an ACES-equipped Vulcan, augmented by strap-on boosters, would have 30 percent more lift capacity than the Delta 4 Heavy, currently the largest vehicle in the U.S. fleet.
ULA has a contract with Aerojet to retain the AR1 as a backup in case the BE-4 effort falters. ULA is expected to choose which engine it will develop for Vulcan late this year.

Спойлер

When the Air Force solicited proposals in June, it said it intended to award a total of $160 million to fund work on both main- and upper-stage rocket engines. Industry would be required to cover at least one-third of the costs of their proposed development efforts, but the actual size of the government investment would vary from proposal to proposal.
On Jan. 13 the service announced the first of the awards and said it would invest at least $46.9 million and perhaps as much as $180 million, to develop three technologies for a new rocket from Orbital ATK.   In addition, SpaceX received at least $33.6 million, and perhaps as much as $61 million, to continue development of its reusable methane-fueled Raptor engine.
In light of the Crimean crisis of 2014, Congress has directed the Defense Department to develop a domestic propulsion systems that would enable the Air Force by 2019 to end its reliance on RD-180.

[свернуть]

[Salo]

http://spacenews.com/ula-intends-to-lower-its-costs-and-raise-its-cool-to-compete-with-spacex/

ULA intends to lower its costs, and raise its cool, to compete with SpaceX
by Peter B. de Selding — March 16, 2016
 
United Launch Alliance's future Vulcan rocket is designed to compete with SpaceX's Falcon vehicle for U.S. government business. It also may improve ULA's pizzazz quotient relative to SpaceX -- a useful advantage in hiring. Credit: ULA
 
PARIS — A senior United Launch Alliance official on March 15 gave a candid assessment of his company's attempt to reinvent itself at a time when competitor SpaceX has almost single-handedly caused a rebirth of the cool in U.S. rocketry that has all but bypassed ULA.
In a presentation by turns admiring and resentful of SpaceX – not the first time a ULA official has expressed these sentiments — ULA Engineering Vice President Brett Tobey said his company accepts the fact that SpaceX has forced the U.S. government, and thus ULA, to change the way rockets are made and sold.
 
Brett Tobey, ULA's vice president of engineering. Credit: ULA

It still views SpaceX's Falcon 9 reusability design – returning the full first stage – as "dumb" given the huge amount of fuel needed to bring the stage back. ULA's plan for its future Vulcan rocket is to separate the Vulcan's main-stage engines, cover them in a package that deploys a parachute and then scoop them up in midair with a helicopter.
Addressing a University of Colorado-Boulder audience, Tobey began by recalling the history of ULA, created in 2006 after the U.S. government concluded that neither of ULA's parent companies, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, could survive on its on as a launch-service provider.
A de facto monopoly was born with U.S. government blessing and with a series of lucrative U.S. government contracts whose principal goal was reliability and capability, not value for money.
It included an annual $1 billion EELV Launch Capability contract, since reduced to $800 million per year, that lards on more cost, but also provides maximum flexibility to U.S. government customers.
"If they say jump, we basically say, 'How high?' under this capability contract," Tobey said.
Life was good for a time. ULA got the government business, which was all it needed. The company never much bothered with the highly price-competitive commercial launch market – a roller-coaster ride that Boeing had badly overestimated, in part causing the formation of ULA.
The company has posted a 100 percent launch success record – 105 missions including classified payloads valued in the range of $1 billion.
"Then along came [SpaceX founder and Chief Executive] Elon Musk, who changed the game completely," Tobey said.
Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket is a design-to-cost vehicle with some launches priced at $60 million. Even with the supplemental requirements that SpaceX has said can add 30 percent to the cost of a U.S. Air Force mission, Falcon 9 is far less expensive than ULA's workhorse, the Atlas 5 rocket.
"On our best day you'll see us at bid at about $125 million," Tobey said. Adding in the Capabilities contract monies and the price climbs to $200 million.
With SpaceX making the rounds in Congress and even suing the U.S. Air Force to open its rocket competitions, ULA's days under its current structure were numbered – 100 percent success over 105 straight missions notwithstanding.
"The government cannot afford this right now," Tobey said of ULA's current cost structure. "SpaceX will take them to court if they [the U.S. military] don't demonstrate the ability to allow competition.... Now we're going to have to figure out how to bid these things at a much lower cost."
Unless the U.S. Air Force decides to end it early, the Capabilities contract expires in 2019. Tobey conceded that the likelihood of its being renewed "is exactly zero. So we have to be ready, in 2020, to roll up the cost of all that work and not make our launch vehicles just extraordinarily expensive."
The challenge for ULA is even greater given U.S. congressional pressure for it to abandon, sooner rather than later, the Atlas 5' main-stage RD-180 engine, whose Russian pedigree is a problem at a time of heightened political heat between Russia and the United States. SpaceX has also stoked this fire for its own account.
 
"Blue Origin is a super-rich girl, and then there is this poor girl over here, Aerojet Rocketdyne. But we have to continue to go to planned rehearsal dinners, buy cakes and all the rest with both."
 
ULA is now working with Kent, Washington-based Blue Origin, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos; and Aerojet Rocketdyne of Rancho Cordova, California, on RD-180 replacements.
Aerojet Rocketdyne's AR1 engine uses liquid oxygen and kerosene. Blue Origin's BE-4 uses liquid oxygen and methane.
Tobey said Bezos has invested $500 million of his own money in Blue Origin and, as demonstrated during the explosion of a Blue Origin engine on a test stand, is willing to "open his checkbook" to pursue what for Bezos is more a passion than a quest for business profit.
Compared to Bezos, Aerojet Rocketdyne's AR1 is working off a relatively small government budget, Tobey said. He did not reference a recent U.S. Defense Department announcement that substantially more funds would be arriving to develop the AR1.
Comparing the two engine developments – Aerojet Rocketdyne pursuing the classic government funding route, while Blue Origin has a billionaire owner who can act lightning-fast – the two companies' situations do not favor Aerojet Rocketdyne.
"Compare it to having two fiancées, two possible brides," Tobey said of ULA's approach to the two. "Blue Origin is a super-rich girl, and then there is this poor girl over here, Aerojet Rocketdyne. But we have to continue to go to planned rehearsal dinners, buy cakes and all the rest with both.
"We're doing all the work on both, and the chance of Aerojet Rocketdyne beating the billionaire is pretty low. Basically we're putting a whole lot more energy into BE-4 for Blue Origin."
Using methane would be new for the U.S. space sector, imposing risks, but Tobey said the BE-4 engine is only 60 percent of the cost of the AR1, a clear advantage in today's cost-driven market.
Of both engines, he said: "They are never going to outperform the RD-180."
Under Chief Executive Tory Bruno, ULA has taken steps to modernize the company's image. Bruno tweets up a storm and comes across as approachable and possessed of a sense of humor – neither of these traits were associated with ULA in the past.
Fittingly, Bruno turned to Twitter March 16 to put some distance between ULA and Tobey's remarks. "These ill-advised statements do not reflect ULA's views or our relationship with our valuable suppliers,"  Bruno said. "We welcome competition."
The company's proposed Vulcan rocket – designed to cost substantially less than the Atlas 5 – could help transform ULA's stodgy, government-coddled image — a complaint voiced by ULA personnel on social media aimed at young jobseeking engineers.
As much as Tobey lamented that ULA deserves more credit than it gets in the market of public opinion, he also expressed – with humor — an engineer's admiration for SpaceX and what it has done in that same market.
"Don't get me wrong: SpaceX has done some amazing stuff," Tobey said. "The landing [in December] of that [Falcon 9] first stage at the Cape was nothing short of amazing. My wife and I were at Best Buy and watching it on my iPhone and I just got goose bumps. It was cool.
"Watching them smash it into the barge was fun, too," he said of previous, and a subsequent, SpaceX attempts at landing the first stage.
"It's getting tons of press. It's extraordinarily, engineeringly cool – but it's dumb," Tobey said. "I mean: Really? You carried 100,000 pounds of fuel after deployment of the SES satellite [SpaceX's March launch of the commercial SES-9 telecommunications satellite, to geostationary-transfer orbit] just to try to land on the barge."
ULA has concluded that the damage to a rocket's first stage, including its engine, as it heads toward landing, plus the cost in fuel needed to turn the stage around and prepare for landing, is not likely a winning ticket.
But he said the investments by billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Virgin Galactic backer Richard Branson have been "really, really good for this industry."
"It's quite a shot in the arm for ULA," Tobey said. "It's going to be a great story written here and my job is to make sure it has a happy ending. But we'll see."

[Salo]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ula-shied-away-price-war-021345846.html

ULA exec resigns after saying firm shied away from price war with SpaceX  
   

An exterior of the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California May 29, 2014. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni
 
By Irene Klotz
 
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - A senior United Launch Alliance executive resigned on Wednesday after saying the firm last year refused to bid on a launch service contract for the U.S. military's next-generation GPS satellite because it was hoping to avoid a "cost shootout" with Elon Musk's SpaceX.
The comments by Brett Tobey, formerly ULA vice president of engineering, were made on Tuesday at the University of Colorado-Boulder. The industry trade publication Space News posted an audio file of Tobey's talk on Wednesday.
Tobey resigned his position, effective immediately, ULA chief executive Tory Bruno said in a statement. ULA is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) and Boeing (BA.N).
"The views, positions and inaccurate statements Mr. Tobey presented at his recent speaking engagement were not aligned with the direction of the company, my views, nor the views I expect from ULA leaders," Bruno said in the statement.
Tobey's comments contradict the reason ULA gave last year for skipping the bid.
The comments came as ULA, the sole provider for U.S. military launches for nearly a decade, scrambles to compete with industry newcomer Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, whose launches cost a half to a third of those of ULA.
"The government was not happy with us not bidding that contract because they had felt that...they had bent over backwards to lean the fill to our advantage. We saw it as a cost shootout between us and SpaceX," Tobey said on Tuesday.
At the time, ULA said it was not bidding to launch the GPS-3 satellite because it did not have the proper accounting procedures in place to do the work.
It also said it lacked enough of the Russian-made RD-180 engines that power its workhorse Atlas 5 rocket to launch the GPS satellite, citing a congressional ban passed in 2014 after Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region.
Tobey said the ban was engineered by Musk to help break ULA's monopoly on the U.S. military's launch business.
Musk "starts attacking us in Washington. He...says, 'Why don't you go after United Launch Alliance and see if you can get that engine to be outlawed?'," Tobey said.
A spokesman for SpaceX, John Taylor, declined to comment on Wednesday.
The ban was reversed in December by Senator Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican, Tobey said.
Congress is debating whether to re-establish the ban on Russian rocket engines for military missions, and possibly expand it to include NASA launch service contracts as well.

 (Reporting by Irene Klotz; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell)

[Apollo13]

http://spacenews.com/ula-vp-resigns-following-remarks-on-companys-competitive-position-strategy/

ULA VP resigns following remarks on company's competitive position, strategy

PARIS—The debate over March 15 remarks by United Launch Alliance Engineering Vice President Brett Tobey during a university seminar – remarks that cost him his job the next day after his company disavowed them – has obscured the fact that much of what he said is beyond serious question.

The truly contestable parts, and those that likely caused his resignation – Reuters reported his departure late March 16 — are little more than the usual excesses of someone defending his company beyond what the evidence shows.

Here are some of the topics that Tobey raised. The ones that forced his departure are not necessarily the most important:

— Tobey's suggestion that U.S. Sen. John McCain (D-Arizona) is an attack dog for ULA competitor SpaceX, using the Russian RD-180 engine as a pretext, was not just impolitic. It brushed aside the legitimate issue of how much the U.S. Defense Department – which for years declined to develop a U.S. alternative to the Russian RD-180, which powers ULA's Atlas 5 vehicle – should continue to rely on a Russia whose geopolitical strategy has forced a rethink of U.S. and Western relations with Moscow.

The fact that SpaceX has made use of the argument to advance its own corporate interests does not invalidate the seriousness of the issue.

— Tobey implied that the absence of public debate over Orbital ATK's use of the RD-181 engine, made by the same Russian company that builds the RD-180, was no accident. But the fact is that, for now, the discussion in Washington has focused uniquely on Russian engines for U.S. military programs, not for commercial or civil government missions with NASA, where Orbital ATK operates.

— Tobey's remarks about the competition between Blue Origin and Aerojet Rocketdyne to replace the RD-180– his rich girl/poor girl analogy was intended to be comical and drew laughs fr om the University of Colorado-Boulder engineering audience – were little more than stating the obvious.

ULA Chief Executive Tory Bruno said as much in June testimony before the U.S. Congress: Blue Origin's BE-4 has the inside track, and Aerojet Rocketdyne's AR1 is the challenger. BE-4 development is more than a year ahead of the AR1.

What is more, Tobey said the BE-4 is likely to be 40 percent less costly than the AR1 and is backed by a billionaire, Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, who can make split-second investment decisions on behalf of BE-4, and has already demonstrated his determination to see it through.

AR1, in contrast, depends mainly on U.S. government backing, meaning Aerojet Rocketdyne has many phone numbers to dial to win support, whereas Blue Origin needs only Bezos's mobile.

— Tobey's assessment of ULA's corporate ownership – a 50/50 joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing – as "dysfunctional parents" was in response to a university questioner's incredulity at the fact that ULA must get quarterly approval for continued work on its new Vulcan rocket.

"The discussion was, 'Why not just launch the rest of our Atlases and Deltas in the in the inventory in most profitable way and then, just like we did with USA [United Space Alliance, a Boeing-Lockheed joint venture to manage space shuttle operations and other NASA work], go out of business?" Tobey said, referring to the Lockheed-Boeing debate on ULA's future.

Call it what you will, most industry observers have long agreed that ULA's corporate structure will have to change if the company is to evolve into the lean, competitive force its managers have stated as their goal. Tobey said Aerojet Rocketdyne's $2 billion bid to buy ULA was rejected because ULA's owners value the business at $4 billion.

— ULA's decision not to enter the competition with Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX for a U.S. Air Force GPS-3 satellite launch, he said, was a simple observation that SpaceX can offer prices that ULA is unable to match.

Naturally enough, the company did not say this at the time, preferring instead to cite obscure government contract rules for which ULA's accounting office was unprepared in explaining its refusal to bid.

— Tobey's larger point was that the U.S. government is now obliged to use the lowest-cost measure as its prime criterion for awarding launch-service contracts. The days of reliability at all cost – and he conceded the cost is high – are over.

And here here raised an issue that the U.S. Air Force, the national security establishment and NASA will all grapple with: Can they live with Silicon Valley's "iterate, fail, then iterate again" operating manual?

"This is where it starts to get emotional at work," Tobey said, recalling that ULA will be launching Boeing's CST-100 Starliner astronaut capsule under contract to NASA, just as SpaceX's Falcon 9 will be launching SpaceX's crew-version Dragon capsule.

"When you talk about a failure, and then getting to a definitive root cause and making substantial changes to fix it – all that costs lots and lots of money," Tobey said. "And if we start chasing the price point down to wh ere it's now affordable, how much will you lose and what risks are you taking?

"You really don't know you've gone too far until you end up losing a rocket. If you lose a rocket with a low-cost commercial satellite, it's one thing. If you lose it on a national security satellite, it's another thing.

"If you lose it with humans, you become part of the tragedy in the history of American space flight. That's completely different."

[Apollo13]

Краткое содержание драмы. Вчера "вице-президент по инжинирингу" ULA Бретт Тоби дал интервью, за которое сегодня был уволен. 

Основные моменты:

1. Blue Origin - супер-богатая девушка, Aerojet - бедная. Пока приходится ужинать, покупать тортики и прочее с обеими. На это директор Аэроджета уже успела ответить в твиттере, что гуляют обычно с одними девушками, а женятся на других. 

https://twitter.com/DrakeEileen/status/710211277910446080

2. BE-4 на 40% дешевле AR-1
3. Когда Аэроджет предлагал за ULA 2 млрд, Боинг и Локхид оценивали фирму в 4 млрд.
4. Боинг и Локхид всерьез рассматривали возможность запустить все оставшиеся Атласы и Дельты и закрыть ULA, подобно тому как как был закрыт USA (United Space Alliance - оператор Шаттла). Это не было сделано "по политическим причинам"
5. В конкурсе на запуск спутника GPS3 ULA отказался участвовать из за того что их цена была неконкурентноспособной по сравнению со SpaceX. Официально было заявлено что ULA не может участвовать в конкурсе из за проблем с бухгалтерией.

[triage]

Спасибо за вчерашнее, а то в твиттерах были непонятные сообщения.

[Sam Grey]

Apollo13 пишет:
2. BE-4 на 40% дешевле AR-1

Он то ли пьяный был, то ли перегрелся где-то, но прочитав транскрипт его "речи" целиком, у меня осталось именно такое впечатление.

 По поводу сравнения стоимости двух движков:



The problem is that this engine is giving us a price 60% of the AR-1. The price of the AR-1 is 100%, the price for two of these is 60% of that. He's already inked a long term contract deal for that. He also gives great tours up at Kent, Washington to basically show he is moving in the right direction.

Ну то есть, как вы и сказали, BE-4 на 40% дешевле, но этот чудик говорит "стоимость двух их (БЕ-4) равняется 60% стоимости [одного?] AR-1".

[Apollo13]

Вообще это было не интервью а какое-то выступление перед студентами. Кто-то снял его на телефон и выложил в интернет.

[Apollo13]

http://spacenews.com/mccain-calls-for-investigation-of-fired-ula-execs-controversial-comments/

Tobey said that when Marilyn Hewson, chief executive of ULA parent company Lockheed Martin, meets with top DoD officials to discuss the F-35 fighter, the Littoral combat ship and other big-ticket Pentagon programs, "the first thing that's going to come out of the DoD leadership's mouth when she walks in the door is,'What are you doing with that damn RD-180 engine? I'm sick of McCain attacking us.'

Еще прекрасное. Тоби проболтался, что во время встречи президента Локхид Мартин Мерилин Хюсон и высокопоставленных чиновников минобороны посвященной обсуждению Ф-35 и прочих дорогостоящих программ Пентагона первое что ее спросили как только она вошла в дверь было: "Что вы собираетесь делать с РД-180? Меня достали атаки Маккейна."

[Apollo13]

https://twitter.com/flatoday_jdean/status/718583893386010625

James DeanVerified account‏@flatoday_jdean

ULA says Atlas V/MUOS-5 launch "delayed and indefinite" as investigation continues into RD-180 engine's premature shutdown during OA-6.

[Apollo13]

https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/718602929599426560

Jeff Foust‏@jeff_foust

Jones: working on 8H21 engine as option for ULA's ACES upper stage; should be about ready by end of 2019. #SA16PHX

Работа над двигателем XCOR для ACES должна завершиться до конца 2019.

[Salo]

http://spaceflightnow.com/2016/04/11/atlas-5-to-launch-commercial-space-habitat-for-bigelow-aerospace/

Atlas 5 to launch commercial space habitat for Bigelow Aerospace             
 April 11, 2016 Justin Ray       
 An illustration of Bigelow module launching atop Atlas 5. Credit: ULA

The maker of inflatable technology for a commercial space station will use a top-of-the-line Atlas 5 rocket with a stretched nose cone to hoist the first habitat into Earth orbit in 2020.
Bigelow Aerospace and United Launch Alliance announced the partnership today at the 32nd Space Symposium in Colorado Springs.
"We could not be more pleased than to partner with Bigelow Aerospace and reserve a launch slot on our manifest for this revolutionary mission," said Tory Bruno, ULA president and CEO.
"This innovative and game-changing advance will dramatically increase opportunities for space research in fields like materials, medicine and biology. And it enables destinations in space for countries, corporations and even individuals far beyond what is available today, effectively democratizing space. We can't begin to imagine the future potential of affordable real estate in space."
The Atlas 5 rocket will fly in the 552 configuration with five side-mounted solid boosters, a twin-engine Centaur upper stage and an 87-foot-long, 18-foot-diameter payload fairing with over 50 feet of usable cargo room, the most capable variant of the vehicle available.
The longer nose cone will give the vehicle a height of 216 feet, 10 feet taller than any previous Atlas thus far.
"You are constrained by the ability of your launch vehicle. In our case, we have to fit within two things — a vehicle that can lift 43,500 pounds and a vehicle that has the fairing length. There is only one at the moment, and for the next foreseeable few years, and that happens to be the Atlas 552 stretch fairing," said company founder and hotel entrepreneur Robert Bigelow.
"When looking for a vehicle to launch our large, unique spacecraft, ULA provides a heritage of solid mission success, schedule certainty and a cost effective solution," he added.
"SpaceX, they do not have the capability with the fairing size that is necessary to accommodate the 330 (module). So that is not even a choice."
 
An illustration of Bigelow module launching atop Atlas 5. Credit: ULA

Atlas comes off the pad riding two-and-a-half million pounds of thrust from the solids and its kerosene-fueled main engine. The rocket, which will return to dual-engine Centaurs for greater lifting power on low-Earth orbit ascents starting next year, will have an upper stage with two hydrogen-fed powerplants for 46,000 pounds of thrust.
That performance is needed to lift the so-called "B330" module to space for either a free-flying station or docking it to the International Space Station and increase the existing work and living area there.
"We are exploring options for the location of the initial B330 including discussions with NASA on the possibility of attaching it to the International Space Station," said Bigelow, the billionaire owner of the Budget Suites of America hotel chain.
 .
 "In that configuration, the B330 will enlarge the station's volume by 30 percent and function as a multipurpose testbed in support of NASA's exploration goals as well as provide significant commercial opportunities."
The provisional name of this module is XBASE or Expandable Bigelow Advanced Station Enhancement.
 
File photo of Atlas 5 rocket with five solids. Credit: ULA

But if the International Space Station idea doesn't pan out, Bigelow says "the B330 is essentially a standalone space station in and of itself."
Commercial uses could range from pharmaceutical research and manufacturing to tourism.
"My background is development, construction, general contracting and banking and everything to do with real estate. So I transfer a lot of the business case from that industry and, essentially, the foundation of our business case (for Bigelow Aerospace) is time sharing. Time sharing time and volume and branding — naming rights to all kinds of advertising," said Bigelow.
Expandable modules are large, roomy habitats that are lighter to launch and collapse down to fit within the nose cone volume of existing rockets, offering clear advantages over traditional solid-body compartments.
 
The interior of a B330 expandable space module. Credit: Bigelow Aerospace

The ULA launch deal comes just one day after Bigelow's experimental BEAM module — the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module — arrived at the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX cargo-delivery ship. BEAM will be attached to the station this weekend, then inflated in late May for a two-year test to record internal temperatures, reactions to debris impacts and the radiation levels in the module.
"We want to understand the structural integrity, the radiation performance of (the module) and the temperature controls in order to help inform our choices for deep space habitats," said Jason Crusan, director of NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems Division. "So we're going to do that over these two years."
With the internal volume about the size of a small bedroom, the BEAM module is not equipped with lights or any other crew amenities. The astronauts will keep the experiment compartment closed off and enter only a few times per year to retrieve stored data.
"This type of architecture has never been flown before," Bigelow said.
"We are in the early phase of a new kind of spacecraft that offers a lot of promise."
The B330 that Atlas will launch into low-Earth orbit in 2020 will have 330 cubic meters (12,000 cubic feet) of internal space, offering a 210 percent more habitable volume with an increase of only 33 percent in mass compared to the conventional U.S. Destiny laboratory module of the International Space Station.
Built at the Bigelow Aerospace factory in North Las Vegas, each B330 will support a crew of six, have four observation windows and a 20-year design life.
 
Illustration of B330 module with a Boeing Starliner crew capsule docked. Credit: Bigelow Aerospace

A free-flying Bigelow station could share room between companies and foreign nations wanting to exploit space.
"It's a combination of everything from what you could manufacture product-wise and bring down," Bigelow said.
"We would operate these on behalf of nations that have astronaut corps and others that aspire to have them. Right now, the frequency of the opportunity to fly is not often. Other than for the United States and Russia, it's about once every three years. Some countries, maybe never, or very, very seldom. So there is a substantial appetite out there we've discovered, and so we think that's a market," Bigelow said.
"It could change the image of a country overnight to have that kind of facility. Or it could induce (a company) to locate their plant in their country and offer them that kind of resource in orbit as a very unique laboratory."
A commercial mode of transportation for launching crews to the Bigelow facilities and returning them to Earth has stymied the billionaire's dreams. But with Boeing's Starliner and the SpaceX Dragon capsules both slated for human test-flights next year, Bigelow's wait may soon be over.
"The element of substantial cliental — us starting to collect deposits by virtue of reservations — has always been hostage to the availability of transportation. And we've had to throttle our own progress according to the ability of transportation to be there at a certain point in time," Bigelow said.
The Starliners will be delivered to space atop Atlas 5 rockets in the 422 configuration with two solids and twin-engine upper stages. SpaceX will use its standardized Falcon 9 rocket.
The DreamChaser mini spaceplanes and Blue Origin's orbital vehicle are future options as well, Bigelow said.
NASA is studying using expandable habitats for a crew's living area on far-flung missions into deep space, such as an asteroid or Mars. The BEAM module is a stepping stone to demonstrate the new technology in the actual space environment before moving to the larger designs of B330.
"It is the future," said Kirk Shireman, NASA's manager of the International Space Station program. "Humans will be using these kinds of modules as we move farther and farther off the planet and as we inhabit low-Earth orbit. So I think it really is the next logical step in humans getting off the planet."

[Salo]

http://www.geekwire.com/2016/united-launch-alliances-ceo-weighs-blue-origins-chances-in-multibillion-dollar-rocket-engine-race/

United Launch Alliance's CEO weighs Blue Origin's chances in multibillion-dollar rocket engine race
by Alan Boyle on April 15, 2016 at 12:59 pm
 
United Launch Alliance's president and CEO, Tory Bruno, talks with students during the 32nd Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo. (GeekWire photo by Alan Boyle)

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – United Launch Alliance's president and CEO, Tory Bruno, is facing a 2019 deadline from Congress to come up with a made-in-the-USA replacement for the Russian-built rocket engines currently used on ULA's workhorse Atlas 5 launch vehicle. But he doesn't sound worried. He's got a Plan A, and a Plan B.
"We're in that great position of having the two to choose from," Bruno told GeekWire this week here at the 32nd Space Symposium.
Plan A is a rocket engine that's being built by Blue Origin, the company founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos and headquartered in Kent, Wash. Nineteen months ago, Bezos and Bruno announced a deal to support the development of Blue Origin's BE-4 engine, fueled by liquid natural gas, for ULA's next-generation Vulcan semi-reusable rocket.
Bruno said Bezos is putting up the "lion's share" of the money for the effort, and in February, the U.S. Air Force provided an additional $46.6 million boost.
But then there's Plan B: Aerojet Rocketdyne – which is based in Sacramento, Calif., but has a facility in Redmond, Wash. – is getting $115 million from the Air Force to develop a kerosene-fueled engine called the AR-1 that could serve as an alternative for ULA's rockets.
United Launch Alliance, a Colorado-based joint venture involving the Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin, will soon have to pick which plan to go with. It's not a decision Bruno takes lightly.
"Billions are at stake," he said. "The nation's ability to maintain its edge in space for national security is at stake."

Both companies say they're the best match for ULA.

"All of us at Blue Origin find the fact that we are going to get to help with the national security missions incredibly motivating," Bezos said at the Space Symposium.
Eileen Drake, Aerojet's CEO and president, was similarly bullish: "In developing our AR-1 engine, we have specifically chosen a very proven propellant, a proven engine cycle and a proven design methodology to make sure that we minimize any risk to mission and to schedule."
By some measures, Blue Origin is taking the riskier approach: The 550,000-pound-thrust BE-4 would be the biggest methane-fueled rocket engine ever built.
"Jeff is the one that has to demonstrate that his technical risk is retired," Bruno said.
But Blue Origin got a head start on its project, because it had already been working on the BE-4 for its own future orbital rocket for three years when the ULA deal was struck. "We expect that if Jeff succeeds, he will be done first, because he started first," Bruno said. "He'll be delivering an engine to us, based on both of their respective schedules, about 16 months earlier."
That's assuming the BE-4 works. The turning point will come when Blue Origin operates the full-scale engine for an extended period of time in ground tests – a major milestone that's expected to take place by the end of the year.
If those tests are successful, ULA will assess the projected schedule for delivering engines, as well as their expected performance and cost, and "down-select" to either Plan A or Plan B for the Vulcan rocket, Bruno said.

That decision will mark a turning point for ULA as well as for Blue Origin and Aerojet. ULA is no longer the only game in town when it comes to putting U.S. national security payloads into orbit. Last year, Elon Musk's SpaceX launch venture was certified to fly such payloads as well. And this year, SpaceX and Orbital ATK received separate awards from the Air Force for rocket propulsion projects.
The competitive environment is forcing ULA into a "big transformation," Bruno said.
This week, he announced that up to 875 job positions, representing about 25 percent of ULA's current workforce, would be eliminated by the end of 2017 to make the company more competitive with SpaceX. A big part of the rationale is that ULA would be dropping its Delta line of launch vehicles and making the transition from Atlas to Vulcan.
One of the selling points for Aerojet has been that the kerosene-fueled AR-1 could serve as a direct replacement for the Russian-made RD-180 engine on the Atlas 5. But Bruno said that's not the case. For one thing, it'd take two 550,000-pound-thrust AR-1 engines to fill in for the 860,000-pound-thrust RD-180. "There really is no drop-in replacement," he said.
Bruno expects that the Atlas 5's customers will switch to the more powerful, less expensive Vulcan once it enters service. Those customers include national security agencies and commercial satellite ventures as well as Boeing, which plans to use the Atlas 5 to send its CST-100 Starliner space taxi to the International Space Station.

Although the rocket engine race is the biggest decision facing ULA in the months ahead, Bruno is also casting his eye to farther frontiers. For example, ULA and Bigelow Aerospace announced a partnership this week that could put Bigelow's B330 expandable space module into Earth orbit in 2020, potentially to serve as a commercial space lab.
ULA is also working on an upper-stage rocket propulsion system known as the , or ACES. The hydrogen-fueled system could make use of Aerojet's enhanced RL-10 rocket engine, Blue Origin's BE-3 engine, or XCOR Aerospace's 8H21 engine. It's designed to provide much more capability than ULA's current Centaur upper stage.
  Within a couple of decades, we see 1,000 men and women in space – because their jobs are in space.
Bruno noted that the Centaur was designed to operate in the seven to eight hours after launch. "ACES will not go for seven or eight hours," he said. "It will go for seven or eight days."
ACES could serve as an element for in-space transportation, opening the way for more people to live and work in space. "I think that we're just really on the very threshold of expanding the permanent human presence beyond our planet," Bruno said.
A ULA initiative known as #Cislunar1000 is aimed at laying out a long-term vision for taking advantage of resources such as near-Earth asteroids, lunar ice and space solar power. The objective? To build up a self-sustaining economic base in the region of space around Earth and the moon.
"It's very different from the exploration mission that we've done all this time, led by NASA," Bruno said. "That's great work, but now Lewis and Clark have come and gone, and it's time to come behind with the farms and the homesteads. Eventually, within a couple of decades, we see 1,000 men and women in space – because their jobs are in space."
Sounds like Elon Musk is no longer the only space executive talking about turning humanity into a multiplanetary species.

[Salo]

http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/show-daily/space-symposium/2016/04/14/hyten-defends-air-force-cost-estimate-end-reliance-russian-rocket-engine/83052630/

Hyten Defends Air Force Cost Estimate To End Reliance on Russian Rocket Engine

Lara Seligman, Defense News 7:53 p.m. EDT April 14, 2016


(Photo: National Space Symposium)

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – A day after the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee accused the US Air Force of misrepresenting the cost to end reliance on Russian rocket engines for military space launch, the chief of Air Force Space Command defended the service's position.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., cited a $3.5 billion discrepancy between two separate cost estimates Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James provided to Congress for transitioning off the Russian RD-180, which powers United Launch Alliance's Atlas V launch vehicle.
Replacing the Atlas V with a combination of ULA's Delta IV heavy launch system and SpaceX's newly-certified Falcon 9 could cost as much as $5 billion, James recently testified before the committee.
By contrast, James told the committee shortly before the hearing that splitting future launches between the two domestic vehicles would cost roughly $1.5 billion, McCain said in a Wednesday letter to the secretary.


DEFENSE NEWS
McCain Skeptical of US Air Force Space Launch Cost Estimate

But it is impossible to accurately predict the cost of launch vehicles by the end of the decade, the point at which McCain wants the Air Force to stop using the RD-180, Air Force Space Command chief Gen. John Hyten said Thursday during the Space Foundation's annual National Space Symposium.
The Delta IV is much more expensive than the Atlas V — on that point Congress and the Air Force generally agree. But exactly how much more the Delta IV will cost in 2020 is difficult to calculate, Hyten said. It all depends on what assumptions the Air Force makes about the state of the launch industry in the next decade.
"The reason I don't know how expensive that's going to be is because I cant tell you what the industry is going to be in 2020, I can't tell you what ULA's business case is going to be in 2020," Hyten said during a media briefing. "I can make certain assumptions that make the Delta IV very attractive, and I can make certain assumptions that make the Delta IV unbelievably expensive — it's all based on the assumptions that you make of what you think the world is going to be like in 2020."
The Air Force has consistently said the most cost-effective way to bridge the gap between now and 2019 when a domestic launch vehicle becomes available is to continue to use the RD-180, Hyten said.
"I don't like giving the Russians one dollar on anything, I just don't like that but we have to maintain assured access to space and we have to be very smart about how we use the taxpayers dollars," Hyten said.

[Salo]

ULA's Role in the Commercial Crew Program

[Salo]

http://tass.ru/kosmos/3247751

Профильный комитет Конгресса США одобрил закупку 18 двигателей РД-180
  28 апреля, 16:31 UTC+3
 
 "Гарантированный доступ в космическое пространство необходим для нашей национальной безопасности", - заявил конгрессмен Майк Коффман  
 
ВАШИНГТОН, 28 апреля. /Корр. ТАСС Антон Чудаков/. Комитет палаты представителей Конгресса США по делам вооруженных сил в ходе обсуждения оборонного бюджета на 2017 финансовый год одобрил в четверг утром приобретение 18 российских ракетных двигателей РД-180. Конгрессмены рассматривали проект бюджета с 10:00 (17:00 мск) среды.
После бурной дискуссии члены комитета проголосовали за соответствующую поправку, внесенную конгрессменом Майком Коффманом (республиканец, от штата Колорадо), несмотря на стремление разработать американскую альтернативу российским двигателям.
"Гарантированный доступ в космическое пространство необходим для нашей национальной безопасности, - отметил законодатель. - Я осведомлен о необходимости положить конец нашей зависимости от российских ракетных двигателей, но только не за счет гарантированного доступа в космос".
Его противник из штата Калифорния Дункан Хантер раскритиковал предложение однопартийца. "Вы в буквальном смысле вкладываете $540 млн в военную модернизацию России", - утверждал он.
Ранее заместитель министра обороны США по закупкам и технологиям Фрэнк Кендалл рассказал, что преждевременный отказ его страны от использования РД-180 обойдется Пентагону более чем в $1 млрд. При этом он предупредил, что собственный двигатель американские компании смогут создать не ранее 2021 года, то есть на два года позже, чем планировалось первоначально.
"Для того, чтобы отказаться от РД-180, нам нужно будет израсходовать из нашего бюджета более $1 млрд, и я думаю, что это не очень хороший вариант", - сказал Кендалл, пояснив, что каждый пуск ракеты Delta 4 вместо Atlas 5, оснащенной российскими двигателями, будет стоить его ведомству лишние $50 млн. В настоящее время Пентагон использует именно этот носитель для вывода на орбиту военных, в том числе разведывательных, спутников.
Кендалл также отметил, что в США новый двигатель будет создан в лучшем случае через пять лет. По оценкам минобороны страны, в этот период для обеспечения пусков ракет Atlas 5 по правительственным заказам ему понадобятся еще 18 российских РД-180 производства предприятия "Энергомаш" из подмосковных Химок.

 Разработка новых двигателей и нынешнее соглашение с Москвой

Новые ракетные двигатели разрабатывают сейчас сразу несколько американских компаний, в том числе консорциум United Launch Alliance (ULA), созданный корпорациями Boeing и Lockheed Martin. Именно он эксплуатирует ракеты Atlas 5 и более дорогую, а поэтому гораздо реже используемую Delta 4. Оба носителя могут применяться для выполнения пусков как по заказам Пентагона, так и в интересах частных телекоммуникационных компаний.
Соглашение между Москвой и Вашингтоном, которое предусматривало поставки в США 101 двигателя РД-180 и оценивалось примерно в $1 млрд, было заключено в 1997 году. Полтора года назад Конгресс из-за обострения отношений с Россией ввел запрет на их использование после 2019 года, но затем сам же отменил его, когда стало ясно, что свои двигатели в течение ближайших трех лет в США созданы не будут. Сразу после этого консорциум ULA заказал в России дополнительно еще 20 РД-180.

[Чебурашка]

Ключевое 

каждый пуск ракеты Delta 4 вместо Atlas 5, оснащенной российскими двигателями, будет стоить его ведомству лишние $50 млн.

[Apollo13]

А каждый Фалкон-9 на 50 млн меньше...  

[triage]

Salo пишет:
одобрил в четверг утром приобретение 18 российских ракетных двигателей РД-180...."Вы в буквальном смысле вкладываете $540 млн в военную модернизацию России", - утверждал он.

Один двигатель в этой партии стоит 30 млн$? Интересно, а есть цена на партию двигателей купленную до 2014 года?

[Дмитрий В.]

Apollo13 пишет:
А каждый Фалкон-9 на 50 млн меньше...  

Ф9 не в состоянии выводить все военные нагрузки - "кишка тонка". А Хэви еще не скоро станет доступным.