Orbital Wants to Use Old Missiles to Launch Commercial Satellites
A Minotaur V rocket carrying NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) lifts off from at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Friday, Sept. 6, 2013. (Credit: NASA/Chris Perry)
Orbital ATK would like to expand its use of old ballistic missile engines for commercial launches.
Orbital Vice President Barron Beneski said in an interview on Friday that the company was pushing Washington to get the ban lifted as part of the National Defense Authorization Act that sets defense policy for fiscal 2017, which begins Oct. 1.
The missiles were idled by nuclear disarmament treaties between the United States and Russia in the 1990s….
Orbital said it wants the missiles to build a Minotaur 4 launch vehicle capable of lifting about four times the weight of small rockets like LauncherOne, which is being developed by Richard Branson’s California-based Virgin Galactic.
“It’s not a matter of us taking business away from them. It’s a matter of us filling a void in the Minotaur 4 market and competing it internationally,” Orbital’s vice president of business development Mark Pieczynski said.
Orbital ATK incorporates leftover Minuteman and Peacekeeper motors in its Minotaur line of launch vehicles, which are used primarily for government payloads. However, their use for commercial launches has been banned for the past 20 years.
Companies that are developing small satellite launch vehicles say lifting the ban would hurt them. Writing in SpaceNews Magazine last month, Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides wrote:
Thousands of jobs depend on maintaining a sensible policy that encourages private investment and discourages government competition. Congress has also been mindful of the potential negative impact that the conversion and use of excess ballistic missiles would have on the growth of the U.S. commercial space industry. The House Science Committee, addressing this issue contemporaneously with the original White House policy, noted that the “Wholesale conversions of ICBMs into space transportation vehicles risks placing the government in the position of competing with the private sector and could have long-term consequences.” What was true then is even more true now.
Read Whiteside’s full op-ed piece.
13 responses to “Orbital Wants to Use Old Missiles to Launch Commercial Satellites”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Let the junk yard dogs use those old assets, better than letting them rust.
After WWI, the US government sold large numbers of surplus airplanes and engines for a very low price. This really hurt the companies building new planes. There was no way they could compete against a Jenny costing a few hundred dollars. It wasn’t until the supply of surplus Jennies and Liberty engines started drying up that companies were able to profitably build more modern equipment. The US government paid for those rocket engines. How much would it charge Orbital to use them to compete against other launcher companies?
When I was a kid I always wanted to buy a surplus Jeep for a hundred buck from the ads in the back of I believe it was popular mechanics. I was told the jeeps were in crates and all you needed to do is buy new tires.
Every year, from age 5 until…, I would go to the local army navy store to try to convince them to let me take a scuba diving course. I was born in 1955, used war resources were still a part of life in the in the 50s and 60s. I like the idea of using used swords 2 improve the future. SpaceX and Blue Origin are the future for exploration in outer space anyway. If another company want to try to bring down the cost of space flight for a while be using rusting rockets, I say let them.
No clue how much, maybe price is the important issue. Doesn’t Orbital buy junk rocket engines from Russia but not the United states?? Buy our junk not their junk!???
Some of the Russians have caught on to the idea of capitalism quite well. I seriously doubt they sold those old engines for junk prices. The problem with solid rocket engines is that they’re pretty complete. Normally, they can cost millions of dollars. I read recently that each of the strap on rocket motors they use on the Atlas V costs about $10 million (government “discount”, I’m sure). The Air Force paid for those rocket engines and likely paid dearly. How much should they charge to sell them to Orbital? If it was a substantially below market price, would that count as a type of sweetheart deal or subsidy? It could easily be seen as the government undermining other rocket providers. It’s one thing if they’re getting a reduced price to launch government payloads since the military paid for those engines. It’s a different thing to use surplus engines to undermine competition.
The Atlas V uses new solid motors for strap-on engines, those are not re-purposed ICBMs. I’m sure what Orbital is lobbying for is to be able to use the stockpile of solid rocket stages that used to be “Peace Keeper” ICBMs. They could have the ATK part of the company build new motors, but the air force is currently paying to keep these in storage. It’s a win for Orbital and for the Air Force. Not so much for companies like Virgin that are trying to get into the small launcher business, especially since the size of that market is so small. Remember that SpaceX already gave up on this market by retiring the F1 because the volume and profits were so small.
I wonder what the fair market price for a surplus Peace Keeper first stage is and who decides. According to online sources, the missiles cost $70 million each. That includes all stages and the guidance system but probably not the warheads. Orbital charges $50 million for one of their Minotaur IV boosters that are made from surplus Peace Keeper motors but that’s probably the “government discount” rate.
You probably need to look closer at the differences between the ICBM and the Minotaur. For instance, I assume they replace the original guidance controls with Orbital’s control system. And there is a new upper stage engine, still solid, from ATK that needs to be integrated besides the payload integration and launch processing. It’s 50 million total launch cost, and I haven’t see a breakdown on how much is allocated to each component, but that is a significant percentage of the used F9 price. Virgin can’t compete with a 50 million price tag for these small payloads, then they need to re-think their business model, because SpaceX will put them out of business as well.
60 million f9, 90 million FH,
Means only cost spacex 15 million to build a first stage, with reuse even less, SpaceX already has any of this beat.
Duheagle is obviously correct about how cheap SpaceX can build a falcon
Virgin is talking of about $10 million for a 225 kilogram payload to LEO (~200 kg to sun-synchronous orbit). That’s $44,444 per kilogram to LEO. A Minotaur IV can put 1730 kilograms into LEO for $50 million, or $28,900 per kilogram. Already, the Minotaur IV is much less expensive and much more capable than the LauncherOne. However, the Minotaur IV is limited to government launches because it uses surplus missile engines. It sounds like Orbital is wanting that restriction lifted. Lower cost per launch rockets like LauncherOne might find a market for dedicated delivery of small satellites to specific orbits but they’d have a hard time competing against Orbital using surplus motors.
SpaceX offers a much lower price per kilogram that what Orbital is offering but small satellite owners are limited to being secondary payloads in most cases. That restricts their launch opportunities and they’re out of luck if they need a specific orbit that’s incompatible with the primary payload. Sun-synchronous and polar orbits are highly desired for many small satellites. SpaceX may have the opportunity to launch a lot of secondary payloads when they begin Iridium launches in a couple months, depending on surplus lift capacity and primary customer agreement.
One would think that the “ATK” part of Orbital ATK would prefer to produce new solid stages rather than purchase “new old stock” from the US Government. I would have liked to have been a “fly on the wall” at the internal meeting(s) where the decision was made to start lobbying the US Government on this issue.
Seems desperate to me.
pretty smart on OATK’s part.
Basically, a number of small companies are coming that will destroy OATK. BUT, if they use old equipment that is already developed and paid for, they can launch at a fraction of the price.
Smart. Very smart.