Boeing’s Phantom Express Vanishes into Thin Air
by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor
A couple of years ago, a friend made the surprising predication that DARPA’s Experimental Spaceplane Program (XSP) — a R&D effort designed to produce a rocket capable of being launched 10 times in 10 days — would never see any hardware built.
The reasoning went like this: the winning bidder, Boeing, really wasn’t interested in the technology. The company was actually interested in government funding and keeping other companies from developing the system.
The argument came from one of the losing bidders, so it was easy to take with a grain of salt. Still, it came as little surprise when DARPA announced today that Boeing was withdrawing from the program effectively immediately. Boeing’s winning entry, named the Phantom Express, had vanished into thin air.
Whether my friend was correct about Boeing’s lack of interest in the result is unclear. The decision came the week after a new CEO, Dave Calhoun, took over the reeling aerospace giant.
Boeing’s newest plane, 737 MAX, has been grounded for nearly 11 months after two fatal crashes caused by design problems. Return to flight has slipped to the middle of 2020. Some critics are calling for Boeing to abandon the jet all together. Plane orders slipped into negative numbers last year. And the company is reportedly seeking a $10 billion loan from banks to cover financial losses.
It wouldn’t be surprising if Calhoun was ordering programs cut so Boeing could focus its financial resources on more pressing priorities. XSP was structured as a public-private partnership that required Boeing to put up part of the funding.
In a statement, the company said the decision came after a detailed review.
“We will now redirect our investment from XSP to other Boeing programs that span the sea, air and space domains,” Boeing said. “We’re proud to have been part of a DARPA-led industry team that collaborated to advance launch-on-demand technology. We will make it a priority to harvest the significant learnings from this effort and apply them as Boeing continues to seek ways to provide future responsive, reusable access to space.”
XSP was intended to produce a suborbital rocket with an expendable second stage capable of being launched 10 times within 10 days. The technology would form the basis of a reusable orbital booster.
“The program sought to develop a launch system with aircraft-like operability, including flying on demand, the ability to rapidly and cost-effectively turn the system around between flights, a low ground infrastructure footprint, and low recurring costs,” DARPA said in its statement today.
The defense agency began the project, then known as XS-1, in 2013. The agency awarded phase 1 contracts to Boeing, Masten Space Systems and Northrop Grumman. In 2017, Boeing won the contract for the second and third phases that included $146 million in DARPA funding and an unspecified contribution by the company.
Boeing contracted with Aerojet Rocketydne to provide the company’s AR-22 engine to power the booster’s first stage. In 2018, engineers conducted ten static fires of the AR-22 in 10 days to demonstrate the engine was up to to the task.
Despite Boeing’s decision, DARPA tried to put a positive spin on the work that was accomplished during the program.
The detailed engineering activities conducted under the Experimental
Spaceplane Program affirmed that no technical showstoppers stand in the way of achieving DARPA’s objectives, and that a system such as XSP would bolster national security. Through XSP, DARPA identified evidence that present-day liquid rocket propulsion systems are capable of supporting XSP objectives, remain of interest, and may be explored in separate efforts.
The program yielded valuable data and accomplishments, including:
- A liquid rocket vehicle configuration with operability and maintainability similar to an airplane
- Detailed understanding of both civil and military mission
- architectures well-suited for a system such as XSP
- The environments and dynamics of deploying an upper stage carried in parallel with the booster
- Design and fabrication of linerless composite tanks for cryogenic propellants
- Successful completion of an AR-22 engine test program with a sequence of 10 discrete, long duration firings occurring within 10 days
- Highly coupled design constraints associated with each phase of flight
- A concept roadmap for different derived flight systems based on XSP technology.
This is the second DARPA-Boeing partnership to fail in recent years. The ALASA program sought to develop a small booster capable of launching a microsat into orbit from an unmodified F-15 fighter jet.
The program ended because the booster, powered by a mono-propellant, was prone to unplanned explosions.
69 responses to “Boeing’s Phantom Express Vanishes into Thin Air”
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“XSP was structured as a public-private partnership that required Boeing to put up part of the funding.”
I guess that means that DARPA can’t sign a contract with another company to take up work where Boeing left off? Would DARPA be able to make Boeing hand over the engines, cryogenic tanks, engineering drawings, etc? In other words, who’s the owner of the IP?
This is reminiscent of XCOR Aerospace – one day there and the next just gone.
I have a feeling that Boeing is entering the death spiral, especially given reports that the same problems with the B737 Max may exist with the B777X.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk…
Staff emails claim Boeing 777X ‘shares Max problem
by Alan Tovey, Industry Editor
18 January 2020 • 4:00pm
And let’s not forget the fines the FAA hit Boeing with for certifying over 300 B737 NG and B737 Max airliners as air worthy despite having parts that were “noncomforming” .
https://www.faa.gov/news/pr…
Press Release – FAA Proposes $5.4 Million Civil Penalty Against The Boeing Co.
January 10, 2020
Contact: Lynn Lunsford
Of course the government needs Boeing so they will get bailed out, but it’s sad to watch a gaint like this go down. But it is what happens when you put finance before good engineering.
Well, when the ship starts taking on water faster than the pumps can handle, the first thing that goes overboard is the deck cargo.
The world’s airlines need Boeing as a counterweight against Airbus. So Boeing will persist. Yet again a private enterprise that thinks of itself as a business first and engineering firm second loses ground to a immortal government based enterprise that can put engineering first, and does. I know you think I’m not a fan of private enterprise because I keep harping on how it loses against state sponsored enterprise, but your only solution to free enterprise’s inability to win against state sponsored enterprise is a moral one where management puts finance above engineering. That’s business, that’s what you do when your only goal in business is to maximize return to investors. That’s too myopic a viewpoint when it comes to designing, manufacturing, and supporting airliners. Boeing will reform, but it will likely never have the market share it currently has again. Any clawback will be long and difficult. Likely, investors will have little patience for the process.
The problem was the government allowing Boeing to get so large based on the argument it needed to be to counter Airbus. It should have never been allowed to merge with McDonnell Douglas. The government dropped the ball on allowing the merger to happen. By allowing the merger all the government did was created an American version of Airbus. And just as the EU favors Airbus the U.S. government favors Boeing (KC-46), again taking it away from being driven by competition.
BTW you do know that Airbus is owned by EADS, a privately traded corporation like Boeing. It was privatized decades ago. You are free to buy stock in it, just as with Boeing. And just like Boeing it worries more about its stock price than its products. So it isn’t a good example for your argument of the superiority of a state run enterprise.
The core issue is that when firms are so large they become a monopoly, or duopoly, they change in orientation from being market driven to finance driven. This is the current state of the airline market. The firms know the markets have to buy from them because there is no alternative due to the high barrier to entry. This causes product quality to slip as it has with Boeing. If Boeing is bailed out it would ideally be broken up to create additional competition in the airliner market.
there would be no McDee without the merger. their commercial products were horrible
That’s a real nice fantasy you have there. We have one example of a startup going up against state sponsored enterprise and winning. And it very quickly became a enterprise so dependent on states as customers that a lot of people would call it state sponsored. Countering the likes of Airbus who can give airliners away as a means of capturing market share requires coordination from a nations industrial base and the government of that nation.
As I noted EADS is privately owned and just as the EU steers contracts towards it the USA steers contracts towards Boeing, with the results you see. In short the USA government has done just as you advocate it should in the case of Boeing. And you see the results.
And just as Boeing has software issues with the B737 Max, Airbus has software issues with the A350. There have also been a number of cases where their A220’s needed to make emergency landings due to engine failures from a software issue. The EU regulators are after them as well to fix the issues. But you have to follow European business news to hear about it. The only difference is that the software issues Airbus has haven’t killed anyone so far.
Well, not unambiguously anyway. Air France flight 296 crashed in June 1988 with three fatalities and the pilots claimed the A320 plane – the first fly-by-wire airliner in commercial service – failed to respond to control inputs because of software overrides triggered by its low altitude at the time. The official investigation report said otherwise and, like Oler in the case of 737 MAX, blamed the pilots. But the investigation was by the French government and, with billions in future sales of the A320 at risk, the possibility of a coverup can hardly be dismissed.
Yes, not “officially”
Actually it’s not the only one. There have been other Airbus accidents with pilot error listed as the cause because experienced pilots seemed to be using the wrong settings on the controls while returning to an airport or in a landing pattern. In another case a thrust reverser failed killing everyone aboard the aircraft.
There are quite a number of historical examples of a state sponsored enterprise getting beaten. by a start up. I just don’t feel like spending a lot of time arguing the point today.
We can go back and forth all we want. But that won’t change the fact that American manufacturing has been hollowed out by pressure from state sponsored industrial policy overseas.
If you will check a few numbers, you will find that manufacturing in this country was on a steady rise until about a year ago when tariffs caused it to start falling. Increased material costs via tariff helped a couple of industries at the cost of damaging many other industries and the consumers. Mismanagement has been far more damaging than competition.
babble by someone who does not have a clue about airplanes and believes in Musk fairy dust
And that is your problem, believing it’s about airplanes. It’s not. It’s about economics, manufacturing and building trust with the customers you serve.
90 percent of the people have no idea what kind of plane they are on. the only reason the trust has been lost has been Boeing being slow to 1) put the blame on the pilots and 2) deal with social media and 3) this lousy administration
Not even Boeing is pushing the story of pilot error anymore.
And Boeing stock price has nearly tripled under the Trump Administration, going from $148/share on Election Day to a high of $424/share. Even now with all its troubles it’s trading at $308/share, over twice what it was under President Obama.
You may not like President Trump, but his administration has been very good to your pocket book if you own Boeing stock.
yeah that is a mistake. it clearly was pilot error
. I have made a lot of money in the stock market since I was 16. Trump did nothing but spend a lot of money that we the nation had to borrow. and my kids will have to pay back. Fortunately well they are all well off.
the vast majority of the pilot industry believes this.
you realize of course that both airplanes “left parts” on the ground as pieces of the airplane (the angle of attack vanes) that had been worked on “fell” off as the plane was 1) t the gate or 2) on the runway
the pilots then had what is called an immediate action item to do “stab trim switchesoff” to correct the problem caused by parts falling off the plane
neither of them did it…the Ethiopian crew finally did it …but in the process left the throttle at nearly full thrust, level the airplane accelerate to Mach .96 and did a mach stall
you clearly have no clue what you are talking about
going through life fat dumb and stupid is no way to advance (I dont know about the fat but the latter two are clear)
Your kids and mine will have to plow through the vastly greater debt Obama racked up before they get a go at the Trump contribution.
nope trump is outdoing Obamas debt on a yearly bsis…dont be dumb
You’re incorrect. You need to do more research before you speak.
Nobody but you is buying that “blame the pilots” dredge. When you build an aircraft that actively attempts to fly itself into the ground and don’t tell anybody about the system that does so, selling that hilarious BS becomes quite difficult.
see my reply to you
here is an example
you walk out to your car. the left tire is low, you go anyway…and it blows…you cannot control the car. whose fault is it
You’re driving your car. A system you had no idea even existed starts to pull the car right into the guardrail while you are on the highway. Eventually the system is too strong and you plow into the embankment. Then Ford says it’s your fault because you did not disable the system you didn’t know about that was actively attempting to crash your car. Except you can’t defend yourself because you are dead.
Boeing has a long, storied history of blaming dead pilots when their product FUBARs.
not even close. if they did not know about it that is their own damn fault. it was in the update manual, the Boeing IPAD demonstration and in any event didnt matter…it required the same action for speed trim and mach trim and normal trim failure
As my first instructor, my Grandmother use to say “Robert there are some mistakes in the airplane which will kill you ….DEAD”
you are out of your league here. you have no clue what you are talking about…38000 hours in the planes says I do bite me
tomdg65 and I don’t need to bite you. Reality is going to bite you a lot harder than we could. With much bigger teeth.
not in this lifetime
I’ll accept your name calling and trying to throw your 38000 hours around like it means something as your utter capitulation on the issue. So says my 25 years in the industry.
lol thanks for the humor this afternoon
Reading item 3) I’m getting a Forrest Gump flashback to that scene where radical left-wing cretin Wesley is blaming Nixon for his beating up Jenny.
ok but I never watched the movie so…and I dont see 3 🙂
Wow.
You actually went there.
of course they had no idea what they were doing. complete idiots lost
So should all of these 737 MAX planes sitting on Boeing’s tarmac be flying right now? Were national aviation authorites around the world wrong to have grounded it?
well they have gone a bit further to idiot proofing it…and my belief is that with the amended ground school and sim instruction that is going to be done…then yes, in my view its fit to fly. if they were flying to day with one of our Captains flying the plane I would put my family on it
“have grounded it”. Boeing did a sloppy job of dealing with the idiots on social media…and allowed the Ethiopian civil aviation authority (a complete joke) to set the tone when they declared “their pilots and maintenance did nothing wrong”
thats just wrong. the angle of attack indicator fell off of the plane at the gate, the FO missed it on his walk around and well the handling of the non normal was subpar by any standards
there was no admininstrator of the FAA at the time…and Trump is the one who did the grounding. Boeing should have done a better job of defending the plane and itself…but thats all water under the bridge
the pilots of both crews made substantial errors as did their maintenance. that is not deniable
Oddly enough we got some triple 7’s from Malaysia airline…and I was coming back from a LIFUS checkride when the triple seven equivelent of trim runaway happened. the FO caught it in about 15 seconds. me? in about 5. but we train our people very very well. and of course I am a senior test pilot
One of Boeing’s problems here was that a US pilot with several thousand hours in a variety of airframes wouldn’t have an issue with the airplane. A non-US pilot with very low time or little variety of experience has trouble determining what to do in the event of a malfunction.
Of course it doesn’t help that Boeing’s beancounters decided to make an AoA indicator malfunction light part of an expensive upgrade, not part of the basic package that most airlines buy.
All of this is an immeasurable loss to Americans in general. Boeing drives such a large portion of the US economy that it is truly too big to be managed by non-engineers.
Boeing’s cancellation of the Phantom Express also hurts Aerojet Rocketdyne’s efforts to develop a reusable RS-25 (AR-22) engine for the space plane.
To think that thing was going to be in any low cost rapidly reusable spacecraft was laughable.
That BBQ smell you sense wafting past your nostrils is pork. Fried granny smith apples goes well with it.
I guess Dave Masten will be quite upset about this news.
Sucks for the losing bidders, definitely.
Also sucks for the US taxpayer
I’m not sure how much taxpayer money was lost but Boeing burned at least $146 M in goodwill and I hope DARPA will remember the next few times Boeing wants a piece of the action.
It’s not just money that the taxpayer lost, it’s the stillborn capability, a capability that is considered important to national defense. And the time spent and that will be needed to reconstitute similar progress towards that kind of capability under a different contract – if we even get around to it among the many other competing national security needs.
Disappointing to say the least
All true. Legally, Boeing will be entitled to payment for whatever real work they put in on the project. Depending on how the contract was written, ownership of the work product may vest in the U.S. Government since the government was the named beneficiary so something useful may end up in DARPA’s hands that can be passed along to whomever picks up the pieces and goes from there. The problem with public-private partnerships in a case like this is determining how much work product belongs to DARPA and how much belongs to Boeing.
A negative result isn’t always a bad thing. If the preliminary work was showing a very promising outcome, Boeing would stay in it. If it looked like a blind alley, the best thing to do is cut losses and cancel any more work. I will say that a final report should be done and filed since the same sort of thing is going to come around again.
From DARPA’s report:
“The detailed engineering activities conducted under the Experimental
Spaceplane Program affirmed that no technical showstoppers stand in the way of achieving DARPA’s objectives, and that a system such as XSP would bolster national security. Through XSP, DARPA identified evidence that present-day liquid rocket propulsion systems are capable of supporting XSP objectives…”
It wasn’t a blind alley, it was a program that Boeing had to contribute funding to. Currently financially reeling and searching to put together $10,000,000,000 in loans to tide them over, it’s a financial decision on Boeing’s part that their money could be better deployed elsewhere. And, from Boeing’s perspective, it surely could, no doubt. From the US and the free world’s perspective, we bet on the wrong horse
The funding for XS-1 is not even a smidgeon of a drop in an airliner budget. This decision has nothing to do with MAX. See my above comment.
I really wanted to see it fly.
The people they were partnering with X-Core is out of business. The other bidder N-G and Virgin Galactic. Looks like they could ask Boeing to return the funds and give that to them. Or just hire someone to finish the Boeing job.
I doubt Dave will be crushed. This is the nature of aerospace. Projects come and go all of the time and MSS may have advanced their capabilities by participating in the program. Just bringing in enough work to keep the doors open is a milestone for a small space outfit. It means the company is around when very good contracts come around.
I too think that Dave won’t be “crushed”, but I’m sure the news will have reminded him of what his team could have accomplished under that contract. (And who knows, XCOR might still be around today if they had won the contract together with MSS?)
I’m sure MSS has learned a lot under Phase 1 of XS-1 and with every tiny news bit coming out about their projects and contracts (sadly they don’t publish a lot these days..) I’m again and again amazed that they manage to keep the doors open with all kind of (amazing) R&D contracts.
I just wonder if they’ll ever be able to transition to a “real” manufacturer and/or operator of spacecraft/launchers or if they’ll forever stay an R&D shop?
Has anybody heard anything about the progress of their XL-1(T) vehicles lately? Or any other CLPS related progress other than that tiny tweet about some cryogenic pump development?
the problem is that the notion had little or no chance of working. space advocates live in an increasingly fiction like world where “reusability” is just around the corner and soon every space vehicle will be a 777 …and the environments are just completely different particularly the thermal one…and really comparisons are simply well fairy dust
it took the jet engine tomake aviation what it is today and it is unlikely that space will change much for humans until some new form of propulsion comes along …as well as some thermal magic… its just that simple
For a reusable first stage with expendable second, it’s just a matter of a few years. The new propulsion and thermal magic comes under the heading of good engineering. Second stage reusability might be what you have in mind for difficulty, and I would put gas-n-go second stages a decade or more out as well.
There are three companies reusing first stages already, albeit at much lower launch cadence than gas-n-go. Experience informed new generations of first stages can get to that point relatively quickly, if there is a market for those services. I believe there is and you don’t, and we will know that shortly as well.
Refurbishable second stages are where I see a few bumps in the road to fast reuse. I don’t see routine multiple flights per day in this decade.
Airliner type reusability seems a distraction to me. Good quality engineering coupled with good quality management in one decently financed organization is a better hope.
a few pointsd
“
“For a reusable first stage with expendable second, it’s just a matter of a few years.
I hope that you are correct…but I dont think you are. I think we are easily a decade away and probably some configuration tinkering (ie working on different configurations for first stages that allow recovery, reasonable payload, and economic reuse) from something that works. the higher and faster one goes even Musk “recovery” rate dramatically lowers…
and I think that the difficulty gets higher if you are carrying a crew because so much of the mass is taken up by keeping the crew alive.
second I dont think we are anywhere near second stage reuse…there is a mix of part reusability/refurbishment and expendability that might get us to “system” price that is dramatically lower but again I think that is a decade or so away and second stage reuse probably not even then
third
“if there is a market for those services. I believe there is and you don’t, and we will know that shortly as well.”
I’ve never said that. I think that if prices came down to say three times what it cost to drive the Boeing across the ocean…there is a market for that
as you go higher in cost then the Boeing at some point there is a break point where development cost for the vehicle never quite match up to lowered cost/profit…
where I am quite sure we disagree 🙂 is that I dont think Musk is anywhere close to that break point…ie for all the money he has thrown into Falcon first stage recovery, fairing recovery etc…I doubt he has made his money back particularly as he loses a lot of performance on the return. Now some of those improvements he would have done anyway ie to up the performance of the rocket…but I bet you he has not made even half of the cost to recover the vehicle back
I will be curious to see Rocketlabs efforts and how they pay off (or dont)
if cost come significantly down there clearly is a market that would develop in long term lift to space. if satellite (low orbit) constellations work lower cost would clearly spur that.
would it change the human equation? probably but there I am less sure
I took it from many of your previous comments that you felt there was no market for humans in space and far less for everything else than some assumed. Three times Boeing transoceanic to break point sounds like close enough to agreement. Getting there time frame we wonder about.
I dont think that there is a purpose for humans in orbit that pays their cost or that makes a profit on them there. machines are another matter
Current prices create that situation. IF prices hit $100K per seat and some orbital destination time, there will be massive changes. People will find reasons to go including tourism.
It’s hard to evaluate the business case for tourism so far.
But ZBLAN manufacturing in zero-g might have some possibilities here that some companies are looking at; for the time being, that would require at least a man-tended orbital facility.
yeah thats the new fiber like cable right? I read a presentation on that a few weeks ago…where from? Made IN space maybe?
It takes a considerable amount of capability to return a first stage and land it again to be reused. The issue hasn’t been one of technology but economics and risk. If you build a rocket to be reused several times, you have to put more margin in the parts which means more mass which lowers efficiency, etc. Since SpaceX is the only one doing it and are a private company, there is no way to see if there is any ROI aside from PR. I’d be curious to see some numbers and find out if it would cover a small percentage of failures from not catching failed parts before reuse.
To date, launch companies match the performance of their rockets to the payload/mission. I haven’t seen any analysis that shows what’s changed in rocket engineering that makes reuse now more viable. I’m open to changing my mind, I’ve seen lots of devices that had to wait until some component or material was developed before it would work or be cost effective. You can’t railroad until it’s time to railroad.
Too bad. Not much different from what F-9 is doing. Just land on wheels on a runway,gliding back. I guess they could restart the engine if they needed to. It was not going into Space. The name meant the 2nd stage was going into Space.
The prediction by your friend was not that surprising. These DARPA space programs over the years have not been that productive. So it was about as simple as predicting the summer weather in Mojave will be hot.
It will be interesting to see what the DARA launch challenge ($10 million prize) produces now that it’s down to a single team.
“a friend made the surprising predication that DARPA’s Experimental Spaceplane Program (XSP) — a R&D effort designed to produce a rocket capable of being launched 10 times in 10 days — would never see any hardware built.”
Was it surprising because it differed so much from the friend’s other views? This outcome seems not at all surprising to me.
This looks like fraud to me. Bid low. Win contract. Spend a lot of Taxpayer money. Quit. Keep money. DARPA ought to sue them.
After the tier one analysis, it was likely shown that the project wasn’t tenable given the constraints. The wisest course of action was to walk away and not spend anymore money on the project. I’m sure Boeing could have milked a contract and brought in a bunch of revenue which they can use right now, but it would be a lot of egg on their face if it emerged that they had no faith in coming up with something that worked.
Looks like more bad news for Boeing. One of their comsats may be getting ready to trash the GEO orbit. Hopefully the FCC will give them permission to move it out of orbit before it goes boom.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/0…
Boeing-built DirecTV satellite may explode in orbit after suffering unexpected malfunction
Published Thu, Jan 23 20206:01 PM EST
Michael Sheetz
Must be that safety culture. It’s like a hole in the dike that keeps eroding. And not helped at all by the constant blaming of others. Pilot error
This is not related to 737 MAX. This is just what’s considered best practice.
The nature of advanced project research is that it’s more risky and not very profitable to complete the project. If you complete the project, the need is met. If you don’t, the need continues to exist.
There’s no real penalty for failing to complete the project, so you run it for a few years, fold it up, and then compete for the next contract. Please see Dyna-Soar et al.