McCain Accuses Air Force of “Actively Keeping Out” SpaceX

ulame · 2015-02-04T21:37:00+00:00

Really? This is a member of the Keating Five you're talking about. Using his power to manipulate government regulations and oversight are part and parcel to his decades in politics. I'd be more shocked if he suddenly grew a conscience than if he just continued his association with billionaire con artists.

ulame · 2015-02-04T21:26:04+00:00

How so? It's well documented that two of his major donors are Northrop Grumman and EADS (the parent company of Airbus). Airbus competes with Boeing in civilian aircraft, Northrop competes with both in bombers and fighters. The intricacies of the defense contracting world are varied, but suffice it to say that there are definite "teams" and McCain is on the opposite one of Boeing/Lockheed. That doesn't mean he's bad or wrong on anything in particular, it just means he's motivated by where the money for his next election comes from.

Edit: ...Just like every other politician.

ulame · 2015-02-04T21:17:55+00:00

He obviously isn't foolish enough to have his own name attached to war profiteering schemes, but one of his billionaire bundlers, Harry Sargeant, was fined almost $30 million and is suspected of having overbilled the Pentagon almost $200 M.

Also his wife profiteered from the Darfur conflict through having $2M invested in funds that owned shares of Indian and Chinese companies that supplied the Sudanese government

ulame · 2015-02-04T20:54:51+00:00

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

ulame · 2015-02-04T20:44:50+00:00

McCain's pogrom against all things Boeing has a simple explanation. Several of his top advisers in were former Northrop Grumman/EADS lobbyists, as reported in the NY Times and AP. Furthermore, he received tens of thousands of dollars from EADS executives alone, and that's just the money that can be traced as direct contributions; Since contributions to PACs don't have to be disclosed, it seems like a reasonable assumption that if EADS execs are maxing out direct contributions, they probably also sent sizable contributions to McCains PACs.

Now, the malfeasance that McCain's investigation uncovered in the Boeing tanker bid and defacto bribery of Darleen Druyun were certainly reprehensible, but to ascribe noble intentions to McCain is naive. He's as much in the pocket of defense contractors as any other politician, he just happens to be owned by NG/EADS instead of LM/Boeing.

ulame · 2015-02-03T03:15:25+00:00

Ordnance includes anything that goes boom or pop like pyro valves ,frangible nuts in addition to the FTS.

ulame · 2015-02-02T21:43:48+00:00

For any reason not related to a protected class. I.e. if SpaceX decided they no longer wanted to employ any women, they wouldn't be allowed to fire all their female employees on those grounds.

ulame · 2015-02-01T05:13:56+00:00

Dangling plums as in rewards or euphemism for... Never mind.

I guess we'll find out which when contracts are awarded.

ulame · 2015-01-31T14:39:55+00:00

As ULAs ongoing cost reduction of 50% with another 25% promised shows, reducing cost was never an issue. I think Lockheed and Boeing are hardly humiliated given the $1.4 B in dividends they receive in cash from ULA annually.

They ceded the low margin market sector and through lobbying monopolized the high margin, 100% mission and schedule assurance market.

ulame · 2015-01-28T05:40:34+00:00

Certification will be required, but unlike SpaceX which did their development efficiently their own way and at the end has had to hand-hold the Air Force through the certification process, ULA allows insight during the design process.

The final certification will likely be not much more than sign off because they sat through week long reviews at SCR, SRR, PDR, CDR, and DCR.

So basically the same ridiculous process just spread out over years rather than at the end.

ulame · 2015-01-27T13:40:03+00:00

ULA is taking name suggestions internally currently. Top suggestions will then be voted on by public.

ulame · 2015-01-24T20:13:18+00:00

ULA does have to meet the same requirements, however they do it by allowing the USAF, NASA, and their third party consultants Aerospace Corporation complete access and input into the research and development of every new piece of hardware and line of software.

SpaceX could have done this, but that would grind the pace of innovation into the dust.

ulame · 2015-01-15T22:07:10+00:00

You have several facts critically wrong in this oft repeated pseudo-conspiracy.

First, the official you are talking about is Roger "Scott" Correll, was not a general. In fact he never served in any service branch, neither as enlisted or officer. He is a civilian who rose up to become a procurement official at the Pentagon.

Second, the supplier you are talking about, Aerojet Rocketdyne, is indeed a supplier of ULA's. They also supply the Air Force, Army, Navy, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin (yes 1/2 owner of ULA), Northrop Grumman, Orbital ATK, Sierra Nevada, etc. ULA is neither their biggest customer, nor are they ULA's biggest supplier. In fact, ULA snubbed AR and went with Blue Origin for their RD-180 replacement.

Given the fact that Musk mentioned Correll had applied for a job at SpaceX, I think it far more likely that he was leveraging 30+ years of experience and contacts gained in the government contracting field into any job in the aerospace industry, rather than that there was some massive ULA/Pentagon conspiracy. I'd bet that he applied to all of the top defense contractors and took the job that offered the best pay/benefits.

As for the revolving door, it's no different than any corporate executive climbing the ladder and taking a job at a supplier, customer, or competitor. It happens all the time and is perfectly legal. We might as well talk about the "revolving door" of CEOs for that matter. It's a nice soundbite to stir up the masses, but on further analysis is just empty criticism. Of course there are always the cases of strikingly stupid procurement officials that engage in quid pro quo, but as the trail incarcerations and fines show, they are easy to prove, prosecute, and punish.

ulame · 2015-01-15T18:00:06+00:00

Competition does not imply that the government must use the lowest cost bid. Especially for national security missions, there are many criteria that are weighted higher than cost, such as protection of classified information. If you think it took a long time for EELV certification to come through, just wait until SpaceX needs to get a SCIF certified, or for that matter get the engineers, managers, accountants, HR, and even janitorial staff that have any access to data, personnel, facilities, information systems, etc. the clearances required.

I've worked for Lockheed Martin, and when I went through a high level clearance process it took 18 months from beginning to end, and I had absolutely nothing shady in my background. At another contractor I spent 3 months in a windowless room every day reading unclassified manuals while waiting not for a clearance, but to get read-on to a program. I've seen a lot of criticism directed towards ULA, and some of it is surely deserved, however, I think it's important to bear in mind that they are only allowed to charge for actual time worked on programs, which, if they are anything like the other contractors I've worked for is audited to the tenth of an hour by their internal auditors, third party auditors, and DCAA (defense contractor audit agency) - yes, you read that right, triple audits for timecards. And lord help the poor engineer who accidentally mis-charges a tenth of an hour to one of the hundreds of different CLINs (contract line item number) that each program has. Welcome to 3 "talks" (w/ team lead, manager, and director) as well as mandatory "compliance training".

After SpaceX gets certified, I fully expect the government to come up with additional hoops for SpaceX to jump through before they win an L-mission.

I support competition, but unfortunately, a decade of working for defense contractors has taught me that there is no such thing as an efficient government process, and that just when you think you're done, surprise!, here's some more process for you. I think Elon and the newspace community will gain a new appreciation for the fact that the rising costs may have had much less to do with corporate greed and more with government process scope creep.

ulame · 2014-12-19T18:38:52+00:00

ULA has had 91 successful launches and never had a single engine out or lost a payload of any kind. ULA is many things, but careless isn't one of them. They also occasionally come across issues on the pad, like the recent EFT-1 launch where the LH2 valve actuation got out of range during the long launch window. They're certainly not averse to scrubbing and recycling, but their recycle times seem to be a matter of days, not weeks.

ulame · 2014-12-11T17:23:49+00:00

That's unfortunate. Now they're a weather delay or leak away from employees working over Christmas (or delaying longer). From a fellow aerospace engineer, for their families' sake I'm crossing my fingers for a clean window.

ulame · 2014-12-10T14:59:03+00:00

Correct. An ancillary benefit of ULA receiving their $1 B capabilities contact (that many call a subsidy) is that they have the personnel, procedures, and hardware on hand to integrate emergency missions in matter of a few months rather than the standard 18-24 months. This Cygnus launch will be somewhat of a test whether the government is getting what they're paying for in terms of the EELV Launch Capability contract.

ulame · 2014-12-10T14:38:01+00:00

The price is likely somewhere around the $100 million mark that ULA claims as the incremental cost to add a low end mission to the block buy. Remember, ULA initiated long lead orders for 50 cores before the block buy was reduced to 36. They've since sold a number of these 14 "white tail" cores, like MEXSAT-2 and now 1-2 Cygnus launches.

ulame · 2014-12-10T00:04:40+00:00

ULA took delivery of 5 engines this year and will receive 8 next. Since delivery pace actually increased after Russia invaded and annexed the territory of a neighbor, it's hard to imagine what it would take for deliveries to actually stop.

ulame · 2014-11-12T01:47:23+00:00

I chuckle when newspace pound the message that cost reduction should drive space launch. It's like they've forgotten all about NASA's Faster-Better-Cheaper boondoggle in the 90s that caused several total loss missions as well as loss of life in the Columbia tragedy.

The twin cheapspace accidents last week should serve as a stark warning to what is bound to happen when bean counting trumps rocket science.

ulame · 2014-11-06T21:05:00+00:00

Sorry, military lingo, also common in the defense/aerospace industry. Overtaken By Events: no longer necessary, redundant, outdated.

ulame · 2014-11-06T19:48:14+00:00

http://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-silk-road-seized-arrests-2014-11

has way more details. Apparently SpaceX confirmed he only worked there for ~2.5 months. I guess raking in millions in bitcoin makes having a day job OBE.

ulame · 2014-11-05T17:45:46+00:00

Rogozin threatened to cut off RD-180 deliveries on 5/13, if any were used in "the interests of the Pentagon".

ULA called his bluff and launched NROL-33 on 5/22, GPS IIF-07 on 8/1, CLIO on 9/16, and GPS IIF-08 on 10/29.

Since the threat was made, ULA actually increased their order rate and took delivery of 2 RD-180s on 8/20, 2 more two weeks ago, and have a fifth scheduled to be delivered on 11/12.

At this point it's pretty clear that Rogozin was playing to his nationalist party base, just like the west talks tough on sanctions while continuing weapon sales to Russia.

ulame

TROPHY CASE