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Elon Musk on Texas spaceport: “We’ll probably have that site active in a couple of years.”
Posted on April 25, 2014 | By Eric Berger

SpaceX Projects



CAPE CANAVERAL, FL - OCTOBER 07: People watch as a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket attached to the cargo-only capsule called Dragon is raised into launch position as it is prepared for a scheduled evening launch on October 7, 2012 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The rocket will bring cargo to the International Space Station that consists of clothing, equipment and science experiments. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
At the tail end of a news conference today in Washington D.C. the founder of SpaceX, Elon Musk, was asked whether a site had been chosen yet for much anticipated SpaceX commercial launch site.

His reply, “We’re also developing a launch pad on the south coast of Texas … We’ll probably have that site active in a couple of years.”

All he’s waiting for, Musk said, is an environmental clearance from the Federal Aviation Administration, which he expects to receive soon.

This site, if it is indeed built, would allow for launches of both the Falcon 9 (already flying) and Falcon 9 Heavy (under development) from south Texas, near Brownsville. These launches would be for commercial (i.e. satellites) as well as possibly NASA purposes.

There have been a number of indications that SpaceX intended to build the site in south Texas, but Musk’s statement today is the clearest sign yet that, in a few years, Texans will be able to see rocket launches up close and personal.

For a state that’s seen a loss of space business due to a downturn in activity at Johnson Space Center over the last five years this is huge news.

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SpaceX Formally Protests Initial EELV Block Buy Contracts
By Mike Gruss, Dan Leone | Apr. 25, 2014

“This is not SpaceX protesting and saying that these launches should be awarded to us,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said. “We’re just protesting and saying that these launches should be competed.”Credit: SpaceNews photo by Lisa Nipp
Updated April 26

WASHINGTON — Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is filing a formal protest in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims over a multibillion-dollar U.S. Air Force contract to its incumbent launch services provider, United Launch Alliance, SpaceX founder and Chief Executive Elon Musk announced April 25.

The official protest document will be posted at 12:00 p.m. EDT on April 28 at

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and filed with the court, according SpaceX.

In December, Denver-based ULA and the Air Force reached contractual terms for the first batch of rockets in a long-awaited bulk purchase, one the service said is the heart of its strategy for saving money on its overbudget launch services program.

Original plans for the block buy called for the Air Force to buy 36 rocket cores from ULA on a sole-source basis while putting another 14 missions for bid, thereby giving so-called new entrants such as SpaceX a crack at the market. The new entrants first must earn certification to launch national security missions, which in SpaceX’s case is expected in late 2014 at the earliest.

The Air Force recently deferred roughly half of the missions to be competitively awarded, this after ordering the first batch of rocket cores from ULA, currently the sole provider under the service’s Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program. As such, ULA has enjoyed a virtual lock on the U.S. national security launch market.

In recent weeks, Musk, along with SpaceX supporters in Congress, have pushed the Air Force to rethink the block-buy strategy. By filing the claim — one of several ways to protest a contract — SpaceX will now receive a judicial review of Air Force’s decision. The court has the power to issue an injunction that would at least temporarily stop the block buy in its tracks.

“This is not SpaceX protesting and saying that these launches should be awarded to us,” Musk said in a press conference here. “We’re just protesting and saying that these launches should be competed.”

Specifically, Musk said, Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX is protesting only a share of the rockets — those which it currently has the ability to launch. That effectively exempts a number of missions, including any that would be launched on ULA’s Delta 4 Heavy rocket.

SpaceX recently acknowledged that it currently is capable of launching 60 percent of Air Force missions, a figure that is expected to climb to 100 percent once the company’s planned Falcon Heavy rocket is up and operating.

The timing of the suit is curious given the fact that the Air Force began ordering the rockets in question in December, information that the Pentagon disclosed at the time.

“We actually only learned about the big sole-source award in March,” Musk said. The contract “may have been signed in December, but it only came to light, interestingly, only one day after the Senate hearing on EELV launch costs. I don’t think that’s an accident. We’ve really just had about a month of awareness. We’ve been somewhat reeling from that news.”

Gen. William Shelton, commander of Air Force Space Command, has insisted that the service has already locked in $4.4 billion in savings through the block-buy strategy, but that figure has been greeted with skepticism in some quarters.

Nonetheless, canceling the existing contract would be expensive. In an April 3 hearing of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, a Defense Department official estimated that the cost would be at least $370 million.

In addition, scrapping the block buy would force the Defense Department to negotiate on a mission-by-mission basis for access to space, thereby driving up costs on a per-launch basis, officials said.

Musk has recently won support from key lawmakers in his quest for the chance to compete for more launches.

Tom Mentzer, a spokesman for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has said the senator believes any launch that a new entrant is capable of performing “should be competed as soon as possible.”

Meanwhile, in an April 25 letter, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) asked Jon Rymer, the Defense Department’s inspector general, to investigate the Air Force’s decision to reduce the number of EELV launches available for competition through 2017. That number, originally stated as 14 launches, could be as few as seven or eight launches, officials have said. McCain questioned whether the Air Force is “aggressively” pursuing competition, as stated in a November 2012 acquisition memo.

In an April 25 email, Mark Bitterman, ULA’s vice president of government affairs and communications, said the company was reviewing the transcript of the press conference.

“ULA is proud and focused on supporting the AF EELV Program for the Department of Defense missions that assure that critical capabilities are delivered to space successfully on schedule,” he said. “The block buy contracting process was formally started in late 2011, with proposals delivered in 2012, and final contract signed in 2013. The DOD robust acquisition and oversight process and ULA improved performance enabled over $4 billion in savings as compared to prior acquisitions approaches. ULA recognizes the DOD plan to enable competition and is ready and willing to support missions with same assurance that we provide today.”

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TerraN_EmpirE said:

Jobs coming to Texas Space

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TerraN_EmpirE said:

The Lyndon B Johnson Space Center acts as a Training center, a Mission Control and lab's. The SpaceX location Would be a Launch pad for SpaceX that's why it's out in the middle of nowhere.

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Contractor speeds up deliveries of Russian engines

By Kristina Wong - 04/24/14 04:48 PM EDT
Is the U.S. Space Program Too Reliant on Russia?
March 18 (Bloomberg) -- Billionaire Elon Musk wants to break into a $70 billion Pentagon satellite launch market monopolized by a Lockheed Martin-Boeing joint venture. Testifying before U.S. lawmakers on March 5, he...



A U.S. defense firm is accelerating deliveries of rocket engines from Russia as members of Congress seek to end contracts with the country over the conflict in Ukraine.

United Launch Alliance said Thursday it is speeding up its schedule for receiving Russian-made engines, from once a year to twice per year.
ULA received one shipment of four engines last November, but this year will receive shipments of two engines in August and three engines in October.

"This year we are having the engines shipped once they are completed versus waiting to get one shipment," ULA spokeswoman Jessica Rye told The Hill.

The Air Force has a five-year contract with ULA to buy 36 rocket cores, for both Atlas V rockets, which use the Russian-made engines, and another type of rocket called Delta IV, which does not.

Lawmakers have called upon the administration to stop using rockets with the Russian-made engines, which are manufactured by Russian-owned firm Energomash.

Members of Congress, as well as competing rocket manufacturers, argue that U.S. national security missions are vulnerable to Russia's supplying the engines, and that taxpayer dollars should not go towards bolstering Russia.

Each engine reportedly costs between $11 to $15 million.

ULA pushed back against those concerns, saying that Russia has taken no actions to restrict sales or exports of the RD-180 engines, and if it did, ULA would use its Delta IV rockets, which don't rely on Russian engines.

"The RD-180 supply chain has never experienced a supply disruption in the 15 years of imports and is widely considered throughout the aerospace industry as a model of international cooperation," Rye said.

She said restricting imports of the engines would have a minor effect on Russia, because 90 percent of Russian exports to the U.S. are raw materials.

"It imposes an artificial crisis in the U.S. domestic launch market, one that only serves to impede U.S. capabilities to launch critical payloads," she said.

"It is completely appropriate to review the status of supply of RD-180s in light of the current political tensions in Russia," she said. "However, ULA is currently the only certified launch provider that can support the full range of national security space missions."



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Draft House Language Seeks to Halt Air Force Atlas 5 Launches This Year

Mon, 2014-04-28 05:12
Draft legislation circulating in the U.S House of Representatives would bar the use of Russian rocket technology in launching U.S. Defense Department payloads as early as this year.

The language -- drafted this month as the U.S. considers additional sanctions against Moscow over aggression in Ukraine -- aims squarely at the NPO Energomash-built RD-180 engine used to power the first stage of the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas 5, a Lockheed Martin-built rocket that launches most U.S. government missions.
Specifically, the language asserts that “no payload acquired or operated by or on behalf of the Department of Defense shall be launched into space by any rocket engine designed or developed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or the Russian Federation, unless such engine was manufactured inside the United States.”
Denver-based ULA, which also manages government launches of the Boeing Delta 4 rocket, currently holds a virtual monopoly on U.S. Air Force national security space missions.
If passed into law this year as part of the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act, the congressional direction could force the Air Force to launch satellites on the more-expensive Delta 4.
The language coincides with an announcement last week by Hawthorne, Calif.-based Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), which is suing the U.S. Air Force for the right to compete for more launches of national security missions.
Last year, under congressional direction, the Air Force began implementing a competitive acquisition strategy for space launch missions under the service's Evolved Expendable Launch Vechile (EELV) program. In December, Air Force leaders signed a contract with ULA for the purchase 35 new launch vehicle cores, including Atlas 5, leaving up to 14 EELV launches open to competition.
Although the language provides an exception for engines acquired under an existing contract, it does so “provided that physical control of such engines in the United States occurs prior to Oct. 1, 2014.”
In April, ULA told The Hill it had hastened deliveries of RD-180 engines this year, doubling the annual number of shipments from one to two in 2014.
ULA says its U.S. inventory includes two years' worth of RD-180 engines, which are distributed in the U.S. by RD AMROSS, a joint venture between Energomash and Aerojet Rocketdyne.
Lawmakers argue the EELV contract was signed ahead of anticipated certification of the SpaceX Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket, which would allow the company to compete with ULA for Air Force missions. However, at the time the EELV contract was signed, Falcon 9 v1.1 had conducted just one successful satellite launch to geosynchronous orbit, the neighborhood of most communications spacecraft, including those orbited for the Air Force.
SpaceX, which has flown the Falcon 9 v1.1 four times since its fall 2013 debut, needs three successful launches to qualify as a new entrant to the Air Force's EELV program, and the company says Air Force certification is expected this year.
However, in March the Air Force said it had halved the number of missions open to tender, deferring several payloads beyond the current contract ending in fiscal 2017 and potentially further reducing the number of satellite launches for which SpaceX can compete.
While the draft House language could help boost SpaceX's chances against ULA, space industry officials say any legislation blocking the use of Russian space technology in U.S. hardware could have broader knock-on effects with regard to Washington's space ties with Russia.
In a letter to House lawmakers, the Satellite Industries Association (SIA) decried language that would prevent the use of Russian technology in any U.S.-built space systems. While the draft legislation targets the RD-180 specifically, SIA says it could easily be broadened to include the U.S.-modified Kuznetsov-built NK-33 engines – two of which power the Ukrainian-built boost stage of the Orbital Sciences Corp. Antares rocket -- as well as other Russian space hardware.
“We have little confidence that such policies would not expand eventually to capture any number of other Russian technologies, whether through Congressional expansion or Russian retaliatory actions,” according to an April 11 draft of the SIA letter, which is addressed to Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), chairman of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, and ranking member Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn).
In the meantime, an Air Force-directed study led by retired Maj. Gen. Howard “Mitch” Mitchell, former head of Air Force Space Command operations and currently vice president of program assessments for the Aerospace Corp., is evaluating RD-180 availability. Also participating in the review is former NASA administrator Michael Griffin.
Known as the RD-180 Availability Risk Mitigation Study, the review was originally discussed by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel in March testimony before the House Armed Services Committee. The study will focus on issues, risks, costs and options associated with Russian engines in the context of the crisis in Ukraine. The study, which is due in May, will also examine multiple scenarios for ensuring the availability of RD-180 engines, as well as long-term mitigation options for meeting launch requirements, and propose recommendations for a way-ahead.
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Aviation Week
Orbital Eying ATK Solid Propulsion System for Antares First Stage

Amy Svitak
Wed, 2014-04-30 12:40
A proposed merger between Orbital Sciences Corp. and the aerospace and defense divisions of ATK could yield a more powerful -- and politically palatable – Antares launch vehicle, according to company officials.

Orbital Chairman and CEO David Thompson says his company is considering an ATK proposal to develop a solid-rocket propulsion system to replace the modified Russian NK-33 engines that power the Antares rocket's Ukrainian-built first stage.
In an April 29 interview following the proposed merger announcement, Thompson said ATK's bid is one of three – including two offered by Russian suppliers – that Orbital is currently reviewing.
“ATK has made that proposal and it's attractive,” Thompson said. “We haven't made any final decisions on which way to go there, but with the recent geopolitical events and the progress ATK has made over the last few years in advancing large composite-case solid rocket motors, that alternative is looking more and more attractive.”
The proposed merger, which is expected to close this year, would see Dulles, Va.-based Orbital bring ATK's space propulsion work in house, increasing Orbital's control over its rocket manufacturing from 40-45% today to 80% under the combined entity.
ATK, which built the Space Shuttle Reusable Solid Rocket Motors, is developing much of the core-stage boost for NASA's new Space Launch System. The company also produces the Antares launcher's Castor-30B solid-rocket upper stage, as well as an optional Star 48BV solid-fueled third stage.
In addition to creating a more vertical manufacturing operation, choosing a U.S.-sourced booster could help Orbital avoid scrutiny from U.S. national security hawks eager to end America's reliance on Russian rocket technology.
A large solid rocket first stage would also boost Antares' current 5,000-kg lift capacity to low Earth orbit by “20-25%, depending on the orbit in question,” Thompson says.
The increase would give Antares a lift capacity comparable to the SpaceX Falcon 9 v1.1 for small- to mid-sized payloads launched to supersynchronous orbit, and could potentially broaden Orbital's customer base beyond its $1.9-billion International Space Station cargo resupply contract with NASA to include the U.S. Defense Department.
“We've submitted to the Air Force our intention to on-ramp Antares in some configuration to its Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program in the future,” Thompson said. “That is our aim over the next couple of years.”
Thompson said the company needs three years to develop a new Antares first stage, though a demonstration flight for the rocket might not be necessary.
“There may be ways in which the results of that sort of demonstration could be achieved short of a full-up demonstration, and that's one of the factors we still have to work our way through,” he said.
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