WI: A more competitive US aerospace industry in the early 21st Century?

[fasquardon]

So, lately I have been thinking about the potential for a timeline following a different path for the US aerospace where ULA isn't formed in 2005 and thought I'd see what folk thought about my ideas.

Some background: in OTL, after Boeing was caught committing corporate espionage to win the majority of EELV contracts back in the 90s, in the face of a shrinking launch market after the dot com bust in the early 00s and DoD "encouragement", Boeing and Lockheed Martin agreed on 2nd May 2005 to make a 50-50 joint venture that would hold a near total monopoly on US launch capability once the Shuttle was retired in 2011 (and even before then many launch missions simply could not be performed by the Shuttle). ULA as far as I have read was then given little ability to re-invest in its capabilities and was for most of its history treated as a cash-cow by its parent companies. So the US saw launch costs rise significantly for over a decade as ULA used its monopoly pricing power to raise prices, and the capability of ULA's rockets stagnated as the profits were squandered on LockMart and Boeing share buybacks.

I've never understood why the DoD and the FTC allowed ULA to be formed in the first place. According to this Ars Technica article by Eric Berger, after Boeing's crimes became known:

...concerned it may lose access to the Delta line of rockets, including the Delta IV Heavy, the US Air Force stepped in. Military officials were especially worried that, if Boeing stopped flying the Delta, their only pathways into space would be through a Russian engine.

To end the lawsuits in 2005 and keep its supply lines open, the Department of Defense brokered a deal in which Lockheed and Boeing would merge their rocket building ventures into one company, United Launch Alliance. Each parent retained a 50-percent stake in the new firm, which would be required to maintain both the Atlas and Delta fleets of vehicles. The military had redundant access to space, and the big aerospace companies, Lockheed and Boeing, had a monopoly.

In addition, the DoD changed how it bought launch capability and under the "Buy III" program, covered all fixed costs by the launch providers.

But what if the DoD had changed how it bought launches, but didn't push LockMart and Boeing to form ULA? What if instead the DoD had forced Boeing to disgorge its space and launch orientated units (which in the early 2000s I understand to have consisted of:

1) Boeing Satellite Systems (used to be Hughes Space and Communications Company & Hughes Microwave Tube Division)
2) Boeing Space and Missile Systems (which notably includes the Decatur, Alabama factory and what used to be the Rocketdyne division of NAA)

But I don't know how plausible it would be for a Bush II era DoD to push for a major corporation to break off a major chunk of itself, even as a punishment for wrongdoing that threatened US military access to space.

It would be easier to have the PoD be that Boeing's crimes go undiscovered, but given the abysmally low competence Boeing management has shown over the last 30-ish years, I feel that PoD would lead to a very dull timeline. Whereas if Boeing were punished by having to break off this part of the company, I could find an excuse to have some engineers end up in charge once the dust settled and then engage in a spirited competition with Lockheed Martin and a rising SpaceX (as well as Orbital Sciences, ATK, Northrop Grumman and other such major players) and create interesting scenarios to explore...

Maybe if Boeing's schemes came unraveled even faster and the DoD was handling this problem during the last years of the Clinton administration? The main difference there being that if the scandal hit during the dot com boom, maybe the DoD would have the view that US launch demand can support two systems. I doubt that the officials of the Clinton era would be more willing to offend a large corporation than the Bush II era officials were.

Anyone have any thoughts?

I am wondering if this is just one of those things that isn't very plausible, and I shouldn't even bother trying to find a plausible PoD, but instead just focus on telling a story about cool engineering.

fasquardon

 

[Juumanistra]

I wouldn't say it's necessarily implausible, so much as a low probability event that requires a fair amount of placing the right people in the right places at the right times for the TL to occur. I think a bigger problem is that, from our real-world experiences, it's going to take a decade (or more) to establish a durable, competitive market for launch services. So if your POD is butterflying away the formation of the ULA in ~2005 by balkanizing Boeing's space-facing divisions and the Pentagon adopting COTS-esque purchasing of launches, you're probably looking at the second-half of what would be the end of Obama's second-term before you get the kind of dynamic you're looking for. You probably need a late-Eighties or early-Nineties POD to be able to plausibly get where you want to go.

There's probably a fun TL to be done where Bush 41 wins a second-term and Boeing's EELV shenanigans are exposed in the 1994-95 period, with the resulting shock pushing for experimenting with a radically different model for the provision of military launch services. (As the immediate alternative -- return military payload launching to NASA -- is unlikely to fly because NASA would want to fly milsats on the Shuttle, which was why they lost that responsibility in the first place.) Bonus points, in fact, if the Pentagon's pushing for commercialization can be junctioned with the Faster, Better, Cheaper Era at NASA to push for the adoption of COTS for the entire space program a decade ahead of OTL. Using commercialization to attack the problem of the Space Exploration Initiative's price-tag is also a low-probability event, but it's also not improbable to bootstrap your way there from the Augustine Commission, either.

Just my six grams of copper to consider. I'd be down for a TL where the Space Exploration Initiative produces real results, but they're not the results which were originally bargained for.

 

[fasquardon]

There's probably a fun TL to be done where Bush 41 wins a second-term and Boeing's EELV shenanigans are exposed in the 1994-95 period, with the resulting shock pushing for experimenting with a radically different model for the provision of military launch services. (As the immediate alternative -- return military payload launching to NASA -- is unlikely to fly because NASA would want to fly milsats on the Shuttle, which was why they lost that responsibility in the first place.) Bonus points, in fact, if the Pentagon's pushing for commercialization can be junctioned with the Faster, Better, Cheaper Era at NASA to push for the adoption of COTS for the entire space program a decade ahead of OTL. Using commercialization to attack the problem of the Space Exploration Initiative's price-tag is also a low-probability event, but it's also not improbable to bootstrap your way there from the Augustine Commission, either.

That sounds like a really interesting TL!

and the Pentagon adopting COTS-esque purchasing of launches

Not so much COTS as a two-provider assured access to space policy.

I think a bigger problem is that, from our real-world experiences, it's going to take a decade (or more) to establish a durable, competitive market for launch services.

Yup, I agree. Especially as I don't think there'd be any major paradigm shift until SpaceX started shaking things up. Just unlike OTL, the existing major launch providers would be better able to compete.

Mostly it would be an excuse to explore the potential of the Delta IV and Atlas V systems and what they could have become with more need to improve them and more investment available. Also, what impacts a different Constellation and SLS would have. (I don't think it would be politically possible for those two programs to completely avoid Congressional sabotage since pork needs to be distributed... But I can think of some interesting alternatives that should be within the realm of plausibility.)

fasquardon

 

[Juumanistra]

Not so much COTS as a two-provider assured access to space policy.

What I know I meant by "COTS" was actually CRS, the contracting for launch services on a competitively bid basis. SpaceX's importance to both has led me to use COTS as a catch-all for both, when that is not always correct. That said, it's also not hard -- and would probably be better for everyone -- to run the EELV tenders like COTS. But that sounds like a different TL than what you're thinking about.

Yup, I agree. Especially as I don't think there'd be any major paradigm shift until SpaceX started shaking things up. Just unlike OTL, the existing major launch providers would be better able to compete.

The problem is that, if you don't introduce some kind of real market pressure, the legacy launching industry is still going to be wrecked when COTS and CRS -- or their ITTL equivalents -- start tearing down the whole house of cards. A managed duopoly between Lockmart and McDonnell Douglas Space Systems (or whatever you call the entity that's cleaved off Boeing) is not appreciably different from the United Launch Alliance, as you're still operating on a cost-plus launch model and can't credibly threaten to deprive one or the other of their contracts to incentivize better performance. Especially when there's going to be a thumb on the scales for McDonnell Douglas Space Systems due to its relative smallness and desire to maintain at least two launch providers.

That said, one of the advantages of an early-to-mid-Nineties POD is that you can butterfly industry consolidation to suit your purposes. An example off the top of my head: Lockheed buys General Dynamics' Space Systems Division in 1994 instead of Martin Marietta, which butterflies the merger of Lockheed and Martin Marietta while Boeing succeeds in purchasing the aerospace-y bits of Rockwell in 1996 but McDonnell Douglas's buying Boeing with Boeing's own money the McDonnell Douglas merger falls through because there is a kind and merciful God someone at the Pentagon is deeply concerned about the potential ramifications for the industry if an entity with the market power of Boeing-McDonnell Douglas becomes a thing given Boeing's bad behavior re: the EELV tenders.

That gives you three existing launch providers -- Lockheed (Atlas), McDonnell Douglas (Delta), and Martin Marietta (Titan) -- with the specter of Boeing skulking in the background and able to enter the market on relatively short notice if given the opportunity and/or incentive. (While Boeing also keeps making money from, and expertise with, space stuff between the Shuttle and Rocketdyne.) With three-and-a-half market participants, you can get a real market while retaining the survival of all of them, because you can use EELV development contracts to fund whoever's currently "losing" in the market to ensure their ability to provide launching capabilities remains viable for the Pentagon's needs.

That setup also means the non-hypergolic iteration of the Titan V might actually get a fair shake, which is worth doing by itself. (With extra credit if it can be contrived to be kept around for launching HL-42.)

Mostly it would be an excuse to explore the potential of the Delta IV and Atlas V systems and what they could have become with more need to improve them and more investment available. Also, what impacts a different Constellation and SLS would have. (I don't think it would be politically possible for those two programs to completely avoid Congressional sabotage since pork needs to be distributed... But I can think of some interesting alternatives that should be within the realm of plausibility.)

If that's what you want to do, yeah, just treat the TL as an engineering exercise and liberally handwave your way around the POD. "Boeing gets caught doing illegal things and gets punished" is sufficient your purposes, as your target audience is here for the rocket porn and not the verisimilitude.

And you are quite correct that any new heavy-lifter is going to be subject to extensive management by Congress, which will be both a blessing and a curse. Though I think all of the programs touched by the Reuse the Shuttle Parts Bin School of Rocket Design -- the National Launch System, DIRECT, and Space Launch System off the top of my head -- are particularly vulnerable to that kind of meddling. As, by specifically designing your program to appeal to Congress's sensibilities, you've forfeited almost all of the power and leverage you might've had to resist Congressional meddling on the basis of your professional expertise. (What's a little more tailoring if it means well-paying aerospace jobs in a few more members' districts, after all?)

 

[fasquardon]

The problem is that, if you don't introduce some kind of real market pressure, the legacy launching industry is still going to be wrecked when COTS and CRS -- or their ITTL equivalents -- start tearing down the whole house of cards. A managed duopoly between Lockmart and McDonnell Douglas Space Systems (or whatever you call the entity that's cleaved off Boeing) is not appreciably different from the United Launch Alliance, as you're still operating on a cost-plus launch model and can't credibly threaten to deprive one or the other of their contracts to incentivize better performance. Especially when there's going to be a thumb on the scales for McDonnell Douglas Space Systems due to its relative smallness and desire to maintain at least two launch providers.

I was thinking of calling it Rocketdyne Space Systems, since that name both has some brand recognition, and would also be a name unburdened by even a hint of scandal.

And while whatever gets broken off of Boeing would be smaller than LockMart overall, I am not sure it would be smaller than the space systems portions of LockMart. A particular advantage would be the Satellite Systems division, Hughes Space and Communications was a pretty major satellite supplier at the time it was bought out, if not the largest commercial satellite maker in the world. (I think it is unlikely that the Satellite Systems division would be broken off with the rocket engine and launch vehicle segments of the company, but my thought is that a strong satellite manufacture and services section could keep the overall company a going concern in the turbulent early years while the organization is rebuilding after the purge of anyone too involved with Boeing's shenanigans and when demand for launches is low and costs for the Delta IV are high.) It may be that even with a launcher that starts off as more economical on the LockMart side, both could be fairly even in overall competitiveness.

That said, one of the advantages of an early-to-mid-Nineties POD is that you can butterfly industry consolidation to suit your purposes. An example off the top of my head: Lockheed buys General Dynamics' Space Systems Division in 1994 instead of Martin Marietta, which butterflies the merger of Lockheed and Martin Marietta while Boeing succeeds in purchasing the aerospace-y bits of Rockwell in 1996 but McDonnell Douglas's buying Boeing with Boeing's own money the McDonnell Douglas merger falls through because there is a kind and merciful God someone at the Pentagon is deeply concerned about the potential ramifications for the industry if an entity with the market power of Boeing-McDonnell Douglas becomes a thing given Boeing's bad behavior re: the EELV tenders.

Hmmm. Mind you, McDonnell Douglas had Boeing's future management in charge of it, and we've seen how well they performed. Also, the US demand for launches in the early 21st Century wasn't enough to support either the Delta IV or Atlas V, never mind both at the same time. I don't think having 3 EELV rockets would help, since they'd all need generous contracts from the DoD to be kept flying.

you can use EELV development contracts to fund whoever's currently "losing" in the market to ensure their ability to provide launching capabilities remains viable for the Pentagon's needs.

Well, in OTL all US rockets lost in the market against Ariane, Soyuz and Proton until the Falcon 9. And even if NASA got more interested in using the EELV vehicles, EELV and NASA contracts subsidizing 3 large launchers does not a competitive market make.

I feel for such a 90s scenario, you'd either have to have an alternate consolidation of the launch industry down to a maximum of two large booster providers (there's still room for a number of smaller boosters like Delta II and Minotaur), or you'd need a PoD that pushed up demand for launch capability.

The easiest one that I can think of would be a fatal Shuttle accident in the 90s.

fasquardon

 

[Juumanistra]

Hmmm. Mind you, McDonnell Douglas had Boeing's future management in charge of it, and we've seen how well they performed. Also, the US demand for launches in the early 21st Century wasn't enough to support either the Delta IV or Atlas V, never mind both at the same time. I don't think having 3 EELV rockets would help, since they'd all need generous contracts from the DoD to be kept flying.

Everyone still needs generous contracts from DoD, as the milsat launching market is not -- and cannot be -- a truly competitive one in the first place. Since the benchmark we're dealing with is cost-plus contracts distributed on the basis of achieving non-economic objectives, we're always grading on a curve when it comes to trying to introduce market forces.

But isn't McDonnell Douglas a great example of why you want as many providers in the market as you can get, when your goal is redundancy? So when the McDonnell Douglas corporate leadership drives the company off a cliff without the lifeline that was Boeing's book of business, the existence of multiple other launching options should smooth out the disruption caused by Delta's becoming unavailable. Of course, that assumes the other launchers are well-enough run to have slack capacity and the ability to ramp-up operations to absorb sudden new business, but that's a different set of issues. (And why any attempt by the Pentagon at managing or structuring competition between launch providers is a risky venture.)

Well, in OTL all US rockets lost in the market against Ariane, Soyuz and Proton until the Falcon 9. And even if NASA got more interested in using the EELV vehicles, EELV and NASA contracts subsidizing 3 large launchers does not a competitive market make.

It's probably a good idea to keep things contained to the Pentagon's milsat launch market. As that's what you said in your original post and what it sounds like you're really interested in, so you can focus on the next-generation Atlas and Delta iterations. I'd just brought up getting NASA involved to drum up the interest to have fascinating side effects beyond the Pentagon's launchers. As that doesn't sound like quite what you're going for, it can be safely disregarded, other than that the progeny of COTS and CRS are eventually going to come for the milsat market. And avoiding that, or at least having it play out differently, is your goal. Or so I've gathered.

 

[Belisarius II]

So, lately I have been thinking about the potential for a timeline following a different path for the US aerospace where ULA isn't formed in 2005 and thought I'd see what folk thought about my ideas.

Some background: in OTL, after Boeing was caught committing corporate espionage to win the majority of EELV contracts back in the 90s, in the face of a shrinking launch market after the dot com bust in the early 00s and DoD "encouragement", Boeing and Lockheed Martin agreed on 2nd May 2005 to make a 50-50 joint venture that would hold a near total monopoly on US launch capability once the Shuttle was retired in 2011 (and even before then many launch missions simply could not be performed by the Shuttle). ULA as far as I have read was then given little ability to re-invest in its capabilities and was for most of its history treated as a cash-cow by its parent companies. So the US saw launch costs rise significantly for over a decade as ULA used its monopoly pricing power to raise prices, and the capability of ULA's rockets stagnated as the profits were squandered on LockMart and Boeing share buybacks.

I've never understood why the DoD and the FTC allowed ULA to be formed in the first place. According to this Ars Technica article by Eric Berger, after Boeing's crimes became known:



In addition, the DoD changed how it bought launch capability and under the "Buy III" program, covered all fixed costs by the launch providers.

But what if the DoD had changed how it bought launches, but didn't push LockMart and Boeing to form ULA? What if instead the DoD had forced Boeing to disgorge its space and launch orientated units (which in the early 2000s I understand to have consisted of:

1) Boeing Satellite Systems (used to be Hughes Space and Communications Company & Hughes Microwave Tube Division)
2) Boeing Space and Missile Systems (which notably includes the Decatur, Alabama factory and what used to be the Rocketdyne division of NAA)

But I don't know how plausible it would be for a Bush II era DoD to push for a major corporation to break off a major chunk of itself, even as a punishment for wrongdoing that threatened US military access to space.

It would be easier to have the PoD be that Boeing's crimes go undiscovered, but given the abysmally low competence Boeing management has shown over the last 30-ish years, I feel that PoD would lead to a very dull timeline. Whereas if Boeing were punished by having to break off this part of the company, I could find an excuse to have some engineers end up in charge once the dust settled and then engage in a spirited competition with Lockheed Martin and a rising SpaceX (as well as Orbital Sciences, ATK, Northrop Grumman and other such major players) and create interesting scenarios to explore...

Maybe if Boeing's schemes came unraveled even faster and the DoD was handling this problem during the last years of the Clinton administration? The main difference there being that if the scandal hit during the dot com boom, maybe the DoD would have the view that US launch demand can support two systems. I doubt that the officials of the Clinton era would be more willing to offend a large corporation than the Bush II era officials were.

Anyone have any thoughts?

I am wondering if this is just one of those things that isn't very plausible, and I shouldn't even bother trying to find a plausible PoD, but instead just focus on telling a story about cool engineering.

fasquardon

What you lay out is very interesting and opens up many possibilities. I guess one of the biggest problems here is that there was no real vision, or will to do anything in space in those years. It simple had such a low priority with Congress, the Bush 43, or Obama WH, or the public for that matter, for a Government program, or a big privatization. All the USAF was interested in was preserving the launch capacity they had, rather than a major upgrade. It's a common thread in American History that nothing big happens without a sense of urgency.

 

[fasquardon]

I guess one of the biggest problems here is that there was no real vision, or will to do anything in space in those years.

The people who controlled the purse strings for sure had no real vision. One of the things that interests me about this scenario is that there were people who worked in Boeing, LockMart and ULA who did have visions - for example the work done on advanced upper stages at LockMart and Boeing that became the ACES under ULA. In OTL, ULA didn't have the money to develop such a stage on their own, and NASA wasn't allowed to fund any work by Congress.

But something like ACES being developed in a more competitive early 21st Century and being ready in time for when SpaceX started really making waves in the launch industry would be super interesting.

It's probably a good idea to keep things contained to the Pentagon's milsat launch market. As that's what you said in your original post and what it sounds like you're really interested in, so you can focus on the next-generation Atlas and Delta iterations. I'd just brought up getting NASA involved to drum up the interest to have fascinating side effects beyond the Pentagon's launchers. As that doesn't sound like quite what you're going for, it can be safely disregarded, other than that the progeny of COTS and CRS are eventually going to come for the milsat market. And avoiding that, or at least having it play out differently, is your goal. Or so I've gathered.

The idea of NASA getting interested in using the Atlas V and Delta IV in a major way at the start of the century is quite intriguing to me. But unfortunately, the only way I can see to make that happen would be for the Shuttle to be retired earlier, which in turn probably needs an earlier fatal accident. Or maybe a third lethal failure of the system after Colombia.

Hm. A third failure of the system might push NASA down a different path for their next large rocket, meaning the Shuttle program contractors don't get SLS pork doled out to them and instead all that SLS money goes into different things.

Anyway, I am mainly focused on the milsat market because I see it as the part of the US launch industry that was best placed to want and push for something different to what we've seen in OTL. By contrast NASA already has the Shuttle and the Delta II and has a long history of being adverse to using rockets that are primarily made to service USAF needs (for fair reasons too, NASA and the USAF have different needs after all). NASA following a different path soon after the PoD is definitely interesting.

fasquardon