Space industry
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Government and industry work to cut the cost of reaching space
File - An upgraded Falcon 9 rocket carrying a small science satellite blasts off from Vandenberg Air Force Base.
Gene Blevins  -  Staff photographer, File
Muhammed El-Hasan, Daily Breeze
California Business
Read more about businesses driving California's economy In January, the head of the U.S. military's special research group known as DARPA sounded the alarm on what many in the space industry, both in and out of government, see as a looming problem that could threaten the nation's leadership in this sector.Speaking at a forum hosted by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Arati Prabhaka, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, reportedly said: "I think we're in the middle of a self-inflicted surprise."Prabhaka was referring to the high cost and slow turnaround time to get national security satellites into space.
Indeed, the space community from the Defense Department and NASA to Boeing and SpaceX are increasingly focused on reducing costs and increasing development speed when sending satellites and other systems beyond Earth's atmosphere.The rising sense of urgency is driven in large part by the federal government's tightening budget constraints as the national debt continues to break records.One strategy the government is taking to lower space costs is to act more like a commercial entity in dealing with contractors.
A meeting in summer 2011 hosted by Boeing executive Craig Cooning helps explain how this new approach is taking shape.Cooning's high-profile guests included David Van Buren, then-acting assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, and Lt. Gen. Ellen M. Pawlikowski, who at the time was the new commander of the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center in El Segundo.While lunching on teriyaki wrap, short ribs and sticky rice, Cooning and his guests discussed ways to lower the price of building military communications satellites.
"(Buren) was looking for ways to behave more commercial-like and asked us for ideas," recalled Cooning, vice president and general manager of Boeing Space & Intelligence Systems. "That (lunch) was the starting point."Cooning noted to his guests the differences between two types of satellites built at his company's sprawling El Segundo factory.One satellite, the Wideband Global Satcom, was for the Air Force. The other was for telecommunications company SkyTerra.Both satellites were about the same size and weight with sophisticated digital signal processors.
However, the military satellite was more than $100 million more expensive and took a year and a half longer to build."And what drove those costs?" Cooning said. "The additional testing, the oversight and the lack of a block buy on parts."Government programs nearly always involve a level of documentation, testing and oversight that far exceeds that of commercial programs. This is the case even when a satellite or other system has been proven and the contractor is simply building near-duplicates of the original.
In addition, federal purchases of satellites often do not involve a block buy, which is a money-saving approach used to purchase multiple systems.For example, if a company orders four satellites from Boeing, the buyer pays a lump sum for parts. That allows Boeing to purchase the parts for the four systems at one time even when deliveries are staggered over multiple years.By making a block buy, Boeing saves 20 to 30 percent on parts and can pass those savings on to the customer.While there is talk about the government making block buys for satellites, that is not the case now.
"Because of the way the Air Force is authorized money by Congress, they can't obligate future congresses," Cooning said. "They can only obligate what they have on the table. In this case, a single satellite. So we couldn't get the material costs."Yet, the Air Force did agree to reduce the amount of testing and oversight on four new Global Satcom satellites, for an expected savings of about $50 million in constant dollars for each system, Cooning said."We took programs that historically may have taken five years to do and we can do them in three and a half," Cooning said of the new approach. "Part of that (savings) is the cost of the people for those extra year or year and a half you're pulling off the program."
Cooning added that with a block buy, the Air Force could have saved about $100 million per satellite.The government's cost-saving push includes satellite sensors."I think we're in a new era if you look at the overall budget climate for the government and most things that the government procures," said Bill Hart, vice president of space systems at Raytheon Space & Airborne Systems in El Segundo. Raytheon makes sensors used in satellites for such customers as the Department of Defense, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
"One of the changes I see is that instead of our conversations with our customers being, 'what do you want,' it's, 'what do you need,'" Hart said. "This whole notion of meeting the requirements and not overdoing it, if you will, is very much similar to what the commercial side focuses on. Pay for what you need and not anything else."The push for cost savings means that Raytheon and other government contractors are constantly refining their manufacturing and design processes.As a result, Raytheon has increased efficiencies by 10 percent annually for the past several years. That includes reducing the size and weight of sensors since it costs about $10,000 to put each pound of payload into orbit.
Raytheon has cut other costs to stay competitive including energy consumption. The company has reduced energy use by about 11 percent, which translates to about $5 million in savings, Hart said.While the focus on cutting costs is important and necessary, it should not come at the expense of mission success, said Wayne Goodman, vice president of space program operations at El Segundo-based The Aerospace Corp., which advises the Air Force on satellites and launches."We probably have the most incredible string of successes. We haven't had a failure since the rash of failures in 1998 and 1999," Goodman said. "When we're launching billion-dollar satellites, we don't want to put them at risk to save some fraction on the rocket."
New satellite planningUltimately, the military must balance cost and mission assurance. Reducing noncritical tests is one technique.Taking a new approach to satellite capabilities also can save money. Known as disaggregation, the idea is to take the capabilities normally found in a single satellite and distribute them among multiple satellites.For example, a satellite that is powerful enough to communicate with the U.S. president in the event of a nuclear war requires a very durable and expensive architecture.
Satellites involved in more conventional military communications do not need such expensive designs.Disaggregation calls for separating such capabilities into different satellites instead of having them all in one hyper-pricy satellite."So they'll be smaller and you'd think they'd be cheaper to send up," Goodman said.Disaggregation also means that if one satellite in orbit goes down or is destroyed in an attack, it is more likely that there will be other satellites in orbit to fill the gap.Rocket launches represent another area where the military is trying to cut costs.
United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing, is the only business certified to carry U.S. military satellites into space.However, Hawthorne-based Space Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX, is seeking certification to bid for the lucrative launches.ULA has put together an extraordinary string of successful launches for the Air Force. SpaceX, by contrast, is a relatively young company with frequent hiccups from launch delays to technical anomalies that have led some missions to fall below 100 percent success.
Yet, SpaceX says it offers the least expensive launches worldwide, even cheaper than Chinese launches.SpaceX already sends commercial satellites into orbit and has a $1.6 billion contract to resupply the International Space Station, saving NASA billions of dollars compared to the now-defunct space shuttle program.NASA's relationship with SpaceX is based on the space agency's belief that it can save money by putting development and operation of launches into the hands of private industry.SpaceX's prices are so low that they could upend the price structure the Air Force has used in sending military satellites into orbit.
"What we do know is that if you look at a SpaceX heavy launcher like a Falcon 9 or a Falcon heavy, it's at least 50 percent cheaper than a comparable vehicle by Boeing or Lockheed," said Marco Caceres, senior analyst at the Teal Group Corp. in Fairfax, Va. "We're talking at least $50 million cheaper per vehicle so it's a significant cost saving for the Air Force."SpaceX did not respond to questions for this article.Even with greater efforts to reduce expenses, the government may not be going far enough, said James Wertz, an expert on space mission engineering whose Hawthorne company, Microcosm, is writing a book on shrinking the cost of going to space.
Wertz cited the Apollo program, which sent U.S. astronauts to the moon, as a good example of what the United States should do now."Historically, things were done in a much quicker and much lower-cost fashion. They would say here's the list of problems. We have to fix them before the next launch," Wertz said of the space program in that era. "Nowadays, if a problem arises what they do is stop all activity until they solve the problem. That dramatically extends schedule and extending schedule extends cost."
Soaring space costs also have led to a government drive to make missions nearly 100 percent successful so as not to lose a billion-dollar system, Wertz said. That, in turn, has further increased the price of missions, a dynamic he called the "space spiral."Therefore, Wertz said, the government must become more accepting of less expensive spacecraft and rockets, even if that means a greater likelihood of launch failure, in order to lower the overall cost of missions."A failure has to be acceptable in a mission perspective," said Wertz, who lectures on space mission engineering at USC and abroad. "What you don't want to do is have people get killed or have the mission not succeed. But there is a difference between having the spacecraft be successful and the mission being successful."
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