Re: Space Launch Alliance - End of Delta II?

Damon Hill wrote:
> "Ed Kyle" <edkyle99@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:1115425943.359485.46250
> @o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com:
>
> > Damon Hill wrote:
> >> "Ed Kyle" <edkyle99@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
> >> news:1115416754.656248.225350@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:
> >>
> >> Presumably Delta IV Lite (Dleta IV CBC + Delta II
> >> upper stage) is not viable?
> >
> > Boeing passed on that option a few years ago,
>
> Seems to me there'd be potential savings by increasing
> the number of CBCs built, elimination of the Delta II
> first stage and all pad facilities, and by hanging onto the
> lower end of the market. Probably wouldn't need the
> strap-ons, either.
>
> The only development money appears to be in the interstage
> and added Delta IV pad equipment to handle the hypergolic
> propellants. That last part might well be a killer, of
> course. Industry is trying hard to get away from that.

I wonder if it might be just as cost effective to
simply launch the bare-bones Delta IV Medium with
a less-than-full propellant load to carry the smaller
payloads (filling out with microsats and secondary
payloads whenever possible). Then they would be
able to shut down the Delta II line, close three
launch pads, *and* increase production on the EELV
line. It might end up costing the payload customer
nearly the same, since Delta II costs have been, and
as its launch rate declines, will continue to, rise.

> I'm not at all sure where the Alliance is going with this,
> without ending either the Atlas or Delta line altogether.
> And I'd have a hard time choosing between them.

Me too, but I had begun to think that Atlas might
be proving itself superior. It certainly is
superior in performance, because it was designed
to out-haul Delta IV from the outset (5 versus 4
tonnes to GTO, etc.) It seems to have been better
engineered - its perfect flight performance so far
evidence of that compared to the flaws discovered
in Delta IV. It has a cleaner pad processing flow.
It requires fewer workers to build and launch than
Delta IV. It isn't designed to catch on fire at
liftoff!

And I was seriously impressed by the most recent
Atlas V launch, when it carried the heaviest-ever
commercial satellite right through some stiff
ground and upper level winds that would have
scrubbed an older Atlas - and maybe the new Delta
too. It outlifted Proton and Zenit during that
flight, without really trying hard - it wasn't
anywhere near its payload limit.

But having said all that, I have to say that
Delta IV is an impressive technical achievement.
Unlike Atlas V, which is pretty heavily derived
from a rocket family that has been around for more
than 40 years, Delta IV is nearly all-new. Despite
this handicap, the rocket has flown cleanly in
its single-stick versions and has only suffered
an underperformance failure during its single
Heavy version flight - a flight that doubled the
total number of Common Core Boosters ever flown
to six (compared to 150-ish Centaurs). Boeing
has to be applauded for pulling off the technical
achievement required to get this machine off the
ground, despite its cost overruns and commercial
market failure to date.

A while back, I predicted that one of the EELVs
would eventually end up in the Air Force camp and
that the other would become more of a NASA machine.
I still think something like that is possible.
But for the time being, we have an interesting
kind of "fly off" underway at Cape Canaveral,
with a Delta IV prepping for a NASA GOES-N launch,
an Atlas V setting up for a NASA Mars mission
launch, and a Delta II on the pad for one of the
dwindling numbers of Air Force GPS launches.

- Ed Kyle

.

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