Appropriations Bill Includes $220 Million for New Rocket Engine

[DocM]

Bye-Bye RD-180

However, it's hard to see how this $220m for a "new engine" is justified when ULA and Blue Origin are already working on an Atlas V replacement on their own dime, Falcon 9 is only weeks from EELV certification, Falcon Heavy is a few months from its maiden flight (and entering EELV quals) and Blue Origin is working on yet another launcher of its own.

Space News....

Compromise Appropriations Bill Includes $220 Million for New Rocket Engine

WASHINGTON ? U.S. lawmakers announced a deal Dec. 9 on a 2015 spending plan that includes $220 million for the development of a new liquid engine rocket to replace the Russian-made RD-180 that powers United Launch Alliance?s workhorse Atlas 5 rocket.

The money was included in the massive omnibus spending bill despite an objection from the U.S. Air Force, which in November said there is no clear path for acquiring a new engine and that it would require extensive changes to any of the launch vehicles at its disposal.

?[W]e don?t have a program to spend that $220 million,? Gen. John Hyten, commander of Air Force Space Command, said at a Dec. 5 breakfast here.

Report language accompanying the ?Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act for 2015, which funds most federal activities for the remainder of the current fiscal year, or through September, gives the Air Force six months to come up with a strategy for risk reduction and technology maturation for the new engine. Both chambers of Congress are expected to vote on the bill Dec. 11.

The push for a new U.S. rocket engine has been fueled in large part by concerns about the future availability of the RD-180 as U.S. tensions with Russia escalate over the crisis in Ukraine. The program itself is named the Competitive Rocket Innovation Motor/Engine Arrangement, or CRIMEA, the name of the Ukrainian territory annexed by Russia this past March.

?We have a lot of work to do to figure out how to work the future of our launch enterprise,? Hyten said. ?And it?s going to be a challenge to figure out how to get there by 2019.?

The bill calls for a demonstration of the new engine in 2019. This roughly tracks with the final version of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015, which prohibits the use of the RD-180 after 2019. The compromise authorization bill has passed both houses of Congress and is awaiting the president?s signature into law.

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[Beittil]

Nice, I guess, but whom is supposed to develop/built this new engine? Who gets this money?

Will ULA get it and be told 'go find a new engine'? Will the DoD go out shopping for bids?

[AnotherITguy]

^{Nope, they'll just give it to ULA, and say no one bid on the new engine.}

[DocM]

They'd bid it out in another competition, with Aerojet-Rocketdyne's AR-1 and Blue Origin's BE-4 as likely bidders.

IIRC the governments plan is to develop an engine where they retain the IP so anyone could build it.

I don't see SpaceX bidding, being unlikely to let go of the Raptor IP. It's also way too large at almost 3x the thrust of the others.

[Beittil]

IP? Intelectual property?

[DocM]

Yup. Lots of secret sauce going into Raptor as it'll be the first operational full-flow staged combustion engine. US & Soviet Union had test stand work, but no production quality engines or flights. They are highly scaleable, reusable monsters.