A Nice Round Number... I remember when I was 40. At least some of that year.
ULA is losing engineers; SpaceX is launching every other day
That's the heading for Ars Technica's Rocket Report newsletter for this week. I watch a good percentage of those SpaceX launches (and miss about half) and I didn't notice the pace since the Falcon 9 resumed flight after being grounded for two weeks.
In 19 days, SpaceX has launched 10 flights of the Falcon 9 rocket, taking advantage of all three of its Falcon 9 launch pads. This is a remarkable cadence in its own right, but even though it's a small sample size, it is especially impressive right out of the gate after the rocket's grounding.
The average rate of 10 flights in 19 days hasn't been one launch every other day, but has tended to be two from the east coast and one from the west. I think there was one day that met to the "two east, one west" schedule, but there have also been one a day from each of the three launch pads and I'm guessing all combinations of the three. Still, they've launched 80 flights of the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy family so far this year. That comes out to an average of one launch every 2.9 days
Thursday morning's launch from "up the road" was at 9:00 AM, an inconvenient
time, as well as cloudy enough that we couldn't get a get look at it. Today's
launch was from the left coast, (Vandenberg) and was a Rideshare launch of 116
satellites called Transporter 11. I embed the video because it's pretty.
About those ULA Engineers
The Rocket Report passes on from the Financial world:
With a record number of launches due next year, United Launch Alliance is losing key staff to competitors, including Blue Origin and SpaceX, Bloomberg reports. This year alone, ULA has lost about 45 of its 105 launch operations engineers—the people who test, assemble, and prepare every rocket and its cargo to fly—at its primary launch site in Florida, a source told Bloomberg. The lack of experienced personnel has postponed work for future missions, the person said. During preparations for two missions earlier this year, ULA had to fly in workers from other locations to help prepare rockets for liftoff.
Credit where it's due, I first read a prediction of exactly this ULA story from a blog I used to link to, Casey Handmer's In that piece, dated October 28, 2021, and that I wrote about two weeks later. Handmer wrote:
At this point, the real fear of other industry players should be that SpaceX won’t even ask them to try. Instead, they’ll wake up one morning and find that all their ambitious junior engineers have taken a pay cut and moved to Texas, while no-one can work out why Starliner’s valves refuse to work properly.
You can't call the reference to Starliner's valves nearly three years ago "prescient." There were problems back then, too. I have to add that I dropped the link to Casey Handmer's blog because he mostly got off the topic of space and got into so-called "renewable energy." I believe because he started a solar electric business. My bottom line was I so rarely read anything there that I was wasting time going to see what's new.
I wonder if SpaceX is still on target for 140 launches this year. Sounds like if they keep the cadence up or speed it up they just might. That's only 60 more launches. And does Starship count?
ReplyDeleteAs to the engineers, hard to keep good people employed when they're sitting on their hands watching one tech do an 8 hour procedure to tighten and wire shut one bolt.
SpaceX does aviation/aerospace manufacturing while keeping things going at a fast pace. And they still manage to document everything so when something goes wrong, they can pin it to a part/procedure usually before the next day, often while pieces parts are still falling.
Legacy vs SpaceX. SpaceX wins every time.
Saturday is day 230 of the year, so 136 days left. 2.26 days per launch? Without another FAA or other agency saying, "you're grounded" it seems like they should be able to do it.
DeleteThe people that are leaving ULA, would be the most energetic and most capable, the most likely to be able to get a new position. The "Graybeard's" would not be able to accrue time in service for retirement at new positions so are likely riding it out until they can retire. The remainder are placeholders. It just gets worse and worse at ULA.
ReplyDeleteWhich brings up that Sierra Space is considering purchasing ULA. If the talent is walking out the door, the value of the company is much less than pre sold launches as there would be considerable doubt that ULA can deliver. Sierra Nevada / Space has a history of being innovative and parsimonious. I wish them the best though suspect buying ULA, even for free, would by a Pyrrhic victory in every sense of the word.
A bitter end for Tory Bruno and his legend.
Well, Bruno & Co once poo-poohed SpaceX, saying that nobody would be able to reuse/recover boosters and that it would be unviable.
DeleteWith "industry leaders" like that, who needs enemas??
If you'll recall from a few months ago (last year?) the thought was that Blue Origin would buy ULA. Granted that ULA has done something Blue has never done, which is to achieve orbit, it's just ULA does it a couple of times a year, with a goal of 25 times a year. Maybe the managers at Blue were sharp enough to realize ULA wasn't a worth buying. They have guaranteed Government contract, just not lots of easy missions.
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