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发帖数: 29576 | 1 波音裸马的联合发射公司垄断政府发射合同，价格越来越贵，用的atlas v得进口毛子
发动机，现在被Elon找着机会在国会狠骂一通。这次乌克兰危机对SpaceX是利好。
SpaceX's Elon Musk chides Senate for paying too much for launches
WASHINGTON, March 6 (UPI) -- Elon Musk accused Congress of wasting money
that could be better spent on innovation by vastly overpaying for each space
launch.
Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, said the monopoly held by the United Launch
Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin that provides
all the space launches for the Air Force, has proven expensive and outmoded,
and should be replaced by a competitive structure.
"Competition has been stifled," Musk said, speaking to the Appropriations
Committee's Subcommittee on Defense. "And prices have risen to levels that
General William Shelton has himself called ‘unsustainable.’”
The U.S. has given a monopoly on launches to the ULA since 2006, and Musk
charges ULA with regularly hiking the prices for its launches. Musk said the
U.S. government pays as much as $280 million more per launch using ULA than
it would with a SpaceX launch, costing taxpayers an extra $11.6 billion.
Neither did Musk shy away from pointing out that some of ULA's technologies
are Russian-built, which stings particularly in light of the recent dustup
between the Kremlin and the West in Ukraine's Crimea region.
“Our Falcon launch vehicles are truly made in America, designed in
California and Texas, with key suppliers spread across the country, and we
launch from either Vandenburg Air Force Base or Cape Canaveral Air Force
Station,” said Musk. “This stands in stark contrast to the ULA’s most
frequently flown vehicle, the Atlas-V, which uses a Russian main engine and
where approximately half the airframe is manufactured overseas."
ULA CEO Michael Gass assured the assembled Senators that the company has a
two-year stockpile of the Atlas-V RD-180 engines, as well as the blueprints
and specifications, so that they could be manufactured domestically.
Gass questioned whether competition would truly drive down prices,
suggesting the duplication of mounting separate systems would drive up costs.
“I believe leveraging the demand from the commercial sector is smart, but
relying on commercial demand to enable national security carries huge risks,
both to the rocket supplier and to its government customers,” Gass said.
But Musk countered by pointing to SpaceX's $1.6 billion contract with NASA
to resupply the International Space Station over 12 missions.
“If our rockets are good enough for NASA, why aren’t they good enough for
the Air Force?” Musk said. “It makes no sense.”
Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2014/03/06/SpaceXs-Elon-Musk-chides-Senate-for-paying-too-much-for-launches/8441394142034/#ixzz2vJYRvyrT | T**********e
发帖数: 29576 | 2 原来私人公司都是自己买了发射insurance给spacex发射，政府不买就要贵30米。
In highlighting the cost difference, Mr. Musk noted that while such launches
will cost a lot more than the prices they offer to commercial launch
service suitors, it will still be far less expensive than the cost of using
the ULA fleet.
“The US government does not buy launch insurance, so there is a mission
assurance overhead applied (to the price). Our launch costs are estimated to
be 50 percent higher than commercial flights.
“So instead of $60 million for a commercial mission, it’s $90m, but that
compares to more like $380 million for ULA.” |
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