In a strategy to Fight Competitions, Launch Companies Reduce Vehicle Options

In the year 2010, some privately developed launch vehicle systems and space launch service offerings emerged by the great industry giants. Such Companies now faced economic incentives rather than the principally political incentives of the earlier decades.

While after sometime the space launch business experienced a dramatic lowering of per-unit prices along with the addition of entirely new capabilities, bringing about a new phase of competition in the space launch market. There was a varied choice of launching vehicles to lure the consumer. Earlier the market of such industry was limited to the government but later sometime the non-government market emerged. Communications satellites were the principal non-government market. Although launch competition in the early years after 2010 occurred only in and amongst global commercial launch providers, the US market for military launches began to experience multi-provider competition in 2015, as the US government began to move away from their previous monopoly arrangement with United Launch Alliance (ULA) for military launches. Whereas sometime in November 2013, Arianespace announced new pricing flexibility for the "lighter satellites" it carries to orbits aboard its Ariane 5 in response to SpaceX's growing presence in the worldwide launch market. While in early December 2013, SpaceX flew its first launch to a geosynchronous orbit providing additional credibility to its low prices which had been published since at least 2009. The low launch prices offered by the company, especially for communication satellites flying to geostationary (GTO) orbit, resulted in market pressure on its competitors to lower their prices. By the recent times in the early 2018, the monopoly ULA had held on US national security space launch was over. The company responded to the Falcon 9 with the Vulcan, a partly reusable vehicle powered by Blue Origin BE-4 engines, intended to replace its ageing expendable Atlas V and Delta IV rockets. Thereafter it was pointed out by SpaceNews, which reported that the rise of SpaceX has disrupted the launch industry at large. By mid-2018, with Proton flying as few as two launches in an entire year, the Russian state corporation Roscosmos announced they would retire the Proton launch vehicle, in part due to competition from lower-cost launch alternatives. By the recent report, ULA plans to continue that reduction in design options with the Vulcan Centaur now under development, with a first launch in 2021. Louradour said the company will initially offer two payload fairings of differing lengths and options for zero, two, four or six strap-on boosters. Bruno said that the company will eventually end up with “something in the neighborhood of four” versions of Vulcan Centaur.

By: Anuja Arora

Content: https://spacenews.com/launch-companies-reduce-vehicle-options-to-lower-costs/