STATEMENT OF MR. ELON MUSK, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, SPACE EXPLORATION TECHNOLOGIES
Mr. Musk: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I hope you can hear me okay.
It is an honor to be here with Admiral Steidle, Bob Dickman, Dr. Sega, and Ms. Poniatowski, I guess in the question period.
It is common knowledge that the U.S. launch industry is noncompetitive. An appropriate comparison is the U.S. auto industry of the 1970s, prior to entry of the Japanese. However, that would be quite generous. At no point during that period did General Motors decide, as Boeing has recently done, that they would only service government customers.
In the case of launch vehicles, the noncompetitiveness is so great that SpaceX is confident of not just a significant improvement in reliability, but also of maintaining a several fold price reduction. Hopefully, this will stimulate the other three U.S. launch vehicle companies to reexamine their processes, as GM and Ford did in their time, and provide a better and lower cost product to their customers.
I am also optimistic that the success of SpaceX will result in other entrepreneurial companies entering the space business, both in launch and the manufacture of lower cost spacecraft. Some look at the cost of launch and comment that it only represents a portion of the total mission cost. This is a very naive conclusion. In fact, it all starts with launch. If you are paying $5,000 a pound for something in orbit, you will naturally pay up to $5,000 a pound to save weight on your satellite, creating a vicious circle of cost inflation.
The result is a cost impedance match between the spacecraft and the launch vehicle, but it is driven by the launch vehicle. If you could launch for much lower cost and manifest quickly, that satellite would cost a lot less. A case example is TacSat-1, the DOD satellite on the maiden flight of Falcon I.
The benefits and risks for the U.S. launch industry of NASA-DOD collaboration, the most significant would be automatic cross-certification of a new launch vehicle. If a launch vehicle is found to be satisfactory for a DOD satellite, then it should be satisfactory for NASA, and vice versa.
That is currently not the case. For example, the Boeing Delta IV and Lockheed Atlas V have had to undergo separate DOD and NASA on-ramp processes. The result is greater expense to the taxpayer and those companies. SpaceX is in a similar position where we are undergoing a DOD review of our Falcon launch vehicle by the Aerospace Corporation, but will later have to repeat the process for NASA.
The biggest risk to launch vehicle development from NASA-DOD collaboration would be excessive requirements accumulation, as occurred with the Space Shuttle. In my experience, having personally developed extremely complex technology systems, it is critical that the number of people determining requirements be kept very small and consist of only the most talented and experienced personnel. Otherwise, one may be faced with requirements that are easily addressed individually, but not combined. Asking that a product serve as either a floor wax or a dessert topping is fine, but not both at the same time. It won’t be a tasty dish.
Recommendations for how NASA and the DOD can support emerging U.S. launch companies.
Okay. Number one, buy an early launch.
Although our launch vehicle has been an entirely private development, the DOD has been very supportive by purchasing the first flight. Here we would like to express our thanks to Air Force Space Command, the Force Transformation group in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the Naval Research Laboratory. Our country should be proud of those organizations and what they are doing to strengthen our capabilities in space.
To date, there has been limited dialogue with SpaceX initiated by the launch vehicle procurement office of NASA. This may be a function, historically, of the Code M office believing that they have no mandate to foster new U.S. launch providers. We recommend that this be established as an explicit goal and that NASA offer to buy the first, or at least an early launch, of a new vehicle. A promising sign is the funding allocation in the proposed NASA budget, referred to as the Small Payload Launch Initiative.
All right. Number two, streamline the regulatory process.
Obtaining approval to launch from the government ranges is a very complex process. Once SpaceX has completed this process for the Falcon, we will work with the Air Force to provide recommendations for how it can be streamlined for other emerging launch providers. This will not benefit SpaceX, as we already will have had our approval. We will do it simply because it is a good thing for our country, and the cause of space exploration will be greater served.
Number three, increase and extend the use of prizes.
The strategy of offering prizes for achievements in space technology can pay enormous dividends. History is replete with examples of prizes spurring great achievements, such as the Orteig Prize, famously won by Charles Lindbergh, and the longitude prize for ocean navigation. The subjectivity and error of proposal evaluation is removed, and the solution may be, in a way and from a company, that no one ever expected. We strongly endorse and urge Congress to support and extend the proposed Centennial Prizes put forward in the recent NASA budget. No dollar spent on space research will yield a greater value for the American people than those prizes.
What unique capabilities might emerging launch providers offer to NASA and the DOD? Well, number one, reliability. Current launch vehicles are considered to be “reliable” if their failure rate is only one in fifty. In any other mode of transport, this would be considered outrageously unreliable. New companies might ultimately provide reliability levels more comparable with airline transportation.
In the case of SpaceX, we believe that our second-generation vehicle, in particular, the Falcon V, will provide a factor of ten improvement in propulsion reliability. Falcon V will be the first U.S. launch vehicle since the Saturn V Moon rocket that can complete its mission even if an engine fails in flight, like almost all commercial aircraft.
Number two, cost. Citing an inability to sell rockets commercially, the incumbent launch providers are dramatically increasing their prices, forcing NASA and the DOD to do fewer missions while paying more and more. The effect is material, severe, and gets worse every year. For a given budget, this obviously results in being forced to cancel missions that might otherwise have flown. Apart from public relations, there is no practical difference between a mission that was canceled for cost reasons and one that failed for other reasons. Either way, you have lost the mission.
In contrast, the SpaceX launch vehicles are commercially competitive worldwide in price and are only a fraction of the cost of our U.S. competitors. Moreover, we expect to decrease our prices in real, if not absolute terms every year.
Factoring in overhead, as anyone could tell by visiting our headquarters, SpaceX can provide a launch vehicle at half the price of both Boeing or Lockheed. We have made significant strides in each of the technical cost drivers, which I would be happy to address in the question period.
Number three, responsiveness. If space assets are needed to cover a particular geography or replace an unexpected loss of coverage, they can not be deployed in time with the existing launch providers. Emerging launch vehicle companies can provide, and dramatically improve, response time.
Four, flight environment. Existing rockets provide a terrible flight environment for satellites that is extreme in noise, vibration, shock, and g loading. These factors drive much of a satellite’s design, despite the fact that it sees these loads for only the first 10 to 15 minutes required to reach orbit. For the remaining years of life, being in microgravity, the satellite sees essentially zero load.
New launch vehicles, like the Falcon, provide a much better flight environment, thus making the satellite design easier and the satellite itself more likely to reach orbit.
Thank you.
