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End of an era: Final Delta IV heavy rocket carries NROL-70 on historic mission

92 points by nabilhat 2y ago

geostupid 2y ago
Who can't love the commemorative poster as well!! https://www.nro.gov/Portals/135/Images/Social%20Media%20graphics/10308_NROL-70_Poster_FINAL2_11x17.pdf?ver=Z2z4eOrY_aZT2cI8cAw9Ow%3D%3D https://www.nro.gov/Portals/135/Images/Social%20Media%20grap...
shreezus 2y ago
This article sounds like it was written by ChatGPT. That said, it's wild we were still using expendable rockets like Delta IV Heavy when SpaceX offerings are objectively better & cheaper. What SpaceX has done for the industry is nothing short of incredible.
- Rebelgecko 2y ago
  I think that's a bit overly reductionist. This launch cost about $150m (granted, without competition from SpaceX it probably would've been much pricier). I think the going rate for a Falcon Heavy is around $120m. Not a huge difference, and it's very possible that changing the mission requirements to work with Falcon Heavy would cost more than $30m. In the past SpaceX had limitations like no vertical integration, narrower fairing, limitations with higher orbits, shorter time limits between engine burns, less accuracy in some orbits, etc. I haven't followed the launch industry as much lately so maybe thats not true anymore, but I think those things were still true when this launch was purchased ~5 years ago
  - martythemaniak 2y ago
    Wikipedia says NRO launches are $440m, so the price difference is really really big, which is the reason why this is the last launch - not even the US Government has that kinda cash for launches. The other reason is there's a lag of several years between when a capability is established (Falcon Heavy) and when large customers can take advantage of it. For example, we really shouldn't expect Starship to make a dent in way satellites and telescopes are designed and built until the 2030s.
    - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
      Does that Wikipedia figure include the satellite?
      - subatomicspace 2y ago
        The figure would be for just the launch itself (however accurate it may be). Satellite costs for these big missions would be in the "multi-hundreds of millions of dollars" range.
    - icegreentea2 2y ago
      Delta IV is notoriously expensive, but USG has plenty of DoD cash for expendable launches in general. The next block (phase 2) NSSL launches are 60% ULA Vulcan. We'll see what phase 3 looks like. I suspect it'll be far more weighted towards SpaceX to try to give ULA a kick in the pants. DoD and USG learned through the 90s-now how screwy things get when you don't have enough competition or you can't spread your money evenly amongst vendors. They will spend the money now and indefinitely to assure they can get to space when they want to, how they want to. That doesn't mean they're happy about it though. I'm sure they'd love if everyone was as affordable as SpaceX.
    - Rebelgecko 2y ago
      I think Wiki is wrong, IIRC this was part of a block buy of three launches for $450 million
      - lern_too_spel 2y ago
        Yes, Wikipedia says $2.2 billion for 5 launches, but the reference says $1.18 billion for 5 launches, where NROL-70 was part of a three launch buy for $467.5 million. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Delta_IV_Heavy_launches https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Delta_IV_Heavy_launc...
        zaphoyd 2y ago
        the reference says $1.18 billion just for "launch operation costs" that doesn't include the hardware. Farther down the source cites the hardware + operations as $2.2B/5 launches
  - numpad0 2y ago
    Is SpaceX running out of patience with slow, or near nonexistent growth of so-called launch market?
    - dotnet00 2y ago
      They have their own launch market keeping them busy. Also, even without Starlink, there has been growth in the launch market, it just happens that with modern electronics, most satellites don't need to be very large, and there are a few sets of orbits most of them want to go to. So you can just have a regularly scheduled trip to an orbit and absorb a lot of the demand in one launch.
    - throwaway48476 2y ago
      The problem is satellites take a long time to manufacture, upwards of 10 years, and everything is very mass optimized. The industry is too slowly adapting to cheaper more frequent launches.
- perihelions 2y ago
  The point of overpaying on the 2nd-best choice is that it maintains an independent backup if the 1st-best disappears suddenly. The client (DoD) is willing to pay for that insurance: they do not want a multi-year downtime interval they're unable to launch military hardware. (This isn't an anti-SpaceX thing, really: the dual-provider system (Atlas/Delta) long predates them). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Space_Launch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Space_Launch (And besides, these satellites are orders of magnitude more expensive than their launch vehicle! The NRO's budget alone is around $10 billion per year).
  - walrus01 2y ago
    If you stop building anything for long enough you lose the capability to do it. There's reasons why the DoD wants to maintain at least two contractors, so I agree with your point here. As an example when the UK built the first Astute class submarine about ten years ago they ran into a huge number of delays and technical issues because everyone who had been involved in their previous nuclear submarine construction program in the early to mid 1980s had retired or moved on to new things.
wffurr 2y ago
Missing the most important piece of info about any NRO launch, the mission patch! Meow! https://www.nro.gov/portals/135/assets/img/L-70_Snow-Leopard_1920px.png https://www.nro.gov/portals/135/assets/img/L-70_Snow-Leopard...
- dylan604 2y ago
  Is it just me, but I feel like this being an NRO patch that the placement of the stars isn't just a designer's choice but potentially some cryptic meaning. If not, how boring!
  - daniel_reetz 2y ago
    Look up Trevor Paglen's book "I could tell you but then you would have to be destroyed by me". It's a collection of mission patches along with some interpretation as to the meaning and placement of symbols. Fascinating stuff.
  - coolspot 2y ago
    These patches are allowed to leak exactly 0 bits of meaningful non-public information about the payload.
  - seo-speedwagon 2y ago
    My guess: there’s 3 stars that are brighter, and the cat is shown with 3 legs, so it could be part of a constellation of 3 satellites. The swoop of the tail could indicate a molyina orbit. Generally the orbit and where these things are in the sky can, and are, tracked even by hobbyists so that’s not particularly juicy, imo
- sandworm101 2y ago
  That isn't a real patch, more of a mission logo. The details are too small. The pink nose, if actually in patch form, would stand out as a pink dot in the middle of a blurry cat. Fyi, military patches look best when using lines with fixed-width. Anything pointy or jagged doesn't translate well into stitched thread. Avoid shadows too. Yes, there are some all-plastic patches that are carved into 3d shapes but those are evil. Real patches are thread over velcro.
dang 2y ago
We changed the URL from https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/End_of_an_Era_Final_Delta_IV_Heavy_Rocket_Carries_NROL_70_on_Historic_Mission_999.html https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/End_of_an_Era_Final_Delta... to an article that seems to have more background information. Is there a better article available? If so, we can change it again.
- walrus01 2y ago
  I don't think you'll get a whole lot more info other than "this is the mission patch, it's named NROL-70, and it was obviously big and heavy enough to launch on a Delta IV heavy". What the payload is will be totally unknown to people who don't have clearance so there isn't anything for tech journalists/websites/bloggers to write about, other than their own speculation.
- xoa 2y ago
  >Is there a better article available? If so, we can change it again. Ars has pretty solid space coverage and I think their article [0] is fairly extensive with a few more technical details on aspects specific to DIVH. Also not related to changing the article, but first comment there links a pretty cool little movie [1] (yes absolutely PR completely with dramatic music but still real footage and DIVH is a damn cool, however expensive, rocket) ULA did on the NROL-91 launch which really was dramatic. ---- 0: https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/03/the-delta-iv-heavy-a-rocket-whose-time-has-come-and-gone-will-fly-once-more/ https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/03/the-delta-iv-heavy-a-r... 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXifOiq56uw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXifOiq56uw

92 points by nabilhat 2y ago

Who can't love the commemorative poster as well!! https://www.nro.gov/Portals/135/Images/Social%20Media%20graphics/10308_NROL-70_Poster_FINAL2_11x17.pdf?ver=Z2z4eOrY_aZT2cI8cAw9Ow%3D%3D https://www.nro.gov/Portals/135/Images/Social%20Media%20grap...

shreezus 2y ago

This article sounds like it was written by ChatGPT. That said, it's wild we were still using expendable rockets like Delta IV Heavy when SpaceX offerings are objectively better & cheaper. What SpaceX has done for the industry is nothing short of incredible.

Rebelgecko 2y ago
I think that's a bit overly reductionist. This launch cost about $150m (granted, without competition from SpaceX it probably would've been much pricier). I think the going rate for a Falcon Heavy is around $120m. Not a huge difference, and it's very possible that changing the mission requirements to work with Falcon Heavy would cost more than $30m. In the past SpaceX had limitations like no vertical integration, narrower fairing, limitations with higher orbits, shorter time limits between engine burns, less accuracy in some orbits, etc. I haven't followed the launch industry as much lately so maybe thats not true anymore, but I think those things were still true when this launch was purchased ~5 years ago
- martythemaniak 2y ago
  Wikipedia says NRO launches are $440m, so the price difference is really really big, which is the reason why this is the last launch - not even the US Government has that kinda cash for launches. The other reason is there's a lag of several years between when a capability is established (Falcon Heavy) and when large customers can take advantage of it. For example, we really shouldn't expect Starship to make a dent in way satellites and telescopes are designed and built until the 2030s.
  - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    Does that Wikipedia figure include the satellite?
    - subatomicspace 2y ago
      The figure would be for just the launch itself (however accurate it may be). Satellite costs for these big missions would be in the "multi-hundreds of millions of dollars" range.
  - icegreentea2 2y ago
    Delta IV is notoriously expensive, but USG has plenty of DoD cash for expendable launches in general. The next block (phase 2) NSSL launches are 60% ULA Vulcan. We'll see what phase 3 looks like. I suspect it'll be far more weighted towards SpaceX to try to give ULA a kick in the pants. DoD and USG learned through the 90s-now how screwy things get when you don't have enough competition or you can't spread your money evenly amongst vendors. They will spend the money now and indefinitely to assure they can get to space when they want to, how they want to. That doesn't mean they're happy about it though. I'm sure they'd love if everyone was as affordable as SpaceX.
  - Rebelgecko 2y ago
    I think Wiki is wrong, IIRC this was part of a block buy of three launches for $450 million
    - lern_too_spel 2y ago
      Yes, Wikipedia says $2.2 billion for 5 launches, but the reference says $1.18 billion for 5 launches, where NROL-70 was part of a three launch buy for $467.5 million. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Delta_IV_Heavy_launches https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Delta_IV_Heavy_launc...
      - zaphoyd 2y ago
        the reference says $1.18 billion just for "launch operation costs" that doesn't include the hardware. Farther down the source cites the hardware + operations as $2.2B/5 launches
- numpad0 2y ago
  Is SpaceX running out of patience with slow, or near nonexistent growth of so-called launch market?
  - dotnet00 2y ago
    They have their own launch market keeping them busy. Also, even without Starlink, there has been growth in the launch market, it just happens that with modern electronics, most satellites don't need to be very large, and there are a few sets of orbits most of them want to go to. So you can just have a regularly scheduled trip to an orbit and absorb a lot of the demand in one launch.
  - throwaway48476 2y ago
    The problem is satellites take a long time to manufacture, upwards of 10 years, and everything is very mass optimized. The industry is too slowly adapting to cheaper more frequent launches.
perihelions 2y ago
The point of overpaying on the 2nd-best choice is that it maintains an independent backup if the 1st-best disappears suddenly. The client (DoD) is willing to pay for that insurance: they do not want a multi-year downtime interval they're unable to launch military hardware. (This isn't an anti-SpaceX thing, really: the dual-provider system (Atlas/Delta) long predates them). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Space_Launch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Space_Launch (And besides, these satellites are orders of magnitude more expensive than their launch vehicle! The NRO's budget alone is around $10 billion per year).
- walrus01 2y ago
  If you stop building anything for long enough you lose the capability to do it. There's reasons why the DoD wants to maintain at least two contractors, so I agree with your point here. As an example when the UK built the first Astute class submarine about ten years ago they ran into a huge number of delays and technical issues because everyone who had been involved in their previous nuclear submarine construction program in the early to mid 1980s had retired or moved on to new things.

wffurr 2y ago

Missing the most important piece of info about any NRO launch, the mission patch! Meow! https://www.nro.gov/portals/135/assets/img/L-70_Snow-Leopard_1920px.png https://www.nro.gov/portals/135/assets/img/L-70_Snow-Leopard...

dylan604 2y ago
Is it just me, but I feel like this being an NRO patch that the placement of the stars isn't just a designer's choice but potentially some cryptic meaning. If not, how boring!
- daniel_reetz 2y ago
  Look up Trevor Paglen's book "I could tell you but then you would have to be destroyed by me". It's a collection of mission patches along with some interpretation as to the meaning and placement of symbols. Fascinating stuff.
- coolspot 2y ago
  These patches are allowed to leak exactly 0 bits of meaningful non-public information about the payload.
- seo-speedwagon 2y ago
  My guess: there’s 3 stars that are brighter, and the cat is shown with 3 legs, so it could be part of a constellation of 3 satellites. The swoop of the tail could indicate a molyina orbit. Generally the orbit and where these things are in the sky can, and are, tracked even by hobbyists so that’s not particularly juicy, imo
sandworm101 2y ago
That isn't a real patch, more of a mission logo. The details are too small. The pink nose, if actually in patch form, would stand out as a pink dot in the middle of a blurry cat. Fyi, military patches look best when using lines with fixed-width. Anything pointy or jagged doesn't translate well into stitched thread. Avoid shadows too. Yes, there are some all-plastic patches that are carved into 3d shapes but those are evil. Real patches are thread over velcro.

dang 2y ago

We changed the URL from https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/End_of_an_Era_Final_Delta_IV_Heavy_Rocket_Carries_NROL_70_on_Historic_Mission_999.html https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/End_of_an_Era_Final_Delta... to an article that seems to have more background information. Is there a better article available? If so, we can change it again.

walrus01 2y ago
I don't think you'll get a whole lot more info other than "this is the mission patch, it's named NROL-70, and it was obviously big and heavy enough to launch on a Delta IV heavy". What the payload is will be totally unknown to people who don't have clearance so there isn't anything for tech journalists/websites/bloggers to write about, other than their own speculation.
xoa 2y ago
>Is there a better article available? If so, we can change it again. Ars has pretty solid space coverage and I think their article [0] is fairly extensive with a few more technical details on aspects specific to DIVH. Also not related to changing the article, but first comment there links a pretty cool little movie [1] (yes absolutely PR completely with dramatic music but still real footage and DIVH is a damn cool, however expensive, rocket) ULA did on the NROL-91 launch which really was dramatic. ---- 0: https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/03/the-delta-iv-heavy-a-rocket-whose-time-has-come-and-gone-will-fly-once-more/ https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/03/the-delta-iv-heavy-a-r... 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXifOiq56uw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXifOiq56uw