I hope you are having an enjoyable weekend.

Week 9 Notes are uploaded. Discussion Board assignment is given below.

Discussion Board
Question

Review most current issues of business/management publications (e.g.

Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, BusinessWeek, Forbes, etc.) and
find an article or news report related to this weeks topics (see Class
Notes) and
- Briefly summarize the article
- Offer your opinions and comments
- Discuss relevance to this weeks topics
- Include complete source (provide full web link)
Also, comment on at least one classmates post

Assigned to
ALL

We will review Quiz 2 results during chat sessions. Do not hesitate to send an email if you have
any question or require clarification. Thank you.
Prof Mehta

How to Catch a Rocket With a Helicopter

Boeing-Lockheed venture proposes alternative to SpaceX
SpaceX launched a rocket on Tuesday but it failed to land safely on an ocean barge. Photo: scott
audette/Reuters By Doug Cameron WSJ April 14, 2015 7:48 p.m. ET
To bring down high costs, the Pentagons main space-launch provider is proposing a technique
that sounds like a mixture of science fiction and circus act: catching rockets as they fall back to
earth with an airborne hook so they can be reused.
United Launch Alliance LLC surprised many in the rocket industry this week with its plan,
which would involve large helicopters with extendible booms to snare spent engines as they
parachute down from the edge of space after delivering their payload.
ULA, a joint venture between Boeing Co. BA -0.66 % and Lockheed Martin Corp. LMT -0.48 %
, is competing with Elon Musks rocket venture, Space Exploration Technology Corp., which has
shaken up the launch industry over the past five years with its low-cost rockets.
SpaceX already is testing its own plan to reuse the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket, by using the
engines to bring the first stage back to a gentle landing on floating barge in the Atlantic Ocean.
On Tuesday, however, it narrowly failed in its latest test of that system, with the rocket stage
reaching the barge but landing too hard to survive, according to a message on Mr. Musks official
Twitter account.
The competing efforts are designed to solve the toughest challenge facing rocket scientists:
cutting stubbornly high costs with reusable rockets. Currently, there are no reusable big rockets,
as their first stages, packed with sophisticated electronics and guidance hardware, typically burn
up while falling back to earth or return too damaged to be used again.
ULA started evaluating ways a decade ago to land rocket stages softly on a pad or parachute
them into the sea for recovery. It decided the cost was outweighed by potential damage if they
landed in the sea or heavily on the pad, making them more costly to refurbish than building a
new one.
But SpaceXs efforts suggested the technical and economic barriers are now more surmountable.
ULAs new plan, announced on Monday, represents a change of heart, though its approach is less
ambitious and wont be ready until 2024. It is focusing on retrieving only the two main engines
of its planned new Vulcan rocket, which account for 65% of its total cost$100 million to $200
million, depending on the load being carried. The rest of the first stage, including the fuel tanks,
would continue to be jettisoned into the sea.
The joint venture says it has tested its system with smaller objects, using a helicopter to snare
first a sky diver and then a 750-pound weight. Now it needs to scale this up to handle the
combined 25,000-pound weight of the Vulcans two engines.

Under ULAs plan, those boosters would separate from the rest of the stage at a height of
750,000 feet, slowed from hypersonic speed by an inflatable heat shield. They would then be
steered toward the waiting helicopter by special parachutes equipped with GPS trackers.
Tuesdays outcome for SpaceX underscores the technical challenges facing reusable rockets, and
the fact that success of such efforts may take longer than proponents have projected.
And catching the used engines is only part of the battle. Space experts said the tougher issue will
be refurbishing them, persuading customers they are ready to fly again and harvesting a whole
rocket.
Reusing the first stage is a good first step, but for major savings the question is how many times
can the engines be reused, said George Torres, a former industry executive and author of two
space books. For instance, the space shuttle reused its engines 10 times.
SpaceX says its Merlin engines can be used up to 40 times, though without a surge in demand for
launches, the cost of building each one would soar as it lost economies of scale.
ULA is confident its new Vulcan engine could be used several times, though its chief executive,
Tory Bruno, has said hes reluctant to push for a model where each is used for a dozen or more
launches.
Early designs for the space shuttle also included recovering more of the rocket after launch, and
efforts to recover and refurbish engines designed to be used as many as 55 times proved
problematic, and only managed 10 launches.
France and Germany this year said theyd revived research previously conducted with Russia on
retrieving and reusing rocket stages, but it wont be employed on the planned new Ariane 6
rocket due to fly in 2020. Similarly, the Boeing-built Space Launch System, a huge rocket
designed for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to ultimately send manned
missions beyond the moon into deep space, isnt being designed with reusability in mind.
Andy Pasztor contributed to this article.
Write to Doug Cameron at doug.cameron@wsj.com