Denver Post July 21, 2002
Lockheed on the line with new rocket
By Jennifer Beauprez
John Olin looks up at a giant hulk of copper-colored metal and nods his head.
"We put a lot of work into this," said Olin, a longtime mechanic, of the fuel tank of one of Lockheed Martin's new Atlas V rockets (view graphic).
A half dozen men, some clad in lab coats, linger around him and the tank. Some use giant wrenches to screw bolts into the aluminum cylinder, which measures 12.5 feet in diameter; others inspect the snaking rows of gauges and pipes along its side.
"A lot of hands went into this," Olin said. "But there's always that thought of, "What if we missed something?' "
Olin's work and that of 1,000 other Lockheed Martin employees will be put to the test next month when the company launches the first of its new line of Atlas V rockets on Aug. 12. The rocket, built in Colorado, is the culmination of a $1 billion investment and five years of meticulous work and planning.
The success or failure of the rocket launch could determine whether Lockheed Martin's Jefferson County space systems division wins the trust of its biggest and most vital customer - the U.S. government.
It will likely determine whether the division grows or shrinks and whether employees can maintain their enthusiasm for the project or even keep their jobs.
"The Atlas V represents the beginning of the next era," said Tom Marsh, the president of the Denver operations. "It's extremely critical to the launch business in Denver. For a lot of people, it's going to be 28 minutes' worth of sheer terror."
Lockheed faces tough odds and stiff competition. At least 80 percent of all first launches of new rockets either blow up or land in the wrong orbit, said Patrick French, an analyst with Frost & Sullivan.
Meanwhile, its chief competitor, Boeing Corp., is developing its own rocket, the Delta IV which analysts say should launch later this fall.
Both companies are vying for the business of a single key customer, the U.S. government, since most of the commercial buyers tanked with the rest of the economy.
Lockheed officials expected a different outlook when they started pouring money into the Atlas V five years ago. Dozens of telecommunications companies promised to put constellations of 400 satellites into space within the next 10 years. They would provide TV, phone and Internet services via those payloads.
Lockheed poured $300 million into building a mobile launch pad and launch complex in Florida specifically for the Atlas V rocket. It reconfigured its entire production line for the rocket and last spring retired the last of its Titan rockets, which had been in production since 1957.
The company sacrificed for the future. Operating profits in 1999 and 2000 plunged 60 percent, in part due to the $1 billion Atlas V investment.
The result: a rocket that uses 15,000 fewer parts than previous versions. It can be built in 10 months compared with 18 months. And it has twice the power as previous rockets, lifting 65,000 pounds, or the equivalent of nine elephants.
Today, the Atlas V may be powerful, but it doesn't have much to lift.
Most of those telecom companies that promised to build in the sky went belly up when financing dried up. The company was prepared to produce 20 of its new Atlas V rockets a year, but the market needs only seven.
Some analysts don't see a recovery in the commercial market until 2009.
The chief buyer now is the U.S. military, which, because of the war on terrorism, is expected to increase the demand for more government satellites for remote sensing, communications and global positioning systems.
Yet Boeing will be vying for the same contracts. If its own rocket goes off without a hitch, and Lockheed fails, then Boeing could easily win most of the U.S. government contracts, French said.
"The U.S. government in its ultimate wisdom could decide to go with one over the other, and the one that is not chosen will have to scale back its production," French said. "That inevitably means there will be a reduction in employees. It's a tough business."
Lockheed has already laid off or encouraged early retirement for 1,080 of its Colorado employees over the past two years. The company now employs 7,200 statewide.
So far, Boeing has a leg up in wooing the government. Since the Chicago company acquired McDonnell Douglas in 1997, it began winning most of the military launch contracts.
"Lockheed has gone from having three-fourths of government business to a quarter of the business," said John Pike, an analyst with GlobalSecurity.org. "It has been a compete reversal of fortune."
Lockheed employees promise that the new Atlas rocket is markedly better than previous rockets. About 85 percent of the software and hardware has passed test launches on older Atlas rockets.
"I've been on six first launches since I started 18 years ago," said Mark Early, a final production supervisor at Lockheed. "The Atlas V has been the smoothest (from production line to) first launches I've ever been on."
Nearly bouncing as he talked, Early's enthusiasm mirrored the inspirational banner hanging behind him in the vast final assembly warehouse scattered with unfinished rockets.
The banner reads "The Power to Lift a Nation."
Employees such as Early take their jobs and the rocket launches personally. And Lockheed depends on their loyalty and meticulous attention to detail at every step of the process.
The rocket was tested repeatedly. It was even submerged in giant vats of water to check for leaks.
Workers carefully placed the rocket on a tractor at midnight last February, and police escorted the covered truck on a route to the airport that avoided stoplights and low-hanging bridges.
Once in Florida, a new team of Lockheed workers spent seven months piecing together the rocket, checking wiring, testing the engine, hooking up electrical connections and reviewing hydraulics and fuel systems.
Last week, the company ran a "wet dress rehearsal," going through every step of the launch except liftoff to ensure each person knew how to react in any situation. The original July 29 launch was moved to Aug. 12 to retest a component.
Perfection is vital. A software glitch or a lose screw could send the $150 million rocket careening into the ocean. A single hair on a lens of the satellite could cause fatal malfunctions once it spun out into space.
"A failure can be devastating," said Ron Stearns, an aerospace analyst with Frost & Sullivan in San Jose, Calif. "It can cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars in investigation and redesign."
Rick Hansen remembers the disappointment that spread through the walls of Lockheed's production facility in 1998 when two of its Titan IV rockets failed to launch and another blew up because of software and mechanical glitches.
"You're sick. You're devastated," said Hansen, a production welder for 23 years. "You worry you're going to go through a living hell for a year, because of the research you'll have to do to find out why it happened. You revisit everything in detail."
Not long after the Titan mishaps, the $165 million Mars Climate Orbiter, built and controlled at Lockheed, burned up and disappeared because scientists at Lockheed and their counterparts at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California were measuring force in different ways.
Those losses tarnished Lockheed's superstar image in the defense business.
It lost key contracts and faced growing competition from overseas and at home.
Lockheed has managed to regain its credibility since. It won a $18 billion contract to build the military's Joint Strike Fighters last fall, and the space systems division went on to have 60 successful rocket launches.
"It's the highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows," said Lockheed's Marsh. "The launch is the report card. Everything you've done until then, you're going to get your grade that day."
Employees like Hansen who are farther down the totem pole are confident that the grade will be an A. They will watch the launch at the Jefferson County plant on closed-circuit TV.
"When you put your life into a thing like this, it's definitely a big thing," Hansen said. "There's no doubt it will be a success."
Copyright 2002 The Denver Post
