The US Space Force announced today, Wednesday March 26, that it has certified United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Rocket for their National Security missions.
"Assured access to space is a core function of the Space Force and a critical element of national security," said Brig. Gen. Panzenhagen, program executive officer for Assured Access to Space, in a news release. "Vulcan certification adds launch capacity, resiliency, and flexibility needed by our nation’s most critical space-based systems."
This marks the end of a multi-year process to achieve this milestone, which
can only happen after the development and at least one successful test flight,
but generally two successful flights. Before the first test flight,
an explosion of the upper stage on a test stand
while being tested in northern Alabama on March 29, 2023, delayed the first
flight of Vulcan by several months. Then,
in October 2024, during the second Cert flight of the rocket, a nozzle on one of the
Vulcan's two side-mounted boosters failed. The mission still met all of its goals but watching an engine nozzle fall off in flight has an effect on confidence.
This nozzle issue, more than five months ago, compounded the extensive paperwork needed to certify Vulcan for the US Department of Defense's most sensitive missions. The military has several options for companies to certify their rockets depending on the number of flights completed, which could be two, three, or more. The fewer the flights, the more paperwork and review that must be done. For Vulcan, this process entailed:
- 52 certification criteria
- more than 180 discrete tasks
- 2 certification flight demonstrations
- 60 payload interface requirement verifications
- 18 subsystem design and test reviews
- 114 hardware and software audits
It seems that the indented paragraph (not the bulleted items just above this) implies that they might have been able to reduce that workload by doing a third certification flight but perhaps didn't have another Vulcan planned for it, so not in inventory.
You might recall that last year, a senior Air Force official expressed concern about ULA's launch rate and their ability to scale up its manufacturing capabilities and reach a high cadence of launches.
Before this year, Bruno said the company aimed to launch two dozen rockets in 2025 (a mix of Atlases and Vulcans), but has since reduced that estimate to about a dozen. Even this number seems aspirational should Vulcan not fly its initial mission before this summer.
While both CEO Bruno and other company officials have said that it would be doable after the certification process is complete, so now, it's time to find out. In the article about first quarter launches on Friday the 21st the only ULA launch was an Atlas V listed simply as "No Earlier Than 1st Quarter 2025." We're just about done with the first quarter, but April still seems possible. This will be followed by the first two Vulcan national security launches, USSF-106 and USSF-87. According to the Space Force, the first of these could occur during the coming "summer." It seems they're unlikely to launch a dozen this year. Unless they have a large inventory of Atlas Vs and the payloads.
Vulcan's Cert-2 Flight Liftoff, October 4, 2024. Image Credit: United Launch Alliance
I. used to work in Old Town 3 where ULA built the fuel tanks for one or some of their rockets and there were probably not more than 12 guys working the entire production floor going jig to jig to bend metal and then weld it. I didn't really see them expanding that capability and then I watched the Vulcan production and from what I saw it was the same sort of production LOE. I don't really think it is all that scalable without a major cash infusion.
ReplyDeleteThe Space Force has to have more than one launch company even if one or more of the companies can not make too many launches in a year. This is more for appearances sake than anything else. SpaceX is the leader in launch capability and no other company is there yet though some of the start ups may be there in a few years. ULA is "Old Space" and does not understand the new pressures they must work under.
DeleteSo, let's get the Dreamchaser to orbit, already!!
ReplyDeleteI must admit, I don't recall ever seeing a nozzle fall off any other rocket in history. It certainly isn't a confidence booster.
ReplyDeleteYeah, me either. But we can rest assured they understand what happened and we'll never see it again! For a moment there, I rolled my eyes so far I almost tore a muscle.
DeleteMy eye muscles fell out years ago.
DeleteGeesum crow! Would be cheaper simpler and reliable just to buy some freakin' Falcons. WTF is wrong with these retards? Its becoming increasingly embarrassing, humiliating in the technological sense, to be an American. These dumbasses are entrenched like ticks on a hound dog. While everyone with any common sense in the aerospace business is building up recoverable launch vehicles these worthies are retrograding to the 60's tech state of the art. National security? More like priorities of National Nepotism and special interests. Yeah thats the ticket, re-design the broken wheel.
ReplyDeleteULA has a novel idea to try to achieve re-use. Instead of recovering the booster, they plan to eject the engines and just recover them. If I'm recalling correctly, they ejecting them with some sort of parachute, but I don't know if it's each engine gets its own 'chute, or somehow it drops all four as some sort of module. Admittedly, the engines cost the most of all the booster's pieces, but it sure seems like a bad trade off to my way of looking at it. What about all those pipes that need to be detached? What about all the time, metal and labor that makes the rest of the booster?
DeleteGack! "they ejecting them...," is "they plan on ejecting them..."
DeleteGee, that's what NASA was looking to do with later generations of Saturn launch vehicles. Toss the tanks and rescue the engines. Using parachutes or balloon/parachutes called ballutes. But, no...
DeleteAriane is also talking about recovering the engine section only of the Ariane 6. But don't expect it to happen anytime soon as they've only been contemplating it for as long as the Ariane 6 was being developed.
Understand that ULA only has so many RD-180 engines, and is not permitted to buy any more from Russia.
ReplyDelete