It's looking like they'll finish 2025 with one.
Around this time last year, officials at United Launch Alliance projected 2025 would be their busiest year ever. Tory Bruno, ULA’s chief executive, told reporters the company would launch as many as 20 missions this year, with roughly an even split between the legacy Atlas V launcher and its replacement—the Vulcan rocket.
Now, it’s likely that ULA will close out 2025 with six flights—five with the Atlas V and just one with the Vulcan rocket the company is so eager accelerate into service. Six flights would make 2025 the busiest launch year for ULA since 2022, but it falls well short of the company’s forecast.
Last week, ULA announced their final launch of 2025 will be December 15th, now set for 3:15AM at SLC-41. Amazon just renamed their Kuiper internet constellation as Amazon LEO, and this mission is LA-04. This will be an Atlas V. Their one and only Vulcan launch was August 12th - three months ago.
...The rocket deployed an experimental military navigation satellite and at least one additional classified payload into orbit. This mission was the third flight of the Vulcan rocket, and its first national security mission after the Space Force formally certified ULA’s new launch vehicle.
United Launch Alliance is one of the Space Force’s two certified launch providers for the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program and the military’s most critical space missions, delivering satellites to orbit for reconnaissance, navigation, communications, and early warning. SpaceX, the other provider, has launched its Falcon 9 rocket fleet 151 times so far this year, including six times for the Space Force’s NSSL program.
Read that last sentence again. ULA launched one Vulcan for an NSSL launch; SpaceX launched six NSSL missions - out of 151 Falcon 9 launches. So far. The next Falcon 9 will be Friday afternoon (1:18 EST but from Vandenberg) - a Transporter ride share mission.
Concerns about the Vulcan rocket are nothing new at the Pentagon. In May 2024, the defense official then in charge of procuring space hardware wrote a letter to Boeing and Lockheed Martin—ULA’s corporate parents—outlining his concerns about the Vulcan rocket’s entry into service. “Currently there is military satellite capability sitting on the ground due to Vulcan delays,” wrote Frank Calvelli, the assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition under the Biden administration.
The low launch rate and issues they've had all sound relatively typical for a new rocket, but that only raises the question of why Tory Bruno thought they would be different and get to 10 this year.
In October of 2024, the first stage of ULA's third Vulcan rocket sports a different paint scheme than the first two missions, with solid red replacing a red flame pattern. Image credit: United Launch Alliance
ULA’s outfitting of a new rocket assembly hangar and a second mobile launch platform for the Vulcan rocket at Cape Canaveral has also seen delays. With so many launches in its backlog, ULA needs capacity to stack and prepare at least two rockets in different buildings at the same time. Eventually, the company’s goal is to launch at an average clip of twice per month.
On Monday, ground crews at Cape Canaveral moved the second Vulcan launch platform to the company’s launch pad for fit checks and “initial technical testing.” This is a good sign that the company is moving closer to ramping up the Vulcan launch cadence, but it’s now clear it won’t happen this year.
All we can conclude is that they're moving in the right direction, just not fast enough.
“Currently there is military satellite capability sitting on the ground due to Vulcan delays,”
ReplyDeleteThis is becuase his chain of command awarded a contract to ULA that it could not fulfill. IIRC, they awarded ULA 60% of their launch budget.
qIf they really wanted those satellites in orbit, all they'd have to do is call SpaceX and ask for launch dates.
Sigh. ULA has hired a lot of NASA engineers. Seems the NASA engineers brought over the culture of fail from NASA. 10% success rate? That's abysmal, even for a government contractor.
ReplyDeleteScrew it. Cancel all contracts, make ULA pay for further testing and only give them an actual launch contract when they have a stacked rocket tested and ready to integrate with a payload.
Seriously, they all use universal launch busses, right? So Satellite A100 is going to be ready to launch in two weeks, put the launch contract out, whomever has a stacked and ready launch vehicle ready gets to bid on the launch. No launch vehicle ready, then no launch contract for you.
And if you get a contract and suddenly your launch vehicle 'becomes unready,' well, no money for you, contract stopped, bid out the payload again.
This bupkis has to stop. We're throwing away way too much money for nothing and not even getting chicks for free, having to pay for those, too. Throwing away too much money for what should be normal and common-place now. Like the now-gone Delta and soon-to-be-gone Atlas, how long were they running and ULA treated everyone like they were custom-made, hand-crafted, rolled-on-the-thighs-of-virgins rather than assembled on assembly lines like they actually were and are.
Yes, space is hard, for the first 10-20 maybe, less hard for the 21st-50th. By 100? Come on man, that's ridiculous.
Yet another place SpaceX is dominating the field in. They understand line assembly.
I mean, during WWII, Ford produced a B-24 every hour on the hour and that plane was more complicated than building a fly-once rocket, which we've known how to successfully do, except for the Thor rocket, since the late 1950s.
Past time for ULA, BO, Boeing, Lock-Mart and all the other legacy or run-like-legacy aerospace companies to finally break the mold and go lean and mean.
Geez, the P-80 was designed and delivered flight-ready in 143 days, with Lockheed having to get their heads around how to do jets. And there weren't much teething problems and that plane and the trainer based upon it flew in service for 50 years in US service and 80 years overall elsewhere.
And it's not like the intel learned building Atlas and Delta wasn't transferable to Vulcan. Geez...
"No launch vehicle ready, then no launch contract for you." Pretty much how every other freight company on earth works.
DeleteAnd that is really where we are in the space race. We're past, or should be past, the 'get there first' phase and we're now in, or should be in, the 'space truckers' phase.
DeleteSpaceX currently has a "lock" on launches because they approach the Space Industry as a business, NOT a jobs program. Musk wants to go to Mars, his companies he starts are all going to contribute to that goal. He knows what he wants and now exactly how to get there. That means he has to make space availability cheaper and faster and BETTER if he wants to achieve his goal of putting people/civilizations on Mars. It helps to get rich along the way.
ReplyDeleteGone are the old ways, it will take time for them to die, unfortunately, because Congress still has a stranglehold on the Space Industry. This too will pass. It will not be missed.