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United Launch Alliance Launched Its New Vulcan Rocket

United Launch Alliance (ULA) has been working on a secretive new rocket program for a while now, and they’ve finally settled on a name — it’s the Vulcan. The announcement date seemed planned to take some wind out of SpaceX’s sails, as the company was supposed to launch a rocket yesterday. That Falcon 9 mission was scrubbed because of weather
, but in a few years we could all be waiting for clouds to clear for a ULA Vulcan to launch.
ULA is a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing formed in December 2006 to provide commercial launch services to the Department of Defense and NASA. The company has been working on a number of government contracts over the years, but all of its launches have been done with pre-existing Atlas V and Delta IV Heavy rockets. The Vulcan will be ULA’s first completely in-house rocket design, akin to the SpaceX Falcon 9 — though the two will be very different vehicles.
So why go to the trouble of designing a new rocket? First is price competition: SpaceX has succeeded in reducing the cost of reaching orbit as it refined the Falcon 9’s design. SpaceX has repeatedly complained about the contracts ULA is awarded by the US government, which it says are far too generous to ULA. In response, ULA is in the process of restructuring its launch program in hopes of slashing costs by half. Another concern has been the Russian RD-180 engines that are used on the first-stage Atlas V booster. With the recent sanctions against Russia, ULA can’t continue using these engines.
The exact details of the Vulcan rocket are still up in the air, but we know it’s going to come in two parts. The lower stage is going to be designed first, and will likely be powered by a pair of innovative BE-4 liquefied natural gas main engines designed by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space firm. The Blue Origin engines include the ability to recycle waste propellants to generate electricity. If those engines aren’t ready in time, the first launches might run on Aerojet Rocketdyne AR-1 kerosene engines. Either way, the Russian engines are out.
ULA plans to introduce some reusable aspects to its new rocket, though nothing as grandiose as SpaceX’s vertical takeoff and landing system. The current plan is to make the engines and other expensive components detachable, allowing them to separate from the tanks and parachute back to Earth after use.
The second part of the Vulcan program will be the development of an upper stage called the Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage (ACES). This part of the Vulcan program is more mysterious. It will rely on balloon tanks fitted with between one and four engines of an unannounced design. It will be able to take payloads into higher orbits than existing upper stages.
Vulcan beat out names like “Eagle” and the overly patriotic “Freedom.” Vulcan was added as an option after the voting began, and probably won because of the recent passing of Leonard Nimoy, who played the original Vulcan character Spock on Star Trek. Yes, Vulcan was also a Roman god, but c’mon. We know why it won. Vulcan will have its first launch in 2019 and could one day carry the Orion manned capsule into orbit.

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