Keep the shuttle flying: Fwd: ULA Unveils America’s New Vulcan Rocket

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From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: April 14, 2015 at 9:37:41 PM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: ULA Unveils America's New Vulcan Rocket

United Launch Alliance Unveils America's New Rocket – Vulcan: Innovative Next Generation Launch System will Provide Country's Most Reliable, Affordable and Accessible Launch Service
Vulcan Name Chosen by America with more than 1 Million Online Votes Cast
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Colorado Springs, Colo., (April 13, 2015) -- United Launch Alliance (ULA) unveiled its Next Generation Launch System (NGLS) today at the 31st Space Symposium. The new rocket, Vulcan, will transform the future of space by making launch services more affordable and accessible. The NGLS brings together decades of experience on ULA's reliable Atlas and Delta vehicles, combining the best features of each to produce an all-new, American-made rocket that will enable mission success from low Earth orbit all the way to Pluto.

"More capabilities in space mean more capabilities here on earth," said Tory Bruno, president and CEO of United Launch Alliance. "Because the Next Generation Launch System will be the highest-performing, most cost-efficient rocket on the market, it will open up new opportunities for the nation's use of space. Whether it is scientific missions, medical advancements, national security or new economic opportunities for businesses, ULA's new Vulcan rocket is a game-changer in terms of creating endless possibilities in space."

To help give all Americans a chance to play a role in the future of space, last month ULA launched an online naming competition that allowed Americans to vote on their favorite name for the NGLS. More than one million votes were cast, and Vulcan was the top choice.

"As the company currently responsible for more than 70 percent of the nation's space launches, it is only fitting that America got to name the country's rocket of the future," added Bruno.

By streamlining the processes and rocket design, and developing a new all-American engine, ULA will continue to be the country's most innovative, cost-efficient and technically rigorous launch company, providing a wide range of services to a broad customer base – including the most critical U.S. government missions.

"ULA's precision and focus makes the remarkable seem routine. Our track record of 95 successful launches in less than nine years – an average of one launch per month – is unmatched in the industry. Our ability to deliver critical national security, scientific and commercial satellites into the correct orbit every time is filled with risks and challenges, and ULA has delivered every time. ULA's reliability is and will continue to be part of the mission," Tory Bruno concluded.

At today's news announcement, Bruno also unveiled the Sensible, Modular, Autonomous Return Technology (SMART) initiative, which will be introduced into NGLS and allow ULA to reuse the most expensive portion of the first stage – the booster main engines – via mid-air capture. This allows a controlled recovery environment providing the confidence needed to re-fly the hardware.

Step one of NGLS will consist of a single booster stage, the high-energy Centaur second stage and either a 4- or 5-meter-diameter payload fairing. Up to four solid rocket boosters (SRB) augment the lift off power of the 4-meter configuration, while up to six SRBs can be added to the 5-meter version.

In step two, the Centaur second stage will be replaced by the more powerful, innovative Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage (ACES), making the NGLS capability that of today's Delta IV Heavy rocket. ACES can execute almost unlimited burns, extending on-orbit operating time from hours to weeks.

Last year, ULA announced that it had partnered with Blue Origin, LLC, a privately funded aerospace company owned by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, to provide a cutting-edge engine for the NGLS while also providing a viable alternative to the Russian-made RD-180. This collaboration to fund the development of a new, U.S.-made BE-4 rocket engine, is part of the cost-reduction innovation for our customers. The BE-4 is designed for low recurring cost and will meet commercial and NASA requirements as well as those of the U.S. Air Force's Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program. The BE-4 uses low-cost liquid natural gas fuel and is designed for reuse.

With more than a century of combined heritage, United Launch Alliance is the nation's most experienced and reliable launch service provider. ULA has successfully delivered more than 90 satellites to orbit that provide critical capabilities for troops in the field, aid meteorologists in tracking severe weather, enable personal device-based GPS navigation and unlock the mysteries of our solar system.

For more information on ULA, visit the ULA website at www.ulalaunch.com.
Copyright © 2015 United Launch Alliance, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Artwork: ULA Vulcan rocket revealed
April 13, 2015 by Justin Ray
These are artist's concepts and press conference briefing slides from the United Launch Alliance unveiling of its new Vulcan rocket to debut in 2019.
Credit: ULA

Video: Animation of Vulcan launch
April 13, 2015 by Justin Ray
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cXQcyHNA6Mg

ULA chief explains reusability and innovation of new rocket
April 14, 2015 by Justin Ray
A sample illustration of mid-air recovery of main engine section. Credit: ULA
CAPE CANAVERAL — United Launch Alliance will salvage the main engines through a mid-air recovery plan and reuse them again aboard the company's new Vulcan rocket, saving 90 percent in booster propulsion costs, the company announced Monday.
It is dubbed SMART Reuse, or Sensible Modular Autonomous Return Technology, that will see the engine section disengage after staging is completed.
"We will cut them off, we will return them to the Earth using an advanced inflatable hypersonic heat shield and then … we will recover them in mid-air, bring them home to the factory, quickly recertify them and then plop them right under the next booster in line," said ULA President and CEO Tory Bruno.
"This will take up to 90 percent of the propulsion cost out of the booster. And this is just the beginning."
The engines represent a quarter of the first stage's overall weight and 65 percent of the booster cost, according to ULA.
"This is a distinctly separate approach from what other people are doing," Bruno said. "This allows us to avoid adding complex, expensive, heavy and performance-killing subsystems to a rocket in order to bring entire stages back that then experience complicated and expensive logistics to recover them. Instead, we took a systems engineering approach to what on the rocket is actually valuable."
A parafoil will be used to slow the descending engine package to a speed slow enough for a helicopter to pluck it out of the sky.
Depending on the launch trajectory, the helicopter will either deliver the engines back to the launch site or onto a waiting ship.
"This new rocket … is going to take the best parts of Delta and Atlas and combine them with new and advanced technology to provide a rocket that's not just reliable and certain as Atlas has been, but also much more powerful, higher performance, greater flexibility and significantly more affordable," Bruno said.
Powered by two Blue Origin BE-4 clean-burning, methane-fueled main engines, the Vulcan rocket will launch on 1.1 million pounds of thrust from either Cape Canaveral in Florida or Vandenberg Air Force Base in California starting in 2019.
"(Blue Origin) is going to bring into an American-built rocket the advanced oxygen-rich staged combustion engine cycle that has yet to be produced in the United States. Much higher efficiency, much higher performance. They will replace the venerable RD-180s," Bruno said.
ULA is monitoring Blue Origin's progress and has Aerojet Rocketdyne's AR-1 kerosene engine as a replacement option, if necessary.
The first stage booster is 20 percent more powerful than the same stage on Atlas. The RD-180 produced 860,000 pounds of thrust. Thew new stage also features stretched fuel tanks for more carrying capacity.
Up to six monolithic strap-on solid rocket boosters can be added to increase lift performance. Atlas could fly a maximum of only five.
"This booster is a significant improvement in performance, and truly is a conquerer of Earth's gravity well."
The existing high-energy Centaur upper stage will fly on Vulcan in the earliest years. A new, long-duration upper stage being developed to debut later will allow the new rocket to surpass the capability of the Delta 4-Heavy.
"We are going to take a giant leap forward in our upper stage, too. We are going to move to an advanced cryogenic upper stage, burning liquid oxygen and hydrogen," Bruno said.
"The exciting part is the Integrated Vehicle Fluids system, the ultimate in reuse. The thing that limits the performance of upper stage systems in launch vehicles is time. Time in space. … We will use an advanced internal combustion engine that will take those waste propellants and recycle them to repressurize our tanks, to generate electrical power and to provide control thrust and attitude thrust for this upper stage system.
"This completely changes everything. Not only do we collapse from three subsystems to one, simplified systems and lower costs, what it really does is a tremendous extension of our time on orbit. We are going to go from hours to weeks with this system. That will open up a whole universe of possibilities — we can carry multiple satellites into orbit, we can put them into different planes, and when we get done with that we can fly back to the space station for operations," Bruno said.
ULA is building the engine with Roush, the NASCAR team. "This upper stage really is a formula race car of space," Bruno quipped.
"This is an absolute thrilling time to be involved in space. At ULA, we are about to launch our 100th rocket later this summer," said Bruno.
"I came to ULA to transform our company and make space much more accessible than it ever has been before. This new rocket is a key part of that vision."

© 2015 Spaceflight Now Inc.

ULA's Vulcan Rocket To be Rolled out in Stages
by Mike Gruss — April 13, 2015
ULA CEO Tory Bruno unveils the company's proposed Vulcan rocket during an April 13 press conference at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs. Credit: Tom Kimmell for Space Foundation.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — United Launch Alliance unveiled an incremental approach to replace its workhorse Atlas 5 rocket, an ambitious path forward that ultimately would include a new second stage and, later, reusable first-stage engines that would be captured midair by helicopter after each mission.
The plan would provide a competitive alternative to SpaceX's low-cost Falcon 9 rocket but entails risk for ULA as it funds a significant development program for as many as nine years as its competition gains momentum.
Tory Bruno, ULA's president and chief executive, declined to detail the company's exact investment in the project but suggested that new rockets typically cost about $2 billion to develop, including the main engine. During an April 13 press conference on the eve the 31st Space Symposium here, he said that cost would be borne by ULA and its strategic partners, but that the company would not turn down government money if that becomes available.
The first step in the developing the newly named Vulcan rocket is developing a new first stage featuring the methane-fueled BE-4 engine by Blue Origin of Kent, Washington. ULA is also working with Aerojet Rocketdyne on the AR-1 engine, in case the BE-4 runs into delays.
The program is driven by the requirement to replace the Russian-built RD-180 engine that serves as the main powerplant for ULA's Atlas 5. Congress imposed a ban on future use of Russian engines in U.S. national security missions following Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine last year.
In addition to the new engine, the Vulcan's first stage would feature a stretch version of the tank used on ULA's Delta 4 rocket, which the company is phasing out in 2018 because it is too expensive. The second stage of the initial Vulcan version, slated to debut around 2019, would feature the same Centaur upper stage and fairing now used on the Atlas 5, Bruno said.
The Vulcan could be augmented by up to six solid rocket boosters, giving it greater lift capability than the largest version of the Atlas 5 but not as much as the Delta 4 Heavy, which features three core stages in a side-by-side configuration. Bruno said he plans to issue a request for proposals within the next 12 months for the large boosters, which would likely be built by either Orbital ATK or Aerojet Rocketdyne.
ULA told the Air Force in February it plans to start two separate U.S. Air Force certification processes for the rocket later this year, one with the BE-4 and one with the AR-1. Certification is required for the Vulcan to carry U.S. national security payloads.
Bruno said ULA's first choice is the BE-4 but that it continues to fund the AR-1 work as a backup option, and that ULA will make a final decision on in 2016.
The next step in Vulcan's evolution is a new upper stage known as the Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage, or ACES, which could be able to operate in space for weeks at a time, ULA officials said. This would open up a whole new range of missions to the Vulcan, ULA officials said.
The ACES stage would have anywhere from one to four cryogenic engines, depending on the mission. The candidate engines are: a new variant of the RL10 produced by Aerojet Rocketdyne and currently used on both the Atlas 5 and Delta 4; Blue Origin's BE-3; and an engine being jointly developed with XCOR aerospace.
ULA will select the engine for the ACES stage in the next few years, Bruno said.
ACES, ULA officials said, would have "almost unlimited burns" and extend on-orbit operating time from hours to weeks. The liquid-oxygen/liquid hydrogen-fueled stage would recycle excess fuel for attitude control and other purposes, ULA officials said.
Aerial Recovery
Ultimately, ULA plans to reuse the Vulcan's first stage engines through a process called Sensible Modular Autonomous Return Technology. After first-stage burnout, the two engines would be severed from the tank and deploy an inflatable heat shield to slow their re-entry. They then would deploy steerable parachutes, which would slow their descent enough so they could be recovered in mid-air by a helicopter.
Once recovered, the engines would be re-certified and used again. The reusability feature is especially important as engines make up about two-thirds of the rocket's cost, ULA officials said. Bruno has said he hopes to drive the cost of the standard Vulcan rocket down to about $100 million.
ULA hopes to introduce the ACES upper stage in 2023 and the reusable first stage in 2024, Bruno said.

© 2015 SpaceNews, Inc. All rights reserved.

'Behold Vulcan': Next-Generation Rocket Unveiled by United Launch Alliance
by Robert Z. Pearlman, collectSPACE.com Editor | April 14, 2015 06:47am ET

United Launch Alliance, the U.S. company behind the Atlas and Delta family of rockets, has unveiled Vulcan, its next generation launch system.
The new Vulcan rocket, which got its name through a poll that attracted more than a million votes, incorporates new engines, a reuse approach that features a mid-air recovery and a new upper stage aimed at enabling complex on-orbit operations.
"[Vulcan is] going to take the best parts of Delta and Atlas and combine them with new and advanced technology to provide a rocket that is not just as reliable and certain as Atlas has been, but also much more powerful, with higher performance, greater flexibility and [is] significantly more affordable," Tory Bruno, United Launch Alliance CEO, said in a press conference held Monday (April 13) at the Space Symposium in Colorado. [Video: ULA's 'Vulcan' Rocket, America's Next-Gen Launch Vehicle]
In March, the United Launch Alliance (ULA) announced that it plans to phase out use of all but the heavy-lift version of its Delta rocket by 2018. The Vulcan is ultimately intended to replace both the Delta and Atlas, initially as a medium-class launch vehicle to fly in 2019, and then in a heavy-lift configuration by 2024.
To accomplish this, ULA plans to follow a four-step plan, beginning with the Vulcan's new first stage.
United Launch Alliance (ULA) has revealed the Vulcan rocket, its next-generation launch vehicle system.
Credit: United Launch Alliance
View full size image
Step 1, first stage
"The first step is this much more powerful booster," Bruno described. "It will sit atop a pair of advanced technology Blue Origin BE-4 rocket engines. They will burn clean and inherently reusable liquid oxygen and methane fuel."
Last year, ULA announced that it had partnered with Blue Origin, the privately-funded aerospace company owned by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, to create a replacement for the RD-180 engines that power the Atlas today. Under pressure by Congress to phase out all use of the Russian-made RD-180s, ULA selected the BE-4 for the Vulcan.
"They will replace the venerable RD-180s, which generate 930,000 pounds of thrust. This pair of BE-4s will kick that up to well over 1.1 million pounds of thrust, a significant improvement in performance," Bruno said.
"They will sit underneath a stretched set of tanks that will contain significantly more propellant so that we can take advantage of the increased power to provide more impulse as we go to space," he added.
The new booster will also increase the number of possible side-mounted solid rocket motors by one more than Atlas, for a total of six, providing up to 20 percent more power.
At first, for the flights beginning in 2019, ULA plans to pair the new Vulcan first stage with its existing Centaur upper stage used with the Atlas. In the company's second step, the Centaur will be replaced by a more powerful Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage (ACES), offering the Vulcan with the ability to match the performance of the Delta IV Heavy rocket.
United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno sports a new Vulcan cap at the press conference announcing the new rocket, April 13, 2015.
Credit: United Launch Alliance
View full size image
Step 2, second stage
"We are going to take a giant leap forward in our upper stage," Bruno said. "Burning liquid oxygen and hydrogen, it'll start with these very large high-capacity balloon tanks [that are] so thin, so lightweight, that on Earth they cannot even support their own mass. They would collapse without propellant or pressure to hold their shape. They are truly designed to fly in space."
The ACES will be powered by one to four rocket engines, which Bruno said will be chosen from the existing Aerojet Rocketdyne RL-10 that is used with the Centaur, the Blue Origin's BE-3, or a new engine based on technology being developed by XCOR Aerospace.
The ACES will also incorporate a new integrated vehicle fluids system.
"This is the ultimate in reuse," Bruno explained. "The thing that limits the performance of the upper stage systems in launch vehicles is time — time in space. Eventually our propellants boil off and we're out of usable propellant. This system changes all of that."
Using an advanced internal combustion engine developed by race car manufacturer Roush, the waste propellants will be recycled to re-pressurize the stage's tanks, to generate electrical power and to provide control and attitude thrust.
"This completely changes everything," stated Bruno. "This provides a tremendous extension to our ability to operate on orbit."
"We're going to go from hours to weeks with this system," he continued. "We can take multiple satellites into orbit, we can put them in different planes and when we are done with that we can fly back to space station for operations."
Steps 3 and 4: reuse and many uses
The third step of ULA's development plan is to introduce reusability. Instead of recovering the entire first stage, like its competitor SpaceX has been attempting to do using an ocean-based landing platform, ULA's "Sensible, Modular, Autonomous Return Technology," or SMART, initiative will seek to recover only the first stage engines.
"In this approach, when the booster is done and you are finished with the rocket engines, we will cut them off, we will return them to the Earth using an advanced inflatable hypersonic heat shield and then with a very low, simplified logistics footprint, we'll recover them in mid-air and return them to the factory to quickly recertify them and then plop them under the next booster to fly," Bruno described.
"This will take up to 90 percent of the propulsion cost out of the booster," he stated, adding that SMART is only the beginning of the company's plans for how to reuse other components of its launch system, with more details to be announced later. [The World's Tallest Rockets: How They Stack Up]
Finally, combining the three earlier steps, Bruno said the Vulcan rocket would be in position to offer distributed lift, enabling the launch of multiple spacecraft components on multiple launches that could then meet up in orbit by using the new ACES upper stage.
"Now this is the real game changer," he stated. "We could take on our first launch big fuel tanks, supplies, food [and] water, if it is manned mission. Then on the next flight, we bring up the spacecraft, the astronauts in their capsule, and with this advanced upper stage that can fly around for weeks, we can put these pieces together."
"We can go out and tap the resources that are in space," Bruno remarked. "We can asteroid mine and then build the infrastructure for a real and permanent human presence."
Of funds and fire
Bruno declined to specify what the four-step development of the Vulcan will cost, though he said it typically takes about a billion dollars to develop a new rocket engine and then another billion to place a rocket atop it. He said that ULA and its partners were funding the development effort.
As for the name, Bruno tossed aside hats bearing runner-up names like GalaxyOne and Zeus before donning a cap with a stylized "V." In Roman mythology, Vulcan was the god of fire. It is also the name of the fictional planet and alien species of Star Trek's Mr. Spock, played by the late Leonard Nimoy.
"It is Vulcan," Bruno said, revealing the name. "Behold the powerful Vulcan rocket."
Click through to collectSPACE to watch an animation of ULA's new Vulcan launch vehicle.

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