Facing rivals building its own reusable heavy-lift rockets, United Launch Alliance is developing plans to keep the upper stage of its Vulcan Centaur rocket in space to tow satellites or counter threats from China.
ULA CEO Tory Bruno said the upper stages can carry more propellant than needed for the initial launch mission, allowing them to remain in orbit and handle other missions for weeks or months. Defense One During the Space Symposium.
I can take off and service the spacecraft and move the spacecraft and get in between the Chinese anti-satellite weapons in orbit and the objects we’re trying to protect. “I can accomplish various tasks with reusable superiors,” Bruno said.
Vulcan is not designed for reuse in the typical sense of returning to Earth, which will make it difficult for the company to compete on cost with SpaceX once its giant reusable rocket, Starship, becomes operational. But ULA’s idea of keeping Centaur in the upper reaches of space could lead to a new mission for the company.
Satellites take weeks to maneuver in orbit, and can only do so a few times before they run out of propellant. This is a rocket. It has two orders of magnitude more thrust and more energy than that, and even if it’s only half full, it can orbit anywhere in Earth’s orbit in a matter of hours, whereas satellites would take weeks to do that, and It can undergo many orbital changes, Bruno said.
Bruno envisioned having an entire fleet out there that could, over time, as I was flying, flying, flying, for longer and longer periods of time, perform missions that would help us deal with this threat.
Bruno said reusing the rocket’s upper stages for other space missions could become a reality within a few years, but he declined to disclose details due to competitive sensitivities.
Bruno also said that Vulcan has two versions of its upper stage, one optimized for low-Earth orbit and one optimized for high-energy missions that need to reach geosynchronous orbit. The third version of the upper stage will be launched soon, There may be a fourth version later.
But the rocket, which made its first flight in January, likely won’t fly again until the fall, in part because of delays with the payload: Serra Space’s Dream Chaser vehicle.
Bruno said he has other options for a rocket ride if Dream Chaser isn’t ready by September.
I have a backup plan. I have two backup plans because it’s so important. “I actually have three, but I can’t tell you what they are because the Dream Chaser will be there on time and we’re going to the space station,” he said.
ULA will need to conduct a second certification flight before it can begin flying missions for the Space Force. Company officials previously said they planned to fly four national security missions this year, but with Sierra Space’s Cert-2 mission now moved to no earlier than September, three Vulcan NSSL missions are planned for the remainder of the year, but will be “Our customers are ready,” the company said in a statement.
After certification, ULA must increase its launch cadence nearly tenfold, an unprecedented task for the company, which has launched just three rockets in 2023. Will launch every two weeks.
Bruno said the biggest bottleneck in increasing the pace of launches is the time required to assemble a 25-story rocket in a special building called a vertical integration facility (VIF). He said the company is nearing completion of the second rocket, which will allow them to build two rockets at the same time.
In addition to the VIF, the company will have to essentially double all of its infrastructure, including building out the company’s small but powerful navy and surface transportation. ULA is building a second rocket transport ship to transport Vulcan to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, or via the Panama Canal to Vandenberg, California.
ULA suppliers are also stepping up, Bruno said. Vulcan, through Northrop Grumman, which makes solids for Vulcan, has essentially tripled U.S. production capacity for large solid rocket engines and is building a new foundry in Utah. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, which makes the main engine for the Vulcan, is also building another factory in Alabama to meet demand.
Challenges encountered while developing Blue Origin’s BE-4 engine resulted in the delay of Vulcan’s original launch date. Bruno said Blue Origin is finally up and running, but things will be tense. “The company won’t start making progress until early 2026, so they will support us, but I won’t have excess inventory,” he said.
ULA is considering returning to the BE-4 engine, but that is still several years away, according to company officials.
Meanwhile, reports over the past year have suggested that Lockheed Martin’s joint venture with Boeing could be sold, with Blue Origin emerging as a finalist. While nothing has been officially announced and Bruno declined to comment on the rumors, the CEO said the company’s expansion plans would have no financial consequences without a buyer.
Do I need inflows from certain buyers or certain IPOs or whatever would normally happen? No, all of this stuff has already been paid for. “Every healthy business is investing in itself as we move forward, and we’re going to continue to invest in ourselves to do all these really cool things,” Bruno said.
The company received huge cash from the Space Force’s National Security Space Launch Program and Amazon to launch its megaconstellation into low-Earth orbit delivering high-speed internet, called Kuiper, which will compete with SpaceX’s Starlink.
The Kuiper contract is the largest commercial space contract of any type, so that puts us in a good position to have a large backlog of missions and allows us to invest billions of dollars in infrastructure to increase launch rates to match that,” Within ourselves and our supply chain,” Bruno said.
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