A great example of this this week is United Launch Alliance’s Cert-2 mission.
For anyone familiar with the space world, hearing CEO Tory Bruno announce that ULA is taking the plunge and flying Cert-2 without a customer on board seems like a crazy declaration. After all, aren’t rockets expensive? Aren’t rockets supposed to wait months or years until the spacecraft is ready to launch? Why send one? How can ULA put an empty $100 million Vulcan rocket into orbit without anyone paying for it, when they’ve sold over 70 launches to customers?
The short answer is that Cert-2 has a customer: the Department of Defense. But let’s take a closer look.
National security mission Most lucrative launch contractsThe rocket orders total billions of dollars a year. Some of these are for low-cost experimental missions, but most are expensive, highly classified satellites that the Defense Department won’t let just anyone fly. Enter the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program.
Both ULA and SpaceX are already part of the NSSL program, but each time they bring a new rocket to market, the Space Force must submit a specific The rocket successfully launched before being certified to fly the NSSL mission, which is why Vulcan’s second mission is called Cert-2. First released in January,This was the first effort towards certification.
“The Space Force’s expectation for Cert-2 is the exact same successful flight as Cert-1,” Bruno said at a press conference on Wednesday.
Bruno said that after Cert-2, ULA will send the Space Force “gigabytes of data on every instrument on every part of the rocket,” and assuming they “don’t find any surprises,” Vulcan will be able to start launching NSSL missions.
ULA had planned to fly Sierra Space’s first cargo Dream Chaser spaceplane on Cert-2, but Bruno said Sierra Space CEO Tom Vice “felt that was a little too much schedule risk for my needs.” Dream Chaser has been set aside and replaced with an “inert payload,” aka a “mass simulator” (think big blocks of concrete and metal), and Cert-2 is scheduled to launch by September.
Why the rush?
The Pentagon has already made a bulk purchase of Vulcan rocket launch vehicles, with two of those missions (USSF-106 and USSF-87) scheduled to fly before the end of the year, and already Air Force Senator Frank Calvelli is pressuring Bruno and ULA to buy them. Letter sent last month The Air Force also contacted Boeing and Lockheed Martin, the two companies that co-own the rocket company, to express concern over the “Vulcan delay.” ULA was finedThe amount was not disclosed due to delays at Vulcan.
One question hanging over the next three Vulcan missions has now at least been largely resolved: whether Blue Origin will be able to deliver the BE-4 engines for the rocket. The company has delivered the six engines ULA needs for the three launches, and Bruno said he’s “much more confident” in the relationship. That wasn’t the case a year ago, Bruno said, noting the company had “significant concerns” about getting the engines ULA needed. That’s because Blue Origin BE-4 engine explodes during acceptance testing — Engine designed for Cert-2 launch.
The timely delivery of the BE-4 engines will be even more important next year, as Bruno expects ULA to conduct 20 launches in 2025, half of which will be on Atlas V rockets and the other half on Vulcan rockets. A total of 16 Atlas V rockets remain scheduled for launch before the company commits all of its efforts to Vulcan.
The Pentagon is ULA’s largest customer, so the military may not pay for Cert-2 directly, but with a backlog of NSSL orders, ULA is prepared to launch the mission out of its own pocket.
Ah, another unanswered question is The long-rumored ULA sale processLike others, I assumed that a successful debut for the Vulcan earlier this year would seal the deal. Massive share sale Earlier this year, Blue Origin seemed the likely winner. I’m guessing, but ULA buyers might wait until Cert-2 is over, or until the White House changes in November and the FTC becomes more friendly.