ULA's New Rocket - Vulcan Centaur

[Grendal]

ULA Vulcan rocket test fire ends prematurely due to ignition delay at Cape Canaveral

Ignition delay forces United Launch Alliance teams to stand down from Vulcan rocket test fire at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

www.floridatoday.com

 

[scaesare]

ULA Vulcan rocket test fire ends prematurely due to ignition delay at Cape Canaveral

Ignition delay forces United Launch Alliance teams to stand down from Vulcan rocket test fire at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

www.floridatoday.com

Does "ULA teams "observed a delayed response from the booster engine ignition system," imply this test was going to ignite the boosters in addition to the BE-4's?

 

[HVM]

No.

 

[ecarfan]

Does "ULA teams "observed a delayed response from the booster engine ignition system," imply this test was going to ignite the boosters in addition to the BE-4's?

By boosters do you mean the SRBs? I can’t imagine they would ignite those for a ground test; once ignited, they go to full power and cannot be stopped.

Maybe they were just testing the SRB ignition sequence without actually igniting them.

 

[scaesare]

Yeah, that quotation I included just says "the booster engine ignition system", but I agree it's hard to imagine them being fired for a test like this (altough I have seen them test fired in stands).

So I assume this is just running tests on the ignnitors or the control systems.

 

[HVM]

Here's SRB testing setup for the static test (and giant piece of concrete, front of it)

 

[bxr140]

Does "ULA teams "observed a delayed response from the booster engine ignition system," imply this test was going to ignite the boosters in addition to the BE-4's?

In context “booster” is the main stage. No solids in this test or any full vehicle test. You can’t shut them down and that’s bad.

 

[scaesare]

Here's SRB testing setup for the static test (and giant piece of concrete, front of it)

Yeah, I've seen SRB tests (out in the middle of the desert like that) previously, but always in isolation, never as part of the overall vehicle test as that article discusses...

 

[scaesare]

In context “booster” is the main stage. No solids in this test or any full vehicle test. You can’t shut them down and that’s bad.

OK, thanks. That would seem problematic if attached to a vehicle, lol...

 

[Mike1080i]

ULA's Vulcan Cert-1 Flight Readiness Firing (FRF) live stream is scheduled to start at 6:45pm ET.

NSF stream is already up.

 

[HVM]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1666620288493035520

 

[JB47394]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1666620288493035520

"Hey, congratulations to them. Now, about us."

 

[HVM]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1668314430785097728

So has ULA completed the anomaly investigation? And if so are you sending another Centaur V tank to MSFC to complete the test campaign?

Root cause found. Working corrective action and retest

 

[ecarfan]

https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/06/ula-shipping-vulcan-upper-stage-back-to-factory-for-more-work/

Sounds like a major delay for Vulcan.

United Launch Alliance technicians at Cape Canaveral, Florida, have partially disassembled the first Vulcan rocket to send the launch vehicle’s upper stage back to its factory for reinforcements to its paper-thin steel fuel tank.

A test article for the Vulcan rocket’s Centaur V upper stage exploded on March 29 during a structural test at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. After a nearly three-month investigation, ULA engineers determined the upper stage already mounted to the first flight-rated Vulcan rocket inside a hangar in Florida needs more work.

ULA hasn’t ruled out launching the company’s first new Vulcan rocket by the end of the year, but the recovery from the test stand explosion in March eliminated any chance of getting Vulcan off the ground this summer.

 

[Grendal]

Dang. They finally (finally!) get the BE-4's they've been waiting forever for, then it's the new Centaur upper stage that bites them in the butt. Centaur: which has been around since the 1960's. Granted that this a new version but they should understand this stage pretty intimately.

 

[mongo]

Berger reporting updates on upper stage anomaly.
Leak, crack, failure on 14th test
Due to laser weld vs arc weld
Adding extra stainless steel ring to fix

https://twitter.com/x/status/1679509797790527488

 

[ecarfan]

Eric Berger’s analysis Vulcan’s upper stage failed due to higher stress and weaker welds

 

[Grendal]

Eric Berger’s analysis Vulcan’s upper stage failed due to higher stress and weaker welds

Not really Berger's "analysis" but an article about Tory Bruno outlining the nature of the failures that happened during the test in March in a teleconference with reporters.

 

[Grendal]

Delays are causing a switch for ULA.

Amazon moves Project Kuiper prototypes from Vulcan to Atlas 5

Amazon plans to deploy its first pair of Project Kuiper prototypes this fall on an Atlas 5 from United Launch Alliance, the internet giant said Aug. 7 after switching rockets a second time to avoid mounting delays.

spacenews.com

 

[JB47394]

Delays are causing a switch for ULA.

Amazon has nine Atlas 5 and 38 Vulcan rockets on order from ULA as part of the multibillion-dollar launch contracts it has secured for Project Kuiper, including other vehicles under development by Arianespace and Blue Origin.

After watching SpaceX for so long, it blows my mind that they're going to build 43 boosters and use them for one launch apiece.

I was curious to know how large these Kuiper satellites are, and ran across this article.

During a Space Symposium panel, the top executives for the three launch companies revealed how many Kuiper satellites they could launch on each rocket: 35 to 40 for Arianespace’s Ariane 6, 61 for Blue Origin’s New Glenn, and 45 for United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur.

Based on those figures, Quilty estimates that each Project Kuiper satellite weighs 600-700 kilograms (1,300-1,540 pounds), which would make them significantly more massive than the satellites fielded by SpaceX (260-300 kilograms) and OneWeb (150 kilograms).

Project Kuiper reportedly plans to build two to four satellites per day. That production capacity, plus the reserved launch capacity, would seem to be enough to fill out Amazon’s 3,236-satellite constellation in five years. That’s assuming, of course, that everything goes right.

Wikipedia says that a Vulcan Centaur launch should cost $100-200 million. Let's say they're $150 million. Divided by 45 satellites, that's $3.3 million per satellite.

A Falcon 9 launch with reusable booster costs $67 million. At 17 metric tons to LEO, that's 26 satellites per launch, or $2.6 million per satellite.

A Starship launching 150 metric tons to orbit could launch 250 satellites (space permitting). The Georgetown Security Studies Review uses $100 million for a Starship launch, which would make it $0.4 million per satellite. In 2019 the White House Office of Management and Budget was using a $40 million number per launch. Elon has predicted $10 million.

If they could get it down to $40 million per launch, that would be $0.16 million per satellite. I can't see the point of dropping launch costs that far, given the lack of competition, so I'd expect them to continue to charge much more, while pursuing their own plans in space at cost.

If Blue Origin doesn't get their act together, SpaceX could have a monopoly, and then the government would have to step in if SpaceX abuses that monopoly power.