United Launch Alliance Monday unveiled the name of its next rocket and it will be called Vulcan.
The new rocket could launch as soon as 2019. It is ULA’s response to competition from SpaceX and political pressure to phase out use of the Russian RD-180 engine powering its workhorse Atlas V rocket.
ULA CEO Tory Bruno said the rocket’s design will allow recovery and reuse of the booster’s main engines, the rocket’s most expensive components.
ULA has partnered with Blue Origin, the Seattle-based firm privately funded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, to develop new American engines.
Plans also call for an eventual replacement of the Atlas V’s Centaur upper stage.
Bruno said the Vulcan would be the “highest-performing, most cost-efficient rocket on the market.”
An artist’s rendering of what the newly named Vulcan rocket would look like upon liftoff. (Photo courtesy United Launch Alliance)
The booster engines, which are the most expensive part of the rocket’s first stage, will be reused. Once the booster detaches, it will — protected by an inflatable heat shield — head back to Earth to be snatched out of the air and recovered by a helicopter.
Yes, a helicopter.
“The inflatable aerodynamic shield will significantly decelerate the engine,” Bruno said.
A parachute will then slow the descent further, allowing the helicopter crew to deploy a large boom and pick it up out of the air.
Of course, this being aerospace, there’s an acronym for this — it’s called the Sensible, Modular, Autonomous Return Technology initiative, or SMART.
“We took a systems engineer’s approach to what on the rocket was actually valuable,” Bruno said. “This will take up to 90 percent of the propulsion cost out of the booster.”
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.
ACES has an ultra-lightweight balloon tank that holds three times the propellant, giving a 75 percent performance increase. It also has an advanced internal-combustion engine that will be a game changer, Bruno said.
The goal is to get costs down to less than $100 million per launch from the $225 million spent today, Bruno said. This will be helped along by ULA’s implementation of the new Blue Origin BE-4 engine, which will replace the Russian-made RD-180 engine, banned for use in the U.S. after 2019. Blue Origin is owned by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos.
Vulcan will sit atop two BE-4 engines, boosting the power to 1.1 million pounds of thrust — a big jump over the RD-180’s 930,000 pounds of thrust.
SOURCE – USA Today
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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