ULA’s CEO outlines a bright 2025 for its Vulcan rocket
In an interview for the website Breaking Defense, ULA’s CEO Tory Bruno outlined his optimistic outlook in 2025 for its Vulcan rocket, despite the loss of a nozzle from a strap-on booster during its second test launch.
The important take-aways:
- He expects the military to certify the rocket “momentarily”, though this could mean one to several months.
- The company plans 20 launches in 2025, with 16 Vulcans already in storage.
- Eventually Bruno expects to be launching 20 to 30 times per year.
- Blue Origin has so far delivered 12 BE-4 engines, of which four have flown.
- Blue Origin’s production rate is presently one per week.
The last two items are significant. If this production rate is the fastest Blue Origin can do, it will limit the number of Vulcan and New Glenn launches significantly per year. For example, Vulcan uses two engines per launch. To do 20 launches in 2025 will require 40 engines. Blue Origin however wants to also launch its New Glenn a number of times in 2025, and it uses seven BE-4 engines per launch. A production rate of one per week means that Blue Origin will not be producing enough engines for the number of launches planned for both rockets. Either ULA will have to delay its Vulcan launches awaiting engines, or Blue Origin will have to do the same for its New Glenn.
Of course, it is also possible that Blue Origin will be able to up this production rate with time. It has certainly made progress in this area in the past year, since a year ago it was having trouble producing one engine per month.
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In an interview for the website Breaking Defense, ULA’s CEO Tory Bruno outlined his optimistic outlook in 2025 for its Vulcan rocket, despite the loss of a nozzle from a strap-on booster during its second test launch.
The important take-aways:
- He expects the military to certify the rocket “momentarily”, though this could mean one to several months.
- The company plans 20 launches in 2025, with 16 Vulcans already in storage.
- Eventually Bruno expects to be launching 20 to 30 times per year.
- Blue Origin has so far delivered 12 BE-4 engines, of which four have flown.
- Blue Origin’s production rate is presently one per week.
The last two items are significant. If this production rate is the fastest Blue Origin can do, it will limit the number of Vulcan and New Glenn launches significantly per year. For example, Vulcan uses two engines per launch. To do 20 launches in 2025 will require 40 engines. Blue Origin however wants to also launch its New Glenn a number of times in 2025, and it uses seven BE-4 engines per launch. A production rate of one per week means that Blue Origin will not be producing enough engines for the number of launches planned for both rockets. Either ULA will have to delay its Vulcan launches awaiting engines, or Blue Origin will have to do the same for its New Glenn.
Of course, it is also possible that Blue Origin will be able to up this production rate with time. It has certainly made progress in this area in the past year, since a year ago it was having trouble producing one engine per month.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
I would bet the production is higher, but short term they know they will need more engines in house, for New Glenn.
ULAs rare of launch has never been particularly fast, and in the first year, does not seem to be any expectation of speed.
20 launches seems very optimistic based on previous results. But maybe I am spoiled by SpaceXs repetition
Dynetics Pyrios should have been Vulcan and also sold as an SRB replacement.
A bigger news item was a story in phys.org called:
“SCIENTISTS DEVELOP COATING FOR ENHANCED THERMAL IMAGING THROUGH HOT WINDOWS”
Rice University has a meta window that–despite being 600 degrees Centigrade–allows clean thermal imaging. This is *big*.
Add to that an article on China whose “Prototype network achieves seamless all light mobile communication across air land and sea.”
Sub-orbital craft just got relevant again.
I wish Tory all the best – there’s a big backlog of NSSL launches riding on Vulcan ramping its rate up, after all – but it will be one heck of a feat if they can reach 20 launches in 2020. Because that would be unprecedented for an orbital rocket in its second year of operation. Falcon 9 needed 8 years to reach that mark. Voshkod managed it in 4 – albeit with some failures.
Bruno is a late baby boomer a time when things got a bit more crowded and tougher by the time of career entry including grad school. Also rural cal upbringing like Victor Davis Hanson.
Are Bruno’s books a good read? If ULA has a good 2025 maybe it could go public.
Robert wrote: “If this production rate is the fastest Blue Origin can do, it will limit the number of Vulcan and New Glenn launches significantly per year.”
Once Blue Origin can start reusing New Glenn boosters, this limit will be eased, and once ULA gets around to recovering its pair of engines, then the current production rate of one per week may be able to cover the needs of both of these rockets, depending upon the useful lifetime of these engines.
If ULA launches 30 times per year and its rocket (and engines) are good for 20 Vulcan launches, then ULA will ultimately need three engines per year. This allows Blue Origin to use 49 engines per year, making seven replacement rockets annually. If New Glenn also lasts 20 launches, that allows for 140 New Glenn launches per year.
Until then, ULA’s hoped-for 30 launches per year will use engines faster than Blue Origin can currently produce them.