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Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

 

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

 

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

 

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

 

 

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

 

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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.

 

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ULA backing off from reuseablity and Vulcan upgrades?

Capitalism in space: According to this Space News story today, it appears that ULA is shifting away from building a major upgrade to the upper stage of its Vulcan rocket, even as it also appears to be backing off from pushing plans to recover and reuse its first stage engines.

ULA spokeswoman Jessica Rye told SpaceNews by email that the company still plans to introduce an “advanced upper stage,” but only after Vulcan flies. Rye also declined to provide a specific timeline.

Similarly, ULA officials also refused to give a timeline for when they will begin recovering Vulcan’s first stage engines and reusing them.

Right now the company expects to launch the first iteration of Vulcan, using as Atlas 5 Centaur upper stage, sometime in 2021. It also appears that those first launches will not recover the first stage Blue Origin BE-4 engines.

In the long run, I do not see how ULA can compete. They certainly appear hesitant about introducing any new innovations or upgrades to Vulcan, which will result in an expendable rocket that costs far too much.

In fact, the arrival of this apparent timidity seems to have occurred almost to the day the company accepted a development contract for Vulcan from the Air Force. Thus, it increasingly appears that it is our federal government that is squelching the company’s creativity.

Why am I not surprised?

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

4 comments

  • Scott M.

    Add this news to Blue Origin’s similarly timid behavior after winning government funding.

    I was disappointed that SpaceX didn’t get any funding for Starship development, but now I see it as a blessing in disguise.

  • Richard M

    “In the long run, I do not see how ULA can compete.”

    But ULA’s stakeholders don’t care about the long run. Vulcan just has to be good enough to win a Phase II award from the Department of Defense, and that’s all. No fancy upper stage or SMART recovery needed for *that*. And we all know it’s going to get that award.

    Presumably after that, Boeing and LockMart can sell off the pieces to whoever will buy them.

  • wodun

    Vulcan just has to be good enough to win a Phase II award from the Department of Defense

    This is true. Well, it’s true in the sense that is all they need to do. I don’t know if that makes the shareholders happy.

    I get it when Orbital Dynamics played this game. They didn’t have the means to do what SpaceX did but ULA does have the means. They also have the people and a blueprint provided by SpaceX. BO even intends to use the same engines to do what SpaceX does.

    It seems to me that separating the engines from the rocket in order to recover in mid-air adds needless complexity.

    I don’t think creating a product to narrowly meet a government contract is necessarily a bad decision but since ULA relies on the engines being built by a competitor and that competitor also wants to capture government and operate in the commercial market, what ULA is doing is extremely bad for their medium term health. That should upset the shareholders.

  • Richard M

    “I don’t know if that makes the shareholders happy.”

    But the only shareholders are Boeing and Lockheed Martin. ULA is a joint venture co-owned by both companies.

    And their approach seems to be to keep ULA just as a government contractor, with as much development cost shouldered by the government as possible.

    In the end, it will be hard for it to compete with TWO launch providers taking advantage of reusability. But that is far enough down the road (late 2020’s?) that this is not a worry for today.

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