ULA begins stacking Vulcan for military launch, anticipating Pentagon approval
Though the Space Force is still reviewing the nozzle issue on the second flight of ULA’s Vulcan rocket and has not yet certified the rocket for military operational launches, ULA has begun stacking the next Vulcan for an anticipated military launch of a national security satellite.
On Monday [October 21], ULA shared photos of the 109.2-foot-long (33.3 m) booster being hoisted into the Vertical Integration Facility to begin the stacking process. In the days and possibly weeks to come, the 38.5-foot-long (11.7 m) Centaur 5 upper stage will be added along with four solid rocket boosters and the payload fairings.
It appears that the military has accepted Vulcan for this launch because — despite the nozzle falling off of
a strap-on side booster — the rocket was successful in placing its payload in its precise orbit. The Space Force is simply completing the paperwork required for certification.
No date however has been set, but the company hopes to complete two military Vulcan launches in 2024, so it won’t be that far in the future.
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Though the Space Force is still reviewing the nozzle issue on the second flight of ULA’s Vulcan rocket and has not yet certified the rocket for military operational launches, ULA has begun stacking the next Vulcan for an anticipated military launch of a national security satellite.
On Monday [October 21], ULA shared photos of the 109.2-foot-long (33.3 m) booster being hoisted into the Vertical Integration Facility to begin the stacking process. In the days and possibly weeks to come, the 38.5-foot-long (11.7 m) Centaur 5 upper stage will be added along with four solid rocket boosters and the payload fairings.
It appears that the military has accepted Vulcan for this launch because — despite the nozzle falling off of
a strap-on side booster — the rocket was successful in placing its payload in its precise orbit. The Space Force is simply completing the paperwork required for certification.
No date however has been set, but the company hopes to complete two military Vulcan launches in 2024, so it won’t be that far in the future.
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.
The apparent USSF decision surprises me. Not a rocketry expert, but it is my impression that any structural failures in SRBs very seldom result in a successful mission. Vulcan may have had sufficient excess capacity to put the payload in orbit this time, but if it happens again, I would not want to bet on the rocket surviving.
Ray Van Dune: I am not surprised in the least, and in fact I predicted the military would find some excuse for certifying Vulcan in order to allow operational missions to go forward.
I am not saying you are wrong, or this decision makes sense. It is simply that the politics of the situation force this decision, and illustrate to a great extent how much like a Potemkin village all of this stuff is. The certification process was never real, it was created to justify decisions by bureaucrats.
They love them some Centaurs
You can’t lose betting on Centaur, that’s not my worry. It’s one of the SRBs blowing up and taking the 1st stage with it. Even Centaur can’t overcome that.
I suppose the optimistic case is that it was a peculiar manufacturing or assembly defect in the nozzle that skated past Northrop’s QA or QC, and that they have found no such similar flaws in the other GEM SRB’s ULA has in the warehouse; or that the problem was easily discovered and the fix relatively easy.
But rocketry is an unforgiving business. If the Space Force is rushing Vulcan to certification to get these payloads up, they are likely to learn if it was a mistake soon enough.
ZimmerBob,
The DoD certification process was, indeed, made up. It was made up in an effort, on the part of ULA partisans within the DoD, to try keeping SpaceX from getting any DoD business even after it had successfully sued the DoD for the right to bid. So the swivel chair hussars in USAF procurement spun up a “process” that required three successful launches before certification was even possible – a requirement neither the Delta IV nor the Atlas V was ever forced to meet.
Their thinking, if such it can be called, seemed based on a conviction that no upstart rocket company could possibly meet such a prerequisite. SpaceX, of course, did meet it and the rest is history.
And karma. Having ginned up the whole “certification” process in an effort to foil SpaceX, the DoD was stuck with having to stick with it when Russia land-grabbed in Ukraine in 2014 and it was now teacher’s pet ULA that had to gin up a new rocket. The DoD couldn’t very well suddenly abandon “certification” – that would never have passed a smell test. The most DoD could do was reduce the number of certification launches from three to two if the rocket developer provided “visibility” into its development process from the get-go. SpaceX wasn’t able to do that as it had already developed the Falcon 9 – absent any such “visibility” – before the whole “certification” regime had been whipped up.
Richard M,
Entirely agree. When the whole DoD rocketry thing was in USAF hands a decade ago, trying to eucher SpaceX out of any role in DoD space was about on a par with that same service’s opposition to GPS technology a generation earlier because it was developed by the Navy.
But USSF took over the space portfolio from USAF five years ago. There are still USAF-y holdovers in Space Force who continue, as best they can, the ULA favoritism of yore. Hence what seems like a rush to “certification” of Vulcan. But these folks no longer have everything their own way – hence the recent shut-out of ULA in favor of SpaceX for the entire first tranche of NSSL Phase 3 Lane 1 launch awards.
Scott Manley on Youtube thinks ULA was most fortunate not to lose the entire rocket when the SRB nozzle failed spectacularly. Since most Vulcan launches rely on these GEM-63 boosters, it seems the Space Force is applying far different rules to ULA than the FAA constantly applies to SpaceX. I’m dubious USSF would be similarly generous towards SpaceX.
Hey, there’s dozens of former generals and colonels working at ULA, and dozens more wanting cushy jobs there. SpaceX doesn’t hire them so much. You gotta feather your nest, and all.
Anyone with a brain knows ULA is a sinking ship. It was a ludicrous con job pulled on the American people by Boeing and Lockheed from the beginning, with connivance from a disgraced former Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Darleen Druyun, who was deeply corrupted by Boeing. Lockheed and Boeing were meant to lower launch costs by competing. But instead they merged their launch vehicle businesses and turned it into a monopoly. The EELV program was supposed to lower launch costs by a factor of 4, but instead they remained constant, or went up. Delta II was always a cheaper option, and Delta IV cost as much to launch as a Titan IV.
Without endless fixed bids and cost-plus contracts, ULA can’t even begin to compete. Vulcan was what EELV was supposed to have been 25 years ago, but it’s hopelessly obsolete and they’re desperately looking to be bought out by someone else. Which might be Bezos if his clown show can’t ever get New Glenn to fly.