ULA’s big plans for 2025
As ULA prepares for the second launch of its new Vulcan rocket, presently scheduled for launch tomorrow at 6 am (Eastern), it held a press briefing on October 2, 2024 to provide an update on the rocket’s present and future status.
The key takeaways, assuming this launch succeeds as planned, as noted in a tweet by reporter Jeff Foust from Space News:
- ULA still plans on completing two national security Vulcan flights before the end of the year
- It is targeting 20 launches in 2025, half with Vulcan and half with Atlas-5
- The first Atlas-5 launch of Amazon’s Kuiper satellites won’t happen until 2025
- When Sierra Space says Dream Chaser is ready, ULA will launch it
Completing three Vulcan launches in the next three months will almost match the four launches the company has so far completed in the first nine months of the year. Furthermore, considering that ULA’s previous record for launches in a single year is 16, set in 2009, and that the company has not completed more than ten launches in a year since 2016, these plans are very ambitious indeed.
If it succeeds however in just getting close to these numbers, ULA will be doing very well indeed.
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As ULA prepares for the second launch of its new Vulcan rocket, presently scheduled for launch tomorrow at 6 am (Eastern), it held a press briefing on October 2, 2024 to provide an update on the rocket’s present and future status.
The key takeaways, assuming this launch succeeds as planned, as noted in a tweet by reporter Jeff Foust from Space News:
- ULA still plans on completing two national security Vulcan flights before the end of the year
- It is targeting 20 launches in 2025, half with Vulcan and half with Atlas-5
- The first Atlas-5 launch of Amazon’s Kuiper satellites won’t happen until 2025
- When Sierra Space says Dream Chaser is ready, ULA will launch it
Completing three Vulcan launches in the next three months will almost match the four launches the company has so far completed in the first nine months of the year. Furthermore, considering that ULA’s previous record for launches in a single year is 16, set in 2009, and that the company has not completed more than ten launches in a year since 2016, these plans are very ambitious indeed.
If it succeeds however in just getting close to these numbers, ULA will be doing very well indeed.
The support of my readers through the years has given 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. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
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. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to 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.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five 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:
5. 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. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
I’d be surprised if Blue Origin can supply the BE-4 engines at a brisk enough pace for ULA.