ULA’s Delta Heavy successfully launches spy satellite for NRO
ULA today has successfully launched a spy satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, using its Delta Heavy rocket, its largest rocket.
With this launch, ULA retires the Delta from any further launches from Vandenberg. Future California launches will use its as yet untested Vulcan rocket.
The leaders in the 2022 launch race:
42 SpaceX
38 China
12 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
6 ULA
American private enterprise now leads China 59 to 38 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 59 to 58. The 59 launches makes this the third most active launch year in American history, trailing only 1966 (70 launches) and 1965 (64 launches).
SpaceX has a Falcon 9 launch of 52 Starlink satellites scheduled very shortly, so these numbers will hopefully go up again before the day is out.
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 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
ULA today has successfully launched a spy satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, using its Delta Heavy rocket, its largest rocket.
With this launch, ULA retires the Delta from any further launches from Vandenberg. Future California launches will use its as yet untested Vulcan rocket.
The leaders in the 2022 launch race:
42 SpaceX
38 China
12 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
6 ULA
American private enterprise now leads China 59 to 38 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 59 to 58. The 59 launches makes this the third most active launch year in American history, trailing only 1966 (70 launches) and 1965 (64 launches).
SpaceX has a Falcon 9 launch of 52 Starlink satellites scheduled very shortly, so these numbers will hopefully go up again before the day is out.
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 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
I had a casual friend who had an admin job that had nothing to do with rockets, but it took him to the factory in Long Beach where they built the Delta IV series. Naturally they offered to show him one of the rockets as sort of a welcoming gesture, but as he was on a tight schedule he almost didn’t bother. Like I said not a CLOSE friend!
Anyway, to be a good sport he agreed to walk out to the factory… and as long as I knew him after that, he never quit talking about it!
He was not only floored by the size of the booster itself, but then they told him to imagine two more, one on each side of it, in the Heavy configuration. He thought they were pulling his leg until they showed him the user guide!
Long Beach?
http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/m-6250
The SSME clad RS-68s had 90% fewer parts than RS-25…and was to go on Ares V at first…
My memory of what he said may be flawed! As I remember he said he was at the former Douglas factory in Long Beach, Ca.
I have a question… Why was the Delta never man rated? It seems to have been a reliable work horse for many years..
Lee S: I can’t directly answer your question. However, I do know this. The Delta family of rockets had become ULA’s most very expensive rockets to build in recent years, much more expensive than the Atlas-5 or the proposed Vulcan. Thus, Boeing had no interest in using it for Starliner, and SpaceX had its own much cheaper rocket.
Congress meanwhile mandated NASA build its own rocket, SLS, cobbled from shuttle equipment.
There were thus no customers for Delta. I suspect this is why it was never man-rated.
Thanks Bob…. I guess that combo makes nothing but sense… Especially when you throw that long shadow of SLS into the mix…
Lee,
To answer your question about the Delta-IV Heavy’s engine, the RS-68, and to point out Jeff Wright’s post, I am sure the reason why all those other parts had to be added was to man-rate the RS-25 for the shuttle. The shuttle’s RS-25 had a little bit more thrust than the RS-68, and like Jeff said, that engine was considered for the five engine first stage of the canceled predecessor of the SLS, the Ares-V.