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Vulcan marks two new customers as ULA begins plant upgrades for transition to Vulcan production.
DECATUR, Alabama – A booster prototype representing the first stage of the Vulcan Centaur rocket will leave a fabulous United Launch Alliance factory in early September and make a short drive through the parking lot to a test facility managed by the subcontractor of ULA, Dynetics.
The structural test booster will be connected to electronic actuators that will simulate loads higher than those expected in flight. The test results – which are expected to continue next year – will validate the integrity of the design and mark a key milestone as ULA prepares to build the booster that will propel Vulcan on its first flight scheduled for 2021.
Vulcan is a new class of space launchers built by ULA in the factory Boeing opened in 1998 to manufacture Delta rockets. After the creation of ULA in 2006 as a Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture, the Atlas line was transferred to Decatur. In the next few years, the production of the two older vehicles will be reduced and more resources will be transferred to Vulcan.
A SpaceNews The reporter recently visited the 1.6 million-square-foot facility, where about 850 employees and contractors cut, weld, and assemble propellant tanks, main and upper floor boosters. About 28 lower and upper floors are currently in various production phases for seven Atlas 5 and one Delta 4 Heavy missions.
In parallel, robotic assembly lines and manufacturing tool upgrades are being introduced into the factory for the transition to Vulcan production. ULA is funding these improvements with funding provided in October 2018 by the Air Force under the launch service contract.
Five major components of Vulcan are currently in various stages of assembly and will be completed in the next 12 months, said Mark Peller, vice president of major development at ULA, in an interview.
"We have just completed the structural recall test article, we have two Centaur top floor test items, plus a booster floor and upper floor for the first flight," said Peller. "Early next year, we will start building the second article and we will transition from the Decatur factory to the recurrent production of the Vulcan rocket."
Prior to the start of production of the first upper stage of the first flight, ULA will build two higher stage test items. One will be tested for structural integrity. The other will be a fluid test article to check the propulsion systems. The two top-flight tests will be conducted at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville during the first half of 2020.
At Decatur, when the new Vulcan material is assembled, it is expected that most of the components will fly on an Atlas or Delta rocket before the start of Vulcan in 2021. The exception is the main engine. The BE-4 from Blue Origin will be tested on the ground before the first launch of Vulcan. The BE-4 is in development since 2011 and is the first rocket engine to operate on liquid oxygen and liquid methane.
BE-4 will not fly until Vulcan flies, but ULA does not consider it a risk to the program, Peller said. "It's a new development that needs a lot of attention. That's why it was the first thing ever to be launched in the Vulcan program. Blue Origin continues to test the engine extensively at its facility in West Texas, Peller added. Once development is complete, Blue Origin will build two qualifying engines for additional testing before delivering two flight engines to ULA for integration into the Decatur plant's booster.
"Before the first flight, the rocket will be further tested," said Peller. The last step before the first launch will be a prep flight on landing with both engines – the so-called green runway.
Vulcan is recruiting customers
ULA has delivered more than 130 satellites in orbit and its future now depends on Vulcan Centaur's victory in one of the two niches of the Phase 2 launch services procurement competition for national security. ULA will propose Vulcan as a unique vehicle to perform all missions currently being conducted by Atlas and Delta, in addition to the more complex flights requested by the Air Force for Phase 2 of the competition. With Vulcan, ULA has a small margin of error as rivals SpaceX, Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman try to challenge ULA's dominance of the national security space launch market.
When designing Vulcan, ULA's main goal was to develop a vehicle with an engine of national origin to replace the Atlas 5, because the army of the U.S. Air would not be able to fly satellites beyond 2022 on the Russian motor-powered engine atlas. the risk of a new design by incorporating the Atlas and Delta components.
Tory Bruno, CEO of ULA, insisted that the vehicle had been specially built for national security missions. But the company is also positioning Vulcan to compete with NASA and commercial work.
Vulcan's first mission in 2021 will be to send an astrobotic lunar landing gear to the moon, the company said on Aug. 19. Astrobotic chose Dynetics a year ago to supply the main propulsion system to its Peregrine lunar lander. NASA has chosen Astrobotic to deliver up to 14 payloads to the lunar surface. The launch of the lunar lander will serve as the first of two certification flights required for the US Air Force certification process. The second flight will be a Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser freighter cargo ship bound for the International Space Station at the end of 2021.
ULA has not yet released its projected prices for Vulcan. While Atlas and Delta have prices much higher than any other vehicle, ULA believes that Vulcan will be more competitive. "It will cost a lot less than Atlas while offering the same reliability," said Peller. ULA will be able to charge less by consolidating the expenses of two lines of vehicles into one program, he said. "This rocket can do what the whole family of Atlas and Delta rockets can do."
As a single core vehicle, Vulcan's heavy configuration will not require the attachment of three boosters like Delta. "The only change we make to tailor performance to a particular mission is the number of solid rocket engines we connect," said Peller. The vehicle can handle up to six solid boosters built by Northrop Grumman. "This is really the breakthrough," he said. "Being able to pull heavy lifting performance from a single central vehicle and adjust the number of solids to meet the full range of missions."
The other modification made to heavy missions is the fairing length of 5.4 meters in diameter. One version is 51 feet long and the longest is 70 feet long. RUAG USA, headquartered in Switzerland, manufactures the 5.4 meter autoclave composite composite fairing in an installation adjacent to ULA. The company has transferred all its production of composite structures for Atlas and Vulcan to Decatur.
"They are about to complete the first 5.4-meter fairing for Atlas," Peller said. RUAG is expected to deliver the first fairing early in 2020. "They have built prototypes of various Vulcan composite structures and are building Vulcan flight equipment."
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