SpaceX's biggest rival has a 'genius' plan to cut its rocket launch costs more than 70%
An illustration of ULA's Vulcan rocket launching toward space. (In this image, used-up rocket motors are falling back to Earth.
SpaceX turned heads around the world on February 6 with the first-ever launch of Falcon Heavy.
The 230-foot-tall rocket's three boosters helped push Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster into space, peeled off after running low on fuel, and then careened toward Earth.
Two of the 16-story boosters rocketed to a safe landing (the third fell into the ocean), and the flight was hailed as a huge success. It proved SpaceX could lift twice as much payload to space for about 25% of the cost of its closest competitor while recycling rocket parts worth tens of millions of dollars.
That primary rival is United Launch Alliance, a company that aerospace industry titans Boeing and Lockheed Martin formed in 2005.
ULA's largest rocket, the Delta IV Heavy, costs $350 million per launch, according to company CEO Tory Bruno. Delta IV Heavy is far more expensive that SpaceX's $90-million Falcon Heavy in part because it isn't reusable.
ULA plans to retire that launcher after about seven more missions, but the company is currently developing its own reusable rocket, dubbed Vulcan, to compete with innovative companies like Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin.
"Vulcan will first fly in mid-2020," Bruno told Business Insider, adding that the rocket "will start at sub-$100-million" - a 70% discount compared to the company's Delta IV Heavy.
Here's what Vulcan will be capable of, why one ULA engineer described its recovery system as "genius," and how the rocket may earn its keep in an increasingly crowded and challenging industry.
Delta IV Heavy used to be the world's most powerful operational rocket. It can send nearly 32 tons of payload into low-Earth orbit — more than two standard school buses' worth of weight.
Since Bruno took the helm of ULA in 2014, the company has been developing its more powerful and partly reusable Vulcan rocket system. That's supposed to launch for the first time in mid-2020.
"Sometimes it's more than just, 'Hey my rocket's really big,'" Bruno said. "Sometimes you need the rocket to do some rather unique and exotic things after they're up in orbit."
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Vulcan should lift 40 tons (nearly three school buses) into low-Earth orbit.
United Launch Alliance
"Vulcan is modular, so you can add solid rocket boosters to kick up its size," Bruno said.
That's less than SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, which can lift more than 70 tons — nearly five school buses — for one-fourth the price. But Bruno said there are big differences between the two systems that will make Vulcan competitive.
Source: SpaceX
The key difference is the rocket's upper stage. Falcon Heavy currently uses a rocket-grade RP-1 kerosene as fuel, but it can freeze in space after a few hours. Vulcan's upper stage will use cryogenic oxygen and hydrogen, which are more resilient to the punishing temperatures of space.
ULA is also evolving its upper-stage system into what it calls ACES: the Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage. After deploying a spacecraft, ACES can be left in orbit for months or years and be refueled instead of being discarded as "dead flying hulks in space," Bruno said.
"That makes it practical to refuel them in space, and use them for other purposes, or simply use them as a shuttle to run down and grab a spacecraft that you might be so heavy you could only get it to [low-Earth orbit], and then take it literally anywhere else in the solar system," Bruno added. "That is going to completely change how we go to space and what we do there."
"It's not just saving a little bit of money off the launch service cost," Bruno said. "This could become a transportation system that enables economic activity between here and the moon, and between the asteroids."
Vulcan will also lower ULA's launch costs by having detachable first-stage booster engines, called SMART (sensible, modular, autonomous return technology). "We would recover about two-thirds the cost of that first-stage booster every single time we fly with no performance hit," Bruno said.
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The 230-foot-tall rocket's three boosters helped push Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster into space, peeled off after running low on fuel, and then careened toward Earth.
Two of the 16-story boosters rocketed to a safe landing (the third fell into the ocean), and the flight was hailed as a huge success. It proved SpaceX could lift twice as much payload to space for about 25% of the cost of its closest competitor while recycling rocket parts worth tens of millions of dollars.
That primary rival is United Launch Alliance, a company that aerospace industry titans Boeing and Lockheed Martin formed in 2005.
ULA's largest rocket, the Delta IV Heavy, costs $350 million per launch, according to company CEO Tory Bruno. Delta IV Heavy is far more expensive that SpaceX's $90-million Falcon Heavy in part because it isn't reusable.
ULA plans to retire that launcher after about seven more missions, but the company is currently developing its own reusable rocket, dubbed Vulcan, to compete with innovative companies like Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin.
"Vulcan will first fly in mid-2020," Bruno told Business Insider, adding that the rocket "will start at sub-$100-million" - a 70% discount compared to the company's Delta IV Heavy.
Here's what Vulcan will be capable of, why one ULA engineer described its recovery system as "genius," and how the rocket may earn its keep in an increasingly crowded and challenging industry.
"Sometimes it's more than just, 'Hey my rocket's really big,'" Bruno said. "Sometimes you need the rocket to do some rather unique and exotic things after they're up in orbit."
Vulcan should lift 40 tons (nearly three school buses) into low-Earth orbit.
"Vulcan is modular, so you can add solid rocket boosters to kick up its size," Bruno said.
"That makes it practical to refuel them in space, and use them for other purposes, or simply use them as a shuttle to run down and grab a spacecraft that you might be so heavy you could only get it to [low-Earth orbit], and then take it literally anywhere else in the solar system," Bruno added. "That is going to completely change how we go to space and what we do there."
Vulcan will also lower ULA's launch costs by having detachable first-stage booster engines, called SMART (sensible, modular, autonomous return technology). "We would recover about two-thirds the cost of that first-stage booster every single time we fly with no performance hit," Bruno said.
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