Vulcan rocket's debut brings long-awaited challenge to SpaceX dominance
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[January 11, 2024]
By Joey Roulette
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Boeing-Lockheed joint venture's launch of a new
Vulcan rocket this week inaugurated a formidable rival to Elon Musk's
SpaceX, a milestone long sought by the U.S. government as it seeks to
build a list of launch suppliers for its satellites.
Boeing and Lockheed Martin's United Launch Alliance sent Vulcan into
space for the first time on Monday, a first step toward reclaiming
market share from SpaceX, whose reusable Falcon 9 rocket for years has
been the main option for countries to get their satellites into space.
The payload, a privately funded moon lander, will not finish its mission
because of tech problems, but the Vulcan launch in Florida was a
success.
"This launch puts ULA in the front-runner position to challenge SpaceX's
de facto monopoly over launch," said Caleb Henry, a space analyst at
Quilty Analytics. "If ULA can prove that Vulcan can scale up to a rapid
launch cadence quickly, they will provide the market with another route
to space."
Dependence on SpaceX has been a concern for the Pentagon, which wants
multiple vendors of rides to orbit.
"If SpaceX has a bad day in the future, we'd still have a pathway to
space for our national security needs" with Vulcan, said Michael Lembeck,
a space consultant and director of University of Illinois Advanced Space
Systems lab.
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Demand for launches has soared, driven mainly by plans from countries
and companies like Amazon to put thousands of internet satellites in
space. But supply to the West has dropped, with Europe's sovereign space
access held up by rocket development delays and Russia's rocket program
being isolated by the West over the Ukraine war.
Bigger U.S. rockets, such as SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's New
Glenn, are months or years from reaching orbit.
"It takes a long time to develop a new heavy-class launch vehicle, so
the scarcity is going to be here for about 10 years," ULA CEO Tory Bruno
said in an interview at Vulcan's launchpad before its launch.
Vulcan's launch debut lets ULA start fulfilling a multibillion dollar
backlog of some 70 missions, roughly split between government and
commercial missions. Amazon's Kuiper satellite project occupies a
majority of its commercial bookings.
NATIONAL SECURITY MISSIONS
The starting price for a Vulcan launch is roughly $110 million, half
that of its predecessor Atlas V, which anchored ULA's dominance for U.S.
national security satellite launches since ULA's 2006 formation.
SpaceX's reusable Falcon 9 is pegged at roughly $62 million per launch,
but sometimes more for Pentagon missions.
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![](../images/011124PIX/news_b80.jpg)
Boeing-Lockheed joint venture United Launch Alliance’s
next-generation Vulcan rocket stands ready for launch on its debut
flight from Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S. January 7, 2024.
REUTERS/Joe Skipper/File Photo
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2019/Sep/05/images/ads/current/stclara_lda_SPONSOR_090519.png)
ULA and SpaceX vie head to head for national security missions. The
Pentagon in 2020 picked ULA to launch 60% of its national security
missions through 2027 and SpaceX to launch the rest. The Pentagon's
next launch procurement will pick three core launchers, giving
SpaceX and ULA a greater challenge.
Vulcan can use up to six solid rocket motors for extra boost,
allowing it to loft up to 60,000 pounds (27,000 kg) of satellites in
a low orbit, or 32,000 pounds (14,500 kg) to further orbits.
SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy - three Falcon boosters strapped
together - can put up to 140,000 pounds (63,500 kg) to low Earth
orbit, or 58,860 pounds (26,700 kg) to further orbits.
ULA used the Russian-made RD-180 engines for its workhorse Atlas V,
and that became a security concern in 2014 after Russia invaded
Crimea. That, and the rise of SpaceX's cheaper Falcon 9, prompted
Vulcan's development.
Atlas V has 17 more booked missions left before retiring. ULA had
bulk-ordered its RD-180 engines before American-Russian relations
collapsed following Russia's large-scale February 2022 invasion of
Ukraine.
Jeff Bezos' space firm Blue Origin has effectively replaced Russia's
RD-180, now supplying Vulcan's twin BE-4 engines, which roared to
life on Monday and marked Blue Origin's first step into Earth's
orbit. Blue Origin is building its own launcher - New Glenn - a more
powerful rival to Vulcan that uses 7 BE-4 engines.
ULA plans to increase production to 25 booster rockets annually by
late 2025, Bruno said. And it has roughly 100 engineers designing
future upgrades to cut production costs.
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Those upgrades include a plan to recover and reuse Vulcan's BE-4
engines - about 65 percent of the booster cost - using a heat
shield, parachutes and a helicopter to catch them out of the air.
Smaller launcher Rocket Lab has adopted a similar strategy.
Bruno said Vulcan upgrades will begin in 2025, and occur every two
to three years after that. ULA will test and implement its reuse
strategy for Vulcan in the midst of its Amazon Kuiper missions.
"It's is a little bit up to Amazon," Bruno said.
(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Will Dunham, Peter Henderson
and Ben Klayman)
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