​United Launch Alliance is preparing to launch a Vulcan rocket powered by two BE-4 methane engines made by Jeff Bezos’ company Blue Origin, but while the new rocket will replace the popular Atlas V and Delta IV engines, it will struggle to find a place in the orbital launch market dominated by SpaceX .

On the afternoon of March 17, SpaceX launched two Falcon 9 rockets with a difference of almost 4 hours (one from the East Coast – Cape Canaveral, the other from the West Coast – Vandenberg). SpaceX is launching an average of every 4 days this year. Whereas United Launch Alliance launched two Altas V rockets 5 months apart!

However, United Launch Alliance has a contract with Amazon for at least 38 launches for the Kuiper constellation (Amazon’s answer to SpaceX’s Starlink constellation), which means Amazon is confident that the Vulcan rocket will have a steady pace of launches immediately after launch ( part of the contract will be aimed at financing the infrastructure necessary for high-speed Vulcan launches).

United Launch Alliance is a joint venture between two giants: Lockheed Martin, which created the Atlas family of launch vehicles, culminating in the Atlas V, and Boeing, which created the Delta family, from which we still have the Delta IV and Delta today. IV Heavy (the latter was at one point the most powerful rocket in operation before being supplanted by the Falcon Heavy).

With the inauguration of Vulcan, the United Launch Alliance is entering a new era: it will have one orbital launcher instead of three, which can be configured for different types of missions using GEM-63XL liquid-propellant boosters. (production of Northrop Grumman).

After the failures of the Zhuque-2 (December 14, 2022) and Terran-1 (March 23, 2023) rockets, Vulcan has a chance to become the first methane rocket to reach Earth orbit: this is because the first stage of the rocket two BE-4 engines, recently delivered Blue Origin. But the advantage of the new rocket is the Centaur V upper stage, capable of carrying satellites to different orbits in different types of missions, from missions in low Earth orbit to direct launches to geostationary orbit. Centaur V is equipped with two RL-10 engines (the first variant of which debuted in 1962!).

In the future, the evolution of this upper stage may allow it to wait in orbit, refuel and be ready for a new mission, thus greatly increasing the flexibility of Vulcan’s missions, but these functions will not be available in the first years of Vulcan’s existence. . Unfortunately, recovering the rocket’s first stage engines is also no longer a priority for the United Launch Alliance, meaning the Vulcan remains a rocket that contains no reusable elements.

But the future of United Launch Alliance is far from certain: there are rumors that this company is being sold, but the details of who will buy it and for what price are unknown. But let me speculate a little on this matter: one of the buyers may even be Lockheed Martin, which will absorb part of the company that Boeing owns in order to strengthen its position in the market of orbital rocket carriers.

Lockheed Martin has recently invested in companies such as Rocket Lab or ABL Space Systems, so their interest in this segment is obvious. On the other hand, it is hard to believe that Boeing will take such a step: the company has enough recent problems, including in the space sphere (the Starliner capsule is delayed again and will deliver the crew to the International Space Station as soon as possible in the fall); besides, Boeing is involved in the construction of the primary stage of the SLS, and it is hard to believe that it has the resources to take on the Vulcan as well.

An interesting name that has been circulating is that of another US military giant, L3Harris, which recently bought Aerojet Rocketdyne (after a similar attempt by Lockheed Martin failed). L3Harris has experience in defense systems and less in space rockets, but with Aerojet Rocketdyne in the portfolio, that may change.

It also wouldn’t be a surprise if Amazon bought United Launch Alliance, and this theory follows from a simple calculation: I talked about the contract between Amazon and United Launch Alliance for 38 Kuiper satellite launches above. Let’s consider a $100 million launch price, which would mean a contract value of about $4 billion.

Well, $4-5 billion is a reasonable amount to buy United Launch Alliance, and the buyer will also benefit from revenue that will continue to flow into the future from defense and private sector contracts. Thus, Amazon not only has something to launch its own Kuiper satellites from, but also expands its portfolio with another area of ​​infrastructure dedicated to orbital launches. And $4 or $5 billion is something Amazon will have no problem finding if it’s really interested in United Launch Alliance.

It remains to be seen what the future holds for the company, especially after the debut of the Vulcan rocket, scheduled for May 4. The chosen date has nothing to do with “Star Wars” (especially since the name of the rocket comes from “Star Trek”, as confirmed by the director of the company, the charismatic Tory Bruno), but dictated by the orbit of the moon, since the lunar lander is aboard the “Peregrine” company Astrobotic along with DNA fragments of four American presidents (George Washington, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan) and the ashes of four people from the “Star Trek” universe (Nichelle Nichols – Ugura, DeForest Kelly – Leonard McCoy, James Duane – Scotty , Gene Roddenberry is the creator of the Star Trek universe and his wife Majel Barrett).

The Peregrine will be headed for the Moon, where it will be a lunar pod, and the capsule containing the DNA of the presidents and the ashes of the Star Trek cast will orbit the Sun during the test of the Centaur V upper unit. So we have every reason to watch the Vulcan launch with our hearts.

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