Time to extend DIVH's service years? :P
Serious question though: is Vulcan Heavy(or any other heavier lift variant) still on? Or is ACES/and XEUS development a better investment?
Yes. Vulcan Heavy is still planned. But, Vulcan heavy is achieved in a single core configuration.
ACES is still also proceeding
/u/ToryBruno might be able to clear some stuff up
A little clarification.
ULA is funding Vulcan from with revenues from our ongoing launches. Our Owners are generously allowing to retain these funds rather than passing those funds on to them as earnings.
Our Board of Directors meet on a quarterly basis, which is reasonably typical. Some Boards meet less often, none meet less than once or twice per year.
At each meeting, we brief the status of development, update our market forecasts, and obtain the Board's confidence to continue with our plans.
/u/torybruno is a Kerbonaut. Kerbluminati konfirmed.
Yes, I am.
Why is this game so addictive?
Think they're rethinking it and reengineering.
Second or third stage, or a kicker stage, something that can live in space for a while both on prop sustainability...if you can can generate power from the ACES engine, use hydrolox (duh), great, if straight hydrogen and batteries, great, if you can run an inefficient but higher ISP version of methalox for the whole stack, great.
Can make fuel from water.
Even if you have a buddy you can call, I haven't heard a damned thing, not a rumor, nothing.
/u/ToryBruno, little leakage or ITAR promotion would go a long way.
Vulcan/Centaur V (upgraded Centaur) will fly first and have 30% more lift than a Delta IV Heavy in a single stick. So, there will be a Vulcan Heavy, but it will not be a multi-core configuration.
ACES will replace the upgraded Centaur in a second step, bringing the capability to operate in space for weeks or years as a rfeulable, reusable upper stage.
Can we say, on the record, that while we all clearly love Elon, /u/ToryBruno is possibly the coolest and most laid back guy in rocketry?
Yes ;)
The second stage is still higher performance than the FH one. Maybe that includes ACES work? /u/torybruno.
Both Atlas and Delta utilized high energy cryogenic upperstages, utilizing LOX/LH2, the highest energy practical chemical propellants, inherently capable of long duration, multiple burn complex orbits
with similar tankagage and propulsion as ACES
So does this confirm that ACES will be using RL-10 for propulsion, like Centaur V?
Not decided yet
Is there anything you can publicly share regarding bringing the RL10 into the 21st century? It's an impressive engine in terms of performance, but everything publicly known about it suggests it is very outdated in terms of cost and labor to assemble.
Given that it seems it has a long future ahead of it with Centaur, DCSS / SLS upper stage), and possibly ACES, it would be good to hear about how it is being made more cheaply and relying less on expert labor to assemble for future-proof-ness.
I know there was some talk about 3d printing some parts, but my understanding is it's still a very hand-made engine for the most part.
RL10 has had several updates, so it's not a 1960s engine any more.
The elegance of the expander cycle in LOX/LH2 definitely has appeal for its size class. (remembering that the cube-square law limits how big it can go).
Aerojet has done really intriguing work in additive manufacturing and how that might be applied to RL10
What about something like a rail gun? Put an engine on the "bullet" to circularize and a really long fairing to minimize friction through the atmosphere? Not for people of course. I'd assume the track would need to be pretty low to keep the g's low enough.
Briefly worked on that. Theoretically possible. 2 big challenges: limited mass to orbit and some pretty impressive environments imparted to the payload.
What about launch loops or space fountains? At all feasible or too expensive for even a motivated US government?
Debate exists over feasibility. Likely to require pretty big investments
That is the vision they have been presenting with their cis-lunar 1000 concept and the in-development ACES upper stage.
Correct, but I intend to remain as a transportation company, enabling all of this
It's not like we're going to use 20% of the moons mass as fuel. With a mass of 7.4*1022 kg and a fuel load of around 100t per flight (assumption), you'd need so many full tanks to move noticable mass from the moon.
Total estimated water at both poles, which would likely be the primary resource developed, is estimated at 20 billion mT, or 2x1013 kg. Even if you removed all of it, which is impractical, that’s only about a 0.00000005% change in mass. Should be ok.
So you are saying that we should desalinate the oceans to create SMART water?
That would be one approach...
expendable?
Independent of reusable or expendable.
This is the phenomenon that limits a typical expander cycle rocket engine to around 300 kN of thrust.
This type of engine sends the fuel through channels on the surface of the bell to both cool the bell and to heat the fuel so that it converts to gas and can run a turbine to power the propellant pumps.
Very elegant. RL10 uses this engine cycle with LH2.
But... As you design for more thrust, you flow more fuel. In turn, you must upsize the bell to flow and expand more fuel. This increases the volume of the bell, which is a cube function (exponent of 3).
That same fuel must also pass along the surface of the bell. But, the area of that surface is only increasing as a square function (exponent of 2).
Consequently, at about 300 kN, the volume increase outstrips the surface area and you can't make the engine any bigger.
This is why we have to move to Gas Generator Cycle engines for bigger stages (or staged combustion cycles in the most modern technology).
Tory Bruno is probably familiar with all of this, but for those wanting more information about expander cycle configurations, options, and limitations there was an excellent NASA write up about it a few years ago.
The Japanese have invested a lot of research and development into how to achieve higher thrust with expander cycles by moving into what they call a expander bleed cycle (this is also the cycle that was going to be used on the RL-60/MB-60). They are already using this cycle on their current second stage engine (the LE-5B) and are deep into development of a first stage engine that uses this cycle for their H-3 rocket (the LE9) which has a thrust of 1,471 kN.
Yes. Some really cool work going on there
Nice explanation, but two big Oops: ("F9 second stage is unique and can restart to deorbit vs staying in GTO or LEO unlike conventional stages... Second stage has enough fuel and can return to platform")
Atlas' Centaur upperstage and Delta's upperstage can be restarted as many as 7 times and routinely restart 1 to 2 times. Depending on our customer's direction, we always either deorbit these stages immediately or place them in the designated trash orbit which results in an eventual decay to reentry. We never randomly leave them in LEO or GTO where they would actually share an orbit with the payload they just separated...
The Atlas and Delta stages actually are unique. They have the ability to fly for very long periods of time in order to perform complex, multiple burn trajectories and direct injection GEO, often coasting for many hours at a time between burns.
No one, as yet, has recovered an upper stage. That's because of two basic reasons: 1) Unlike the booster, the upper stage is orbital, so it takes a lot of propellant to recover it. You must first remove the delta-V you just put in, rendering it sub-orbital. Then, you must reserve additional propellant to fly home and land (like a booster recovery). This is extremely costly to performance. Mass penalties for first stages are in the neighborhood of 5 to 1 (1 kg of payload mass lost for each 5kg of extra inert mass), making booster recovery contemplatable. It's 1 to 1 for the upperstage. A little higher for the Kg's of propellant reserved since they could have been burned on the way up.
This is why I intend to reuse the ACES upperstage in space vs returning it to earth.
Thanks for all your and everyone at ULA's hard work. There is a new age of space travel upon us and it will be incredible.
Thanks
Mighty Atlas is without fear
Dug a little deeper, the last web archive snapshot is from July 2017. The following papers/presentations are no longer accessible.
Under commercial space:
Transportation Enabling a Robust Space Economy (AIAA SciTech2018)
Transportation and Resources in the CisLunar Marketplace (CIM Convention, May 2017)
CisLunar Marketplace Workshop (Space Symposium, April 2017)
CisLunar Marketplace Workshop (February 2017)
CisLunar-1000: Transportation Supporting a Self-Sustaining Space Economy (AIAA Space 2016)
Transportation Enabling a Robust Cislunar Space Economy (Space Resources Roundtable, Planetary & Terrestrial Mining Sciences Symposium June 2016)
Transportation Enabling a Robust Cislunar Space Economy (Space Access and Northeastern Astronomy Forum April 2016)
Transportation Architecture for Cislunar Space (Space Solar Power 2015)
The Business Case for Space (AIAA Space 2015)
Under upper stage:
XEUS: A Powerful Path to Beyond LEO Activity (Space Symposium 2017)
ACES Stage Concept: Higher Performance, New Capabilities, at a Lower Recurring Cost (AIAA Space 2015)
Hopefully it is just a server blip as each section paths to a specific directory and the two in question appear to have reverted to roughly the same point (September 2015).
IDK. I'll ask our Chief Mad Scientist, Bernard Kutter
Hey man you're cool. Thanks for being part of the community.
Thanks
Hmmm... wonder what could prompt releasing stats on accuracy like this at this particular time ;)
You are thinking too hard. I've been sharing these for awhile. This sort of thing has to be cleared by both our customer and my Global Trade Controls (ie; ITAR) team.
They were busy and a little slow on this one. I tweeted it as soon as it became available.
I don't understand the chart. It looks to me like they only achieved '30%' of 'reqt', which I would assume was a negative. What am I missing?
Anything inside the biggest circle is acceptable and meets spec.
The closer you are to the bulls eye, the more you have out performed the requirement.
Insertion requirements are not a single point singularity, which would be impossible to achieve. Instead, they are expressed as "box" that if you land within, you meet the requirement and the spacecraft, as designed, can do its mission to its requirements.
When we out perform the requirement, the satellite life is extended and, depending on the type of bird, its performance may also be improved, exceeding its expectations.
Is this relative to the insertion accuracies claimed in your own user guides, or relative to the customer requirements?
Also, looking towards ACES, IVF (with low-thrust infinitely restartable low-impulse-bit thrusters like the current hypergolic RCS, but with a much larger fuel reserve and longer stage life) would seem to allow pretty much arbitrary insertion accuracy right? I'd guess the main limit on accuracy currently would relate to how accurately you can time the start/stop transients on an RL10-sized engine. If a customer using the existing Centaur/DCSS required (for whateved reason) insertion accuracy better than the standard versions of those could provide, could their accuracy be meaningfully augmented as well by adding extra hydrazine tanks/batteries?
These are relative to the customer's requirements for that specific mission, not our own theoretical capability. One of the special cultural attributes you find embedded at ULA is a complete focus on the customer's mission. This flows from our heritage as a National Security Space focused company.
If you look for it, you'll find it manifested in many ways. This InfoG is an example. Another would be our live stream. When we fly, no one claps at ignition, no one cheers at first separation, or fairing release, etc. The room is pretty quiet until the spacecraft successfully separates, because that's the only thing that matters.
End result accuracy is achieved through systems engineering a cumulative error budget. These include things like the error contributions of the inertial measurement unit (gyro), GPS receiver (if you utilize one), navigation calculations, starting position in inertial space, and thrust increments.
So, yes, theoretically, with small thrust bit propulsion, you can improve that part of the chain.
I thought these were some sort of shower heads at first glance.
Kind of are, in a way...
That's really cool, thanks for answering Tory!
Any time
Caceres does not believe ULA can compete on cost. SpaceX charges $62 million for Falcon 9 launches whereas Atlas 5 launches can cost more than twice that much. ULA’s Delta rockets are even more expensive than Atlas 5.
At first I was skeptical that the price difference was as high as 2x, that is pretty accurate. At best and Atlas V is 1.75 the cost of F9, or 1.5x FH depending on exactly what payload mass and variant of Atlas is flown.
They didn't mention expectations of Vulcan at all. From Jeff Foust's twitter:
With Vulcan + Centaur V having close to the same performance as Vulcan ACES (V50x ~8.5mt to GTO) will the cost still be the original estimate of $99M? That should but it quite close to Falcon Heavy's (current) pricing of $90M for 8.0mt to GTO.
Comparing prices is a little tricky. All customers ask for things beyond the base prices that are typically published. Final Commercial sales prices are almost never disclosed.
I suggest googling the USG awards. The winner's price is made public. You will likely be surprised by what you discover.
As you might imagine, we watch all of this pretty closely and do a lot of competitive analysis. I can't share details, but I can say that we know it's not 2 to 1 for USG competitions and don't believe it's that commercially either.
Having said that, I don't intend to beat my competitor on price alone. When you go to the store, do you buy only the absolute cheapest generic brand of everything? Do you do that for really large, critical purchases like your computer, your car, your home, etc?
If you do, you are a rare person and are probably not always getting the best value or making wise choices.
ULA intends to be the best value provider for critical payloads. Things that are very expensive, or can't be replaced, or are time critical, or upon which lives depend... These are items for which a modest premium is well worth the money.
Ever think about teaming with another launch provider to guarantee services (kind of like what happened with OrbitalATK's Cygnus while Antares RTF happened?) Simply put, if they have too much backlog they agree to transfer a payload over to ULA. Might be useful for constellations.
Yes. Mutual backup between providers is a frequently occurring topic within the industry
the timespan for making commercial deals was sometimes on the order of hours
There is literally no way.
The timelines for commercial are much shorter. One might develop a relationship and a given opportunity for weeks or months, but the actual deal making can be very rapid. Most of the Commercial Operators are relatively small companies, sometimes privately owned, sometimes literally family businesses. They are very agile by Aerospace and Defense standards.
At what point in the process is a launcher configuration typically selected? Will that be done before the deal is made, or just something like RocketBuilder to generally get an idea of the configuration needed with a detailed mission-specific analysis later on? If customer requirements change, how late in the process can they change the launcher configuration, and does this add any extra fee?
Happened to do some reading on the disputes with regard to the Delta IV configuration used for GPS recently, which sparked this interest
Launcher configuration is typically identified before the deal closes because it affects the price. However, it is not unusual for the configuration to change later on. Typical reasons might be growth in the satellite weight or dimensions above the original estimates. Depending on the nature of the change, it can occur as close as 3 months to the launch date.
Well, indeed that's an objective view! Thanks a lot for the detailed answer :)
AtlasV has MRS capability. We can program in any orbital parameter a given customer would to have exceeded. Ie; apogee, inclination, etc.. Atlas (and Delta) have the unique ability to measure their own performance during flight, and then AUTONOMOUSLY reprogram their own trajectory in order to maximize that parameter.
This is awesome but.. just wondering, how are you sure that Atlas/Delta are the only rockets with this capability?
I do this for a living...
(I also have a very capable Business Development and Engineering staff that keep track of things like capability differentiators, their value to customers, and where we should invest our R&D.)
If you look back through the media in my twitter feed, you can find infographics on a number of these unique capabilities.
Atlas has several unique things who's roots trace to its origin as an ICBM.
Not doubting any of that :), thanks a lot Tory!
My pleasure
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u/ToryBruno seems to be a pretty chill guy. I wish him and ULA nothing but success.
A rising tide lifts all boats.
Thanks