Update for you Scott: Monday's launch was a good day. The count was very clean and quiet. At one point, I thought my headset might be broken because there was literally no chatter on the net at all. In fact, I wasn't joking when I said that our biggest concern during the count was when the coffee maker in Launch Control failed. And yes, it was a valve... There was a ECS reading that we fussed around with for a bit, mostly because we got bored. It really did feel more like a 90th Atlas mission, than a first launch. We lifted off right at the open of the window. This was also fortunate because the weather had been iffy the day before and was completely unacceptable for launch the very next day, Tuesday. For once, the weather gods were on our side. The flight was nominal and delivered a perfect bullseye insertion. To have such a clean mission on a first flight is somewhat unheard of. I've personally done around three dozen first flights and never really had one go quite this smoothly before. Obviously, having conducted a couple of WDRs and an FRF helped, but still remarkable... Vulcan performed beautifully. Once we separated Peregrine and completed the heliocentric burn for the Celestis Enterprise mission, there were big smiles, handshakes, hugs, and even a few tears of joy, all around. Sadly, our initial jubilation at getting comms with Peregrine was later dampened upon the discovery of their propulsion anomaly. We made our facility available for their anomaly team since their key people were all out in Florida for the launch. I also got several of our engineers out of bed and brought them back in, including Chris Deel our head of Engineering, in case we could be of any assistance. The Astrobotic team, who by now had been up for at least 24 hours, worked very hard to understand the situation and make the best of it. As you will see in their communications, science will still happen, as well as a fitting memorial for that element of their mission. I have no doubt they will bounce back on their next bird. For the ULA team, this was an incredibly important and successful flight. It was the culmination of no small measure of blood, sweat, and heart. Nine hard years of transforming ULA, overcoming countless challenges of E-V-E-R-Y kind, and the development of a new heavy class space launch vehicle were finally, ultimately successful. I've decided that I might take part of today off... We are already well underway with preparations for the CERT2 launch. See you then.
It is legitimately so cool that you take the time to do this. Other companies would be issuing vague press releases and here you are leaving a detailed comment on a Scott Manley video 😂 Thanks for the update!
Thank you as always for sharing your sincerest enthusiasm to so many people. You and your team have been a consistent beacon of inspiration for many incoming engineers like myself, and I deeply thank you for your commitment to transparency and level-headed approach to challenges. Enjoy your day off, I look forward to the future!
Nice update, but nothing on the magnificent mustache? I think we all want to know how it held up during the launch, and if it will still be operational for Cert 2?
Also 9:40 animation that shoots all the exhaust straight backward in a vacuum. Squeezing every drop out of Newton's laws, no sideways waste. SpaceX: "What Isᴘ sorcery is this?"
The section around 4:30 makes me think, could we have a video on rocket profiles? Some are long and skinny, others are short and fat; some are mostly cylindrical, while others are almost conical. I find it particularly notable that now all the stages have (mostly) the same diameter, but decades ago they got narrower as they went up the rocket. What are the design considerations that go into this? I imagine it's a combination of aerodynamics (to have both low drag and high stability) and maximising the wet volume / dry mass ratio, while keeping to various logistical considerations, but I'm sure there's a lot more to say!
From what I remember a lot of old rockets were basically putting multiple already existing rockets/motors together, now that a lot more is from scratch it's easier to just make a single diameter. I think similar thing applies to second stage engines being the same as the first stage, although that way engines usually aren't really specialized to be that good at one particular thing.
I think the main reason almost all modern rockets have all the core stages the same diameter is tooling cost. it's usually pretty easy to build the same tank at different lengths with the same tooling, so if the stages are the same diameter, you don't need as much tooling and can reuse things like bulkhead designs. I think it's about the same reason a lot of cost-optimized designs have settled on 7-9 engines on the first stage. it lets you reuse work since one of the same engines with a vacuum nozzle is about right for the second stage.
AFAIK there is little/no gain in making upper stages narrower. By the time they separate atmosphere is mostly cleared, and "rounder" is more mass-efficient.
the primary constraint on diameters is what will fit in railway tunnels Wider diameters have to take the Panama canal route and that's impossible for things manufactured in places like Utah As for WHY things are made in Utah, the answer is congressional pork This is why fully commercial ops will eclipse NASA - They aren't beholden to Senators for funding, will site manufacturing where it makes the most sense and generally aren't afraid to move sites if it makes commercial sense to do so
Everyday astronaut said he has a video coming soon comparing vulcan with all the other launchers. He will likely explain design reasons for differences in width.
I was one of propulsion engineers who developed the Delta IV CBC. We were Rockwell Space Shuttle MPS engineers who formed a team to help McDonnell Douglas develop the EELV DIV. After Boeing bought MDC and Rockwell, some of the engineers moved to Denver to work for the ULA joint venture. I stayed in HB and worked on the development of the SLS Booster and EUS but have kept in contact with some of the ULA folks. I wish the best of luck to M.Peller and company! Onward and upward!
Just another part of the complex rocket story that has lead to Vulcan at Decatur ! Great that things have sort of come full circle and SLS is currently a big Delta IV / Shuttle hybrid !
I just watched a video by Scott from 10 years ago and i can't help but point out the fact that he has maintained literally the same look all the while.
And Utah and California's Congressional members are why NASA got THAT Space Shuttle. Nixon used the STS as a political tool for both power, and getting support for re-election in 1972.
@@VekhGaming your chances to start taking part in them to help change them for the better? No one wins as much from "good people shouldn't do politics" stereotype then self serving aholes, already born into them.
Criminal corruption. Shelby is knowingly, willingly, destroying American capability and wasting budget to "bring home the bacon", thus basically buying votes for himself with other people's money. There is no limit...none whatsoever... to the harm someone like him will do to country and humanity as long as it keeps him personally in power.
@@dascherofficial Are you sure you don't mean Smarter Every Day instead of Everyday Astronaut? The latter has some videos touring the SpaceX facilities, but as far as I know not ULA.
@@rschroevyou know the tour’s legit when they have to *redact* stuff lol. That video was so cool, the *massive* machines, and the site was so big they had bikes go get around if i remember correctly.
The longer I live (and I was born in 1954 and "grew up" with the space race), the more impressed I am that NASA managed to put men on the moon, per JFK's schedule, back in the sixties, and the more doubtful I become that I will live long enough to see another human set foot on the lunar surface. I hope I'm wrong!
I'm actually sympathetic to Lockheed's resistance to investing in ULA. From their perspective, they're shackled to this joint venture with Boeing due to BOEING's wrongdoing. Lockheed was the VICTIM of corporate espionage and yet they were punished by being forced into a shotgun marriage. Adding insult to injury, the vast majority of ULA's launches were on Atlas V, which is a Lockheed product, yet Boeing got to suck out 50% of ULA's profits. If I were Lockheed, I'd be seething at how Boeing has been rewarded again & again for their bad behavior, and would be adamantly opposed to investing a single dollar into ULA, which would only further reward the free-riding Boeing parasite. In light of all this, it's a minor miracle ULA was able to develop a rocket at all. I wish them luck.
Not also that. Eric Berger from Ars Technica writes: > "We had released a series of papers showing how a depot/refueling architecture would enable a human exploration program using existing (at the time) commercial rockets," a former ULA physicist, George Sowers, has said. "Boeing became furious and tried to get me fired. Kudos to my CEO for protecting me. But we were banned from even saying the 'd' word out loud. Sad part is that ULA did a lot of pathfinding work in that area and could have owned the refueling/depot market, enriching Boeing (and Lockheed) in the process. But it was shut down because it threatened SLS."
I see ULA is using a Cincinnati Milacron machine to make the large panels. Cincinnati Milicron went out of business decades ago, wonder where they get parts for such an old machine or find anyone who knows how to program it! Also proves CM made some very durable machines.
When the control electronics become unavailable we rebuild our machines with new controls and often rebuild mechanically as well. There are loads of companies who do this work as well. We have Cincinnati through grinders that have all probably been rebuilt several times, when we replace one the old one goes to be rebuilt for someone else, the castings could be 50 years or more old.
I figured that was probably happening, but I guess that also means that no equivalent machines are being built now, or that the cost to replace the old machine is very high. It looks like they have more than one of the same machine, but it has got to be a pain to need to reverse engineer parts when you need one. What if the failed part is too distorted to use as a guide? Maybe they have CM's shop drawings for the original construction of the machine. One of the CM machines I worked on back in the 70's had a little glitch in the tool changer fingers that would collect chips from the machining process. When it did, during the next tool change it would throw the tool across the shop! All of the CM machines we had seemed to be a little too high speed on changing tools.@@bulakhv
If the machines are being USED, they don't last 15 years. You can't easily "rebuild" the Ways 😂. No one would want to. My dad has worn completely to unusable about a dozen metal shaping and cutting machines over the decades, it's cheaper to buy a NEW machin with HIGHER accuracy and ALL NEW EVERYTHING... Tham trying to what? Have a welder build up the ways and then have them re-ground?!? 😂 then re-hardned?! 😂 Machines that collect dust, last decades. Machines that get used 40 hours a week every week, do not. They cannot.
I'm an ECE freshman at Carnegie Mellon and it's been super exciting to follow the progress on IRIS and MoonRanger. Congrats on the succesful launch! Go Peregrine, go IRIS, go CMU!!
This thing had better work. ULA is all in since they shut down Atlas production, and the USA in general currently has only one working launch provider, SpaceX. Personally I think it would've been a good idea to hedge our bets and fund an engine swap for Atlas as well as Vulcan.
Yeah, especially since ULA was intended to ensure that national security payloads always had a launch vehicle. But I guess someone upstairs wasn't really thinking.
Yeah I'm aware their CEO is a cool dude on Twitter and realise this might be harsh but honestly, I can't really care for ULA and wouldn't shed a tear if they are bought up or go down. They had a monopoly for many years and did nothing with it exept collecting as much government money as possible. Tough luck now, should've acted smarter and with more foresight... Not taking New Space competition seriously could turn out to be a grave mistake. Like Arianespace, their next generation rocket is just targeting SpaceX's last generation rocket and it's still is not (really) designed for reusability. What are they thinking? It's not like I want SpaceX to become the new monopolist, but come on now, if your management is that bad you don't deserve to stay in the game...
Tory has to answer to a board of directors and no matter what he might have preferred, he can only do what they tell him. Just like NASA in a way, that despite all the smart people working there, still has to answer to a bunch of congressmen and senators who barely passed 8th grade science and math.
(LOL) ULA: (Pained sigh) It's better than a DIVH for the cost of an Atlas. I wanted reusability and space tugs but the council disagreed. Apparently, upsetting Dark Lord, I mean Senator Shelby is unwise.
(LOL) ULA: (Pained sigh) It's better than a DIVH for the cost of an Atlas. I wanted reusability and space tugs but the council disagreed. Apparently, upsetting Dark Lord, I mean Senator Shelby is unwise.
(LOL) ULA: (Pained sigh) It's better than a DIVH for the cost of an Atlas. I wanted reusability and space tugs but the council disagreed. Apparently, upsetting Dark Lord, I mean Senator Shelby is unwise.
"ULA: I built a new rocket to complete with SpaceX." There is no comparison in terms of innovation and cost, but it is understandably important for the US government to have launch alternatives. Given the staggering sums Congress has approved for Artemis development, and Vulcan development, to name but two, the price difference between Spacex and ULA launch seems of little consequence. Commercial launch is a different matter, but V/C exists solely to satisfy that US government need/policy.
@@alexanderSydneyOz The price difference is actually not that huge between Falcon Heavy, Falcon 9 and Vulcan Centaur. For some contract SpaceX actually charges more per launch that ULA does. While internal cost may be different, prices, the thing we actually have some information on, are relatively compareable. And while ULA has definitely designed Vulcan Centaur with high energy national defence missions to GEO/GTO in mind, it is entirely incorrect to say V/C exists SOLELY to satisfy US government need/policy. The obvious counter example would be the large Amazon Kuiper contract they have lined up, which makes up about half of all launches currently planned for Vulcan Centaur.
watched the ULA launch last night...very cool. Now ULA and Blue Origin needs to have quick turn around times. Let's see what happens...good luck to ULA and I feel kind of sorry for ULA having to depend on Blue Origin or engines.
It beats relying on Russians! The BE4 engines were delayed, but in the end the V/C was not ready by the time of their delivery, so it seems no problem to rely on BO for engines.
BE-4 had some issues during development, but so did the Centaur V. Now that BlueOrigin has a working design for BE-4, I don't see why you would need to feel sorry. They are quite impressive engines, with a good mixture of high thrust and high efficiency. They are also already set up to be reusable, if and when ULA decides to begin attempting SMART reuse. The only question is whether or not BlueOrigin can keep up with production while maintaining the reliability and quality control, as they are switching from prototyping to full mass production. But at the end of the day ULA has priority on engine delivery, so if production is slow New Glenn will have to soak up all the delays while Vulcan will barely even notice anything.
Excited to watch this launch, as well as celebrating as a proud employee of DHL their first delivery to the moon. Amongst the many moon boxes will be a piece of Mt Everest collected by astronaut Scott Parazynski. Good luck ULA!
You’ll have to forgive me here, but why exactly is this exciting? Legacy defense contractors doing their thing and making a less capable rocket that costs more years late. Yaay, it can get less mass to orbit for more money than a Falcon 9 with zero reusability. Cool story.
You let out the most important reason for Vulcan. The USA LAW DEMANDED that all government payloads must fly on USA rockets with USA engines. So no matter if RD180’s were available or not the military payloads ie:NRO and Space Force could only use SpaceX USA rockets. That was a law and not a suggestion. Then the be4 was a non starter and the NRO or government kept reducing the minimum number of launches by the Vulcan before it could launch military satellites. ULA should have been required to fly all the flights, it’s just 3 or something like that anyway, even if they only flew mass simulators. Determined reliability requirements shouldn’t be reduced just because an independent company (propped up by the government just as you said) can’t make good engineering or business decisions even if the decision was a dilemma.
"The USA LAW DEMANDED that all government payloads must fly on USA rockets with USA engines. " I don't think that is correct. The problem is that RD-180 engines would not be available beyond a contracted number, due to sanctions on Russia. To say nothing of the strategic risks of relying on anything from Russia.
Is that a LEGO set between the shuttle and your laptop Scott? Looks like a satellite! I'm looking forward to the launch tomorrow as well, and wish ULA success!
Thanks for this informative video! I'm learning after the fact, but it's still learning. As we know, Vulcan Centaur launched perfectly, so that's great news for ULA. I hope this leads to a great future for their company. It's too bad about the Peregrine lander, but whatever happened there probably isn't because of the launch vehicle.
It got to me, how seemingly proud Tory was in that video, of their manual, artisanal approach to bending the orthogrid panels. As if such inefficiency and built-in higher cost is something to boast about...
@@ericlotze7724 I'm not a manufacturing engineer, so I don't necessarily know. All I know, is I recognize blatant inefficiency when it's dancing naked right in front of my face. Maybe, one possible better way would be to 3D-print (e.g. via laser sintering of powdered alloy) instead of subtractively machining and then manually bending? Or maybe, at least try to automate the bending in some way instead of declaring matter-of-factly that hyper-specialized near-irreplaceable expert humans are too superior in their sheer eyeballing capacity for any robot to emulate...
@@classydave75 Going back into the pad right after launch to secure systems and wash down the mobile launcher. Getting it ready to transport back to the VIF.
I know in the SmarterEveryDay tour they had to redact certain bits. Might be a bit overkill (Re: that study where college students designed a nuclear bomb), but i think much of the information is restricted due to being potentially useful for Ballistic Missiles etc.
Does anyone know why Amazon when down the oxygen rich route for the pre burner on the be4? As opposed to fuel like the rs25? Given that methane is cleaner burning like hydrogen? And did they copy the technology from the rd-180 for its pre burner?
Amazon does not own Blue Origin, they are two independent companies. Their only connection is that Jeff Bezos owns both Blue Origin and 9.5% of Amazon, and that BlueOrigin is one of the companies contracted to launch Amazon project Kuiper. As for why Blue Origin went with oxygen rich, instead of fuel rich, I don't know. But I do know that during the time of the RS-25 and other, earlier American closed cycle engines the limits of American material science research made an oxygen rich cycle unattractive. Ultimately, the Soviet scientists solved that material science issue for their own closed cycle engine development program, and today we have even more advanced materials and manufacturing methods, so I imagine that wasn't a huge concern at BlueOrigin anymore.
@@plainText384 thanks. Is there an advantage to going down the oxygen rich route, like that used on the RD-180s? More power, simpler and cheaper, fuel efficient?
You miss those days where there were shark teeth or fire on the sides of rockets. I suppose you miss the Chris Foss days. Well, I do to miss those days!
I can't wait to watch this Vulcan launch tomorrow morning. This is not a particularly big rocket but it's heavy lift capabilities are surprisingly high and that's to HEO and GSO-TO
Its good that there is a second space access provider that won't let SpaceX eat everyone's lunch, but with what SpaceX (and many other space startups) are doing, i really hoped ULA can try to be a bit more modern - but instead they played it super-safe (like they usually do) and we got: - no reusability now (maybe a bit in the future - not sure). - still significantly less mass to orbit than Falcon Heavy - while still being more expensive than an FH - wider fairing - yay! But not significantly wider than the FH extended fairing and much smaller than either New Glenn or Starship. I really think they could have been more ambitious with their engineering.
Well, I see what you mean. I think the engineering is just fine, and even a bit clever. ...- For what it is. The design concept though, is obsolete and started on the wrong premises. Once you make the paradigm shift to reusability and low operating costs, most things need to be done radically different. First of all, you need much different engines, because you're going to need much greater throttling ability, and you'll need thrust to weight ratio in a different ball park, because the rocket will need to be much lighter when you brake and land the almost empty rocket again. You also want only one kind of fuel for sake of simple operation. You want that anyway, because you're forced away from big engines by the thrust/weight needs. So instead of pursuing economy by scaling size and reliability with low numbers, you have to find a way to do it by mass production instead. Which means you only want one type of engine anyway. And so it goes on.
@@Vermiliontea I'm not sure how the engines factor into the equation - Blue Origin plans on the same engines to power their fully reusable rocket, so supposedly these should be able to throttle down well enough for that. According to Wikipedia, BE-4 can throttle down to 40% - like a Raptor, so what is missing? Are the BE-4 engines delivered to ULA not as capable as those that will be used on New Glenn?
@@guss77 Yes. But we're talking about Vulcan here. And the BE-4 is big for the Vulcan and it only has two. That's not enough granularity. I might do a longer answer later - I'm on my way out now - but essentially the Vulcan is designed and optimized all the way - flight profiles and Delta-V distribution - to be a throw-away 3-stage rocket (1: Boosters + BE-4, 2: BE-4, 3: RL-10). A very good such, with great flexibility, and "economical". But it's still throwaway and the launch costs of the Falcon family will always be utterly unreachable for it. Considering its configuration, it's also not in a good place to evolve into reusable.
Sadly Vulcan is unlikely to fly for more than a few years. The moment New Glenn is online there's no need for the US DoD to keep them around as they'll still have 2 options in SpaceX and Blue Origin, and New Glenn and Starship will eat up all their customers. Vulcan simply isn't going to be cost efficient enough to keep ULA going once there are enough competitors out there.
Regarding the sale of ULA: 1. Whomever buys thrm should keep the name because it's catchy. 2. Taking a deal with Cerberus would be signing their own death warrant.
@@joelongjr.5114 Yep, although in the dog's case he was doing an important job making sure people weren't just walking in and out of the underworld like an amusement park.
Fun fact; this rocket has a higher payload to the moon than Starship does without refueling. Starship in it's reusable mode has ZERO PAYLOAD TO TLI LMAO. Only 27 tonnes to GTO, 8 tonnes to GEO, and 0 tonnes to TLI.
It all comes down to the use of hydrogen fuel and its higher Isp vs methane. Downside of course is that hydrogen is a PITA to work with and makes everything more complicated and expensive all around.
Listening to this late, but can’t help thinking Vulcan isn’t only the most important rocket ULA has ever designed, it’s the only one it has ever designed. Worse, they had to go buy someone else’s engine, the most critical part of the design. Too difficult a task for Boeing and Lockheed, I guess.
Vulcan might not be doing propulsive, complete recovery, but SMART is definitely going to be awesome to see if anyone can get a tracking camera on it out over the ocean...
Maybe, but it's not going to happen on this mission. The helicopterr catch is scrubbed anyway. The inflatable heatshield will let the engines float long enough to retrieve them. 🚀🏴☠️🎸
And off she went. Watched it live. Congratulations to @ULA, it was a tremendous success, if a few years behind schedule. Most of the delays were not, as you said, due to anything ULA could have done differently. Probably at least 3 years delay due to BO being so late with engines. Surprisingly, the engines performed well, seemed to anyhow. They don't show nice telemetry data like they do on SpaceX launches. Maybe in the future...
An important and capable launch vehicle. If they can successfully reuse the engines in the future and ramp up production to cover the high demand then I could see it doing well.
@@vicroc4 Why would you like a concept that is reuse with extra steps? Get rid of the extra steps. Do direct reuse, no silly schemes where they try to remake every part of the rocket every time, but reuse the engines. An overly complex gimmick. Rocket Lab just tried to catch their small first stages in mid air and it did not work. Spacex tried to catch fairings in nets. It did not work. ULA is going to have very low recovery success rates. Vulcan is another garbage throw away rocket that wastes tax payer dollars.
For sure, it is good to see an american product actually able to launch, and not rely on 50yo Russian rocket engines. But let us be blunt here: Vulcan/Centaur only exists due to considerable government cash support for its development, and government contracts specifically based on having >1 launch option. For military/gov, that strategy makes complete sense; the inability to service the ISS directly, for so long, really emphasised that. Commercial customers, however, care nothing for that stuff; they just want the payload safely up there for the cheapest price. I may be missing something, but I don't see how V/C will have any commercial customer demand, given that Falcon 9 is half the price for more payload, Falcon Heavy is still cheaper, for ~ 2.5x the payload, and when Starship is operational, the price difference per kg will be just ridiculous. It will be interesting to see if the aspiration, but not operational, SMART is ever implemented. Looking at the graphic at 11:30, the 'catch with helicopter picking up a line loose in the air' part, appears hopeful, and fraught. Not least because that will require two helicopters per launch, both catching falling engines, in the same vicinity. Can that really work? It really does come across as UAL trying to find some way of making some part of the vehicle reusable, when 'reusability' is a concept which was created and near perfected *after* V/C was conceived, and in a way which makes any other reusability, not possible. Anyway, great to see the fully successful launch, and equally disappointing the private payload failed for its own reasons.
It actually makes a lot of sense once you run the rocket equations. At low speed (takeoff), a rocket is hella inefficient no matter what the fuel. Low specific impulse fuels make a lot of sense in that regime. For the upper stages once the rocket is moving at speeds at or exceeding the propellant velocity, you want the fastest, highest specific impulse fuel you can get (HydroLOx).
@@NullHand The problem is, it only makes sense if you look *exclusively* at the rocket equation. If you're actually looking at the requirements for building an operational rocket (instead of some idealised paper concept), that kind of optimisation isn't particularly helpful.
Peregrin is on its way! After waiting 16 years for this to happen. Centaur continues on what looks like an interplanetaty mission; it's a funeral! Next launch for DreamChaser. September? When will the next two be4 engines get delivered? 🚀🏴☠️🎸
I suspected that the beautiful flame livery on the Vulcan booster would be discontinued after the first launch. I remember how NASA stopped painting the external tanks of the Space Shuttle after the first few launches. The weight penalty of hundreds of pounds of crisp, white paint that would just burn up on reentry didn't make sense. However, I have wondered if the paint layer on the external tank might have reduced the amount of insulation that came off the tank on ascent, perhaps preventing the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.
Nope. None of the Shuttle disasters had anything to do with the paint. 1. That giant firescorpion came from a loosened booster breaking the tank. 2. A lost heat tile happened more than once! It doesn't always result in a disaster. 🚀🏴☠️🎸
there's a little bit more nuance to the white tank. The paint was added to reduce heat absorption from the sun during fueling/ flight. Eventually it was decided that the amount of fuel saved wasn't worth carrying the weight of the paint.
"you two shall marry". A bit like Northrop and Consolidated way back when. Aviation missed out on a super cool flying wing and ended up with a burning Andre the Giant.
As a taxpayer, fancy paint and once-and-done rockets are a pure ripoff. I prefer to see lots of soot telling me that rocket paid for itself many times over. If we want to paint rockets. may as well put a cartoon of Shelby giving it to a taxpayer up the old wazoo.
So...Jeff Bezos and his Blue Origin BE-4 engines are the first methalox rocket engines to power a payload into orbit, ahead of Elon Musk's SpaceX Raptors. Who would have thought that would happen? Now that Peregrine is launched, hopefully on a successful mission, it's up to Blue Origin to start turning out those BE-4s at the rate that they will be needed for ULA's and for their own New Glenn rockets.
No. The Chinese successfully launched a methalox rocket into orbit before either of them. And Relativity Space have also launched a methane rocket to space, albeit failing to reach orbit due to a second-stage problem.
@@iamjwns6277 Yes, if you narrow the criteria down enough to eliminate contenders, then sure. But the fact remains, the BE-4 is *not* the first methalox engine to power a payload to orbit. The Chinese TQ-12 engine was. BE-4, if successful, will be the second to reach orbit (and the fourth to reach space, after Aeon 1 and Raptor)
@@simongeard4824 not only is the BE-4 the first. They are also the most powerful methalox engines in the world to take a rocket to orbit. And they succeeded on the first try. Amazing engineering, you haters are looking foolish. And will look even more foolish when New Glenn also succeeds in its first flight this year. Raptors are still melting
Good luck to ULA but in my opinion they weren’t ambitious enough. Man this just shows SpaceX really put in some work, what they’ve built in under 20 years in terms of cost, reliability and reusability is nothing short of incredible.
I remember watching an old video with someone (maybe Destin?) That went to ULA and they were very excited about their new upcoming rocket. I suppose thats the Vulcan? Cool!
The landing ashes on the moon thing is alright, but what about intentionally re-entering them so you can wish on your loved one’s remains as a shooting star
@@mythicfolfi4652yeah, a small section of native Americans are now claiming the Moon as their de facto property. Pretty soon they'll want to run casinos over there too.
@@mythicfolfi4652 There are dozens of bags of Apollo astronaut feces, lying on its surface, as we "speak"...not to mention, all the leftover tools, equipment, spent stages, etc.
Why dosnt the orthogrid use the bestagon the hexagon? Uses less wall for more strength thanks to 120 dehree angles And the corners will hav less fatige
Bestagons are better all around, especially for loading from wildly varied directions, but pay for it in complexity, machine time and absolute directional strength... Vulcan is designed to avoid having to deal with basically anything but compression loading and hoop strength. That means they don't need the versatility of the bestagons and can use the easier to make and more directional squareagon....
💀 (Also Short of a Potato Quality video on “rocket.watch”, I can’t seem to find much (at least on RU-vid) on it. Probably buried in a space news video maybe as well?) (Also giant congressional report maybe lol)
I never understood how it can be cheaper than Atlas V and Delta IV when the 1st stage is basically Delta IV without foam insulation and it has an extra (expensive) RL-10 on the new Centaur upper stage giving twice the thrust and 2.5 times the propellant mass… OK they are using the much more efficient Altas launch infrastructure (Everything about Delta IV was very indulgent and costly) but can modern production techniques and higher production rates save that much money ? I do think it’s a cool rocket, incorporating the best of both its predecessors….
Majority of launch costs are related operations, and fixed costs. Delta IV and Atlas V were expensive cuz they were built in same building, meaning they held back eachother lowering the flight rate and consequently increasing the costs. Vulcan plans to take.over entire Decatur, and has already like 70 launches booked up, and now its projected to be competitive with Falcon 9
@@_mikolaj_ they wont ever be competetive with Falcon 9 since by the time they get enough rockets to do 2+ launches a week, SpaceX will have Starship up and running a while ago. They narrowly missed their 100 launches a year target by 2 or so flights, meanwhile ULAs entire rocket flights is around 155. Sadly for some reason no other company can even beginn to rival SpaceX currently, and going by the trend it seems to only widen the gap.
I know that there was a list of Emergency / Backup Runways that the Shuttles could have used all around the word is that still the case for dream chaser? Same list, just an updated one or is Dream Chaser restricted to just one place?
Probably. In theory it could land on any runway long enough (but landing at a major airport would cause unwanted delays to other flights.) I suspect they'll have plans to land on some friendly countries' air force bases. Anywhere they use as a landing site will require preparations to recover it from there and return it to Cape Canaveral.
Dream Chaser, unlike the Shuttle orbiters, has more options due to its smaller size and due to its non-toxic propellants. So, it can land at any large airport, and it can be approached immediately after landing to get time-sensitive cargo or an injured astronaut offloaded.
The interesting thing about the welding is it's friction welding. Interview with Tory Bruno: HOW ROCKETS ARE MADE (Rocket Factory Tour - United Launch Alliance) - Smarter Every Day 231
Feb 29, 2020...Smarter Every Day 231 Sheesh.... almost FOUR YEARS ago... ULA surely are proud of their incredible production speed there bub. Getting $1,000,000,000 a year to simply exist..... NICE sinecure. ... ULA deeply discounted the price of its first two Vulcan missions, which cost in the neighborhood of $112.5 million per mission. “A base Vulcan is about half what Atlas used to be in the old days,” Bruno told Aerospace DAILY in an October 2022 interview ... THAT is some racket they have going on.
Great info!! And all the best to ULA for Successful launch of Vulcan👍 Hey Scott I have a recommendation don't know if majority will agree or not but Can you please make such informative videos for Landspace's Zhuque, Skyroot Aerospace's Vikram and Perigee Aerospace's Blue Whale.
It's currently not reusable, but they have a planned upgrade that will make it partially reusable. The BE-4 engines are already built for reuse and ULA has worked with NASA for some tech demonstration mission for their inflatable heatshield concept (LOFTID) which will be scaled up with SMART to enable engine reuse. This system would not land, but instead splash down in the ocean. The have greatly reduced cost compared to Delta IV Heavy (and Atlas V), while also having a reliable supply of engines (unlike Atlas V). In some contracts ULA has signed, Vulcan Centaur is even price competitive with SpaceX's Falcon Heavy and Falcon 9 rockets.
Funny how heavy launch vehicle named Vulcan is going to finally fly, but it won't be soviet Vulcan ie projected 200 ton to LEO configuration of Energia.
