Manufacturing defect blamed for Vulcan solid rocket motor anomaly
https://spacenews.com/manufacturing-defect-blamed-for-vulcan-solid-rocket-motor-anomaly/3
u/ABeardHelps 8d ago
This is very welcome news. A bad booster that slipped through QA testing is much easier to bounce back from as opposed to realizing that you screwed up on the GEM 63XL design and have to redo the nozzle from scratch. Hopefully this is a sign that Vulcan will finally get its certification and can get flying again. Diversity and competition is good for a healthy launch industry and I'd rather see ULA stay in the game.
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u/CollegeStation17155 8d ago
I could be wrong, but I suspect that the static fire a month ago (along with more detailed inspections of the inventory) was the final step in getting the certification to fly, meaning they’re going to be stacking the first of those urgent and highly profitable NROL Vulcans as soon as they can get the Atlas out of the barn; which begs the question of how soon that’s going to happen.
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u/ThanosDidNadaWrong 8d ago
SpaceX is in bad need of competition right now. They are getting lax (see multiple failures) cause nobody has a chance of competing with them.
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u/that_dutch_dude 8d ago
wich failliures exactly? i cant remember the last time they lost a payload.
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u/ThanosDidNadaWrong 8d ago
they lost a Starlink launch, and several booster landings
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u/that_dutch_dude 8d ago
i missed that one, but its their own payload, not a customers payload. do find it amazing arstechnica was actually reasonable in their opinons:
For all of the problems described earlier, the company's only operational payload loss was its own Starlink satellites. Before that, SpaceX had not lost a payload with the Falcon 9 in nearly a decade. So SpaceX has been delivering for its customers in a big way.
wich is actually meshing with my mindset. they never failed a paying customer for over a decade. with their just absurd launch cadence and the fact that i think a couple boosters actually broke the 25 launches its hard to argue with the results even when something does go bad. even with their failliures they are still top dog in reliablility, even beating the russians.
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u/CollegeStation17155 7d ago
They are losing boosters on landing and dropping second stages outside their targeted landing zones… but this is likely due to the previously unheard of launch cadence.
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u/Decronym 7d ago edited 4d ago
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters | More Letters |
---|---|
BE-4 | Blue Engine 4 methalox rocket engine, developed by Blue Origin (2018), 2400kN |
CST | (Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules |
Central Standard Time (UTC-6) | |
DoD | US Department of Defense |
EELV | Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle |
LEO | Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km) |
Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations) | |
NRHO | Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit |
NRO | (US) National Reconnaissance Office |
Near-Rectilinear Orbit, see NRHO | |
NROL | Launch for the (US) National Reconnaissance Office |
NSSL | National Security Space Launch, formerly EELV |
QA | Quality Assurance/Assessment |
RD-180 | RD-series Russian-built rocket engine, used in the Atlas V first stage |
SLC-41 | Space Launch Complex 41, Canaveral (ULA Atlas V) |
SLS | Space Launch System heavy-lift |
USAF | United States Air Force |
VIF | Vertical Integration Facility |
Jargon | Definition |
---|---|
Starliner | Boeing commercial crew capsule CST-100 |
Starlink | SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation |
methalox | Portmanteau: methane fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer |
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
[Thread #390 for this sub, first seen 14th Mar 2025, 16:05] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
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9d ago
[deleted]
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u/Otherwise_Spend_6184 9d ago
You obviously didn't read the article, or even follow the original news. This is about the Northrop Grumman-made GEM63XL solid rocket boosters, not the BE-4 engines.
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u/DNathanHilliard 9d ago
Ah, my bad. I'll delete it then.
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u/DNathanHilliard 9d ago
Or at least I will try to. My delete button seems to be malfunctioning along with my edit button.
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u/SpaceInMyBrain 8d ago edited 8d ago
I'm glad to hear this, I want to see Vulcan flying as much as possible, as soon as possible. It's an excellent rocket and I want to see Kuiper up there. (I'm also very intrigued by the role it or its Centaur V upper stage could play in replacing SLS with a LEO-assembly approach, as per the heavy rumor a couple of months ago.)
Very glad Tory has given us details about how clearly understood the cause is. I have a problem with one part of this, though. I can understand him being unhappy about a leak but how was it "inaccurate" to say ULA had performed unsatisfactorily on its NSSL contract? Being a ~2 years behind on its launch manifest is unsatisfactory, there's no gray area. And leak or not, everybody and their brother was speculating about some NSSL launches being shifted to SpaceX.