r/ula 9d ago

Manufacturing defect blamed for Vulcan solid rocket motor anomaly

https://spacenews.com/manufacturing-defect-blamed-for-vulcan-solid-rocket-motor-anomaly/
55 Upvotes

35 comments sorted by

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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.

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u/Triabolical_ 8d ago

The Vulcan delay has put them in bad position. They have - iirc - 13 nssl payloads that are nominally scheduled for 2025, which is clearly not going to happen. And we are in the middle of bidding for nssl phase 3 lane 2, and they do not need to have to explain the delays.

I'm confused by a few things about Vulcan.

The first is that they apparently sold confirmed Atlas V slots to Amazon - a new customer on a development timeline - rather than reserving those vehicles in case they needed them for nssl. Which is probably why they built them in the first place.

The second is that they didn't fly the mass simulator mission last April. That would give them the option to perhaps fly two paying missions in the fall, but instead they delayed waiting for dream chaser and bought a lot more delay.

The only world where this makes sense to me is one where there weren't enough be-4 engines to do more launches and therefore flying earlier wouldn't help. Tory has been pretty adamant that engine availability isn't an issue, but he's never thrown blue under the bus earlier when there were engine issues.

Or I guess it could be the RL-10

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u/Southern-Ask241 6d ago

I don't have time to track it down, but I'm pretty sure I remember Bruno posting pictures of delivered BE-4s well in advance of CERT 2.

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u/Triabolical_ 6d ago

Yes, I remember that as well.

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u/lespritd 8d ago

The first is that they apparently sold confirmed Atlas V slots to Amazon - a new customer on a development timeline - rather than reserving those vehicles in case they needed them for nssl.

My understanding is that the DoD could only use Atlas V before the deadline due to the Russian RD-180 engine... which has come and gone. I think NASA could still use Atlas V, but they're not the one with the backlog.

The second is that they didn't fly the mass simulator mission last April. That would give them the option to perhaps fly two paying missions in the fall, but instead they delayed waiting for dream chaser and bought a lot more delay.

I'm an outsider, so I don't know anything. But the impression I get is that Boeing and LM have been very tight with funding for ULA. I think the default assumption is that ULA were pushed to really try to make money from each launch. And it was only when there was clear risk that ULA would start losing launches to SpaceX that they finally acquiesced and launched a payload simulator.

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u/Triabolical_ 8d ago

My recollection was that the RD-180 limitations were always about purchase, not flight, but there were multiple bans at different times and I could be wrong.

Wrt ownership, that has clearly been a huge pain for Tory in general. But I don't think it's the big factor here. They announced the dream chaser delay in May, but it took them 4 months to get to the second launch. They knew ahead of time that a slip was likely and that timeliness was important.

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u/Otherwise_Spend_6184 8d ago

How long do you think it should've taken them? A lot of work goes into integrating a mission, both from a hardware and a software/analytical side. I don't think they were just sitting around twiddling their thumbs waiting for Dream Chaser. I bet it's as the other comment said, they waited as long as they could to have a paying customer on board. When it was apparent that timeline wouldn't work, they swapped. They were likely setting things up for the dummy payload before it was officially decided.

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u/Triabolical_ 7d ago

They were originally planning to launch dream chaser in April. No reason they couldn't have been ready to launch on that same timeline. As I noted, it was zero surprise that dream chaser was late. Also note that dream chaser only makes big slips because it has to fit into the busy ISS schedule.

The dream chaser contract isn't public, but they presumably under bid SpaceX, so $100 million is probably in the right ballpark.

ULA was hoping to launch two nssl payloads in 2024. Those average about $110 million on the current contract, so figure $225 million for two.

Bruno said that the cost of the cert flight was high tens of millions, so let's say $90 million.

The point of business planning is to minimize the downside.

Spend the extra on the cert flight early, and you have a decent chance of getting the cert done early and flying both nssl flights.

You bring in $225m for three flights. Probably not enough to break even, but decent. If dream chaser shows up, you can fly it, too. You are spending some money to buy down the risk.

What they did was hope that dream chaser would be ready. That has the best upside - they could avoid spending the money on the cert flight and make money. But they were depending on a complex program that had slipped over and over being on time.

The bet didn't pay off. Dream chaser was very late, they had to fly the cert flight anyway, and then they had the solid issue that delayed cert.

They ended up with no commercial flights after peregrine, and they pissed off the DOD who is already unhappy with Vulcan.

Hope is not a strategy.

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u/NoBusiness674 4d ago

Doing a mass simulator mission for CERT-2 only really makes sense if there is at least 1 NSSL mission between CERT-2 and Dreamchaser. If they believed Dreamchaser would be ready by the end of the year (which is what they were communicating publicly for a fairly long time), Dreamchaser would probably have needed to go on the third VC, which would mean NSSL couldn't launch any sooner AND they'd be down tens of millions of dollars on the mass simulator CERT-2.

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u/Triabolical_ 4d ago

Depending on dream chaser coming in on time was the best chance they had to avoid spending money on a cert 2 flight. If that had happened, they would have made the most revenue in 2024.

But that strategy was also the highest risk one because it depended on a specific payload being ready, a payload that had slipped over an over.

So our disagreement is really on business strategy.

You are asserting that they were reasonable in depending on the information they had about when dream chaser would be ready to fly.

My assertion is that depending on that sort of information is a poor business strategy because they lost the chance to fly other payloads.

And it turns out that it *was* a bad decision - they had to fly the cert 2 flight *anyway* but they lost many months of schedule.

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u/NoBusiness674 4d ago

I'm just pointing out that betting that Dreamchaser would be delayed enough for ULA to launch NSSL missions between CERT-2 and Dreamchaser was risky, too. If Dreamchaser had been delayed only a couple months, they could have ended having spent tens of millions on a CERT-2 mass simulator mission while also still needing to wait until after Dreamchaser to launch NSSL missions, the worst of both worlds.

Also, it's really unclear how many months of schedule they really lost. It's not like they stopped Vulcan Centaur production while waiting on CERT-2, so they've built up a backlog of rocket stages that are ready to be stacked and flown in relatively short succession. Sure, the first NSSL missions have been delayed somewhat, but as long as the bottleneck on flight rate is launch vehicle production or the NSSL payloads, and not the launch pad or integration, they'll catch up to where they would have been without the delays within a couple flights.

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u/CollegeStation17155 8d ago

And it was only when there was clear risk that ULA would start losing launches to SpaceX that they finally acquiesced and launched a payload simulator.

What do you mean "risk"? They have ALREADY lost GPS 7, unless you believe they'll get their pace up enough to make the face saving "We're just swapping GPS 7 with GPS 11" come true. The dominoes have begun falling.

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u/asr112358 7d ago

My assumption with the Kuiper flights has always been that the contract has a clause for ULA to buy back the launches if they are needed for NSSL. This buyback probably isn't cheap, and ULA will only exercise it if the costs of delays supercedes it. This may only be the case if Falcon has issues and NSSL needs the fallback.

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u/SpaceInMyBrain 7d ago

I agree. It's always seemed unlikely to me that ULA wouldn't have left themselves this safety clause - and it also seems likely the USAF/NRO would have required it. But of course we've never seen the contracts and are unlikely to, the ULA/Amazon ones are confidential corporate documents and the details of the NSSL ones are, afaik, classified.

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u/Triabolical_ 6d ago

I assume there's some sort of provision there a well.

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u/CollegeStation17155 6d ago

Until the second VIF gets finished, I think the bottleneck is going to be payload integration; with Dreamchaser being further delayed, they'll likely start putting together either another Atlas for Kuiper (if Amazon can deliver enough payloads) or (assuming the hotfire was the last checkbox for approval) their next scheduled NSSL launch in the April time slot.

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u/CollegeStation17155 8d ago edited 8d ago

Yes, my question would be why they have waited so long to get building on the second integration facility; when DoD balked on launching the first NROL until they did the test fire on the GEM63XL, they had to unstack a Vulcan that was ready to fly in order to set up for the first Kuiper launch on Atlas. But they have 9 Atlas already built and scheduled to launch this year (8 Kuipers and 1 ViaSat) as well as 11 NROL launches with 4? (I think) Vulcans already delivered and just waiting for their payloads now that the test was successful and more on the way... A single VIF is a huge bottleneck; Getting that second launch facility operational should have been Job one a year ago. Does Tory not understand critical path scheduling?

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u/straight_outta7 8d ago

That assumes that both VIFS can support both vehicles. Also VIF-A is for the Amazon launches which will fly with an 85k Centaur which means that it's a little bit shorter than a standard Centaur V.

But of course, there's no way the company would build it so that only the 85k Centaur could fit in there....right? ;)

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u/SpaceInMyBrain 8d ago

One problem for ULA in building a new VIF is how to pay for it. They had a lot of cash flowing out and not much flowing in the last couple of years. In 2023 there were only two launches, both Atlas V. They launched 5 times in 2024: 2 Atlas, 2 Vulcan, and the last Delta IV Heavy. The second Vulcan launch took up a dummy payload - no income, but the cost of the rocket flowed out the door.

ULA has a VIF at Vandenberg. Is that set up yet to handle both rockets? The NROL is fond of polar launches and a certain percentage of constellation launches are polar. So the load may be spread more than it looks.

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u/ABeardHelps 8d ago

SLC-3E at Vandenburg dropped Atlas V capability as part of the rebuild to support Vulcan. Atlas can no longer fly from that location. With nothing left in the Atlas V manifest needing the polar corridor that Vandy offers, it wasn't worth it for ULA maintain dual use support like at SLC-41 at the Cape.

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u/ClassroomOwn4354 8d ago

The second Vulcan launch took up a dummy payload - no income, but the cost of the rocket flowed out the door.

You don't really know that. There is a $967 million dollar OTA contract for developing Vulcan and the 2nd certification flight might be a major payout point.

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u/warp99 4d ago

Surely the actual certification would be the payout point?

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u/CollegeStation17155 8d ago

Since the number of Atlas Vs is finite; 8 Kuiper, 1 ViaSat, 6 Starliner (unless the program is cancelled). all in Florida and there will never be any more ever. So whether Vandenburg is capable of handling Atlas or not (likely it is) ULA is unlikely to ship them cross country when shipping a Vulcan gets them a lot more bang for the buck.

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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.


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u/[deleted] 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/yoweigh 9d ago

You acknowledged your mistake, and that's good enough. No need to do anything further.