United Launch Alliance (ULA) could have internal tradeoffs done as early as January on what will go into its next-generation launch vehicle to pair with the company’s Blue Origin
-developed engine, according to company CEO Tory Bruno.
“We’re not done with the trades,” Bruno told Defense Daily Thursday, declining to provide specifics on what the company is looking at for its next-generation launch vehicle. “But I promise, call me in January, and we’ll talk.”
ULA announced in September it was teaming with Blue Origin to jointly fund and develop a liquefied natural gas rocket engine called the BE-4 to power a new launch vehicle. The teaming arrangement allows for a four-year development process with full-scale testing in 2016 and first flight in 2019.
Launch vehicles are not plug-and-play instruments, requiring significant adaptations to changes to important components like first-stage boosters, for example. Bruno reiterated that thought Thursday by coming out against a government-funded next-generation rocket engine program.
Bruno told an audience at the Atlantic Council think tank in downtown Washington that the Defense Department’s early plans to develop its own rocket engine could result in a booster that doesn’t fit the ideal future launch vehicle.
“You don’t want to go out into a corner and develop a rocket engine that maybe a one-size-fits-no one,” Bruno said. “Rockets are integrated systems.”
The Air Force in August requested information from industry about the possibility of a domestically-produced next generation rocket engine (Defense Daily, Aug. 21). House appropriators have proposed funding such an endeavor, passing a fiscal year 2015 spending bill that included $220 million (Defense Daily, June 10), but it has not yet been signed into law. The White House has also come out against such a program (Defense Daily, June 18).
Bruno said he’d rather let industry develop, with its own money, a solution to fill a government need. This in direct contrast to previous ULA CEO Michael Gass, who advocated for government funding in a next-generation engine program.
DoD isn’t buying a utilitarian item like a tank or a fairing, Bruno said, but a service—access to space.
“Enable those investments to happen by private industry with their own funding, so we can provide the right solution for the country, all of us, in whatever that solution might be,” Bruno said.
Bruno also spoke out against proposed Senate authorization language that he said would ban ULA from using the Russian-made RD-180 first-stage booster. The Senate Armed Services Committee- (SASC) approved FY ’15 bill bars the defense secretary from entering into a new contract, or renewing a current contract, for space launch supplies if those supplies are provided by Russian suppliers, as is the case with the RD-180.
The text gives the Pentagon an out, saying the defense secretary can waive the prohibition if he/she certifies to the congressional defense committees not less than 30 days before the waiver takes effect that the waiver is necessary for national security interests and that the launch services and capabilities covered could not be obtained at a fair and reasonable price (Defense Daily, June 5).
Nevertheless, Bruno said the text would create an unintended consequence of preventing ULA from offering its Delta IV launch vehicle, despite it not using a Russian-developed first stage engine. Bruno said congressional staffers are currently hashing out the differences.
“As it was originally drafted, it was a very harmful set of language,” Bruno said. “It would have created a ban on ULA…simply because we have the RD-180 product line. We would not be allowed to offer the Delta.”
ULA is accelerating production rates of its current RD-180 contract deliveries, Bruno said, because it anticipates the need for its Atlas V launch vehicle to increase in the near-term. Bruno didn’t provide further specifics, but said ULA wants to make sure it has “adequate assets” on hand to meet that additional demand. Bruno said he has “a couple years’ worth” of engines on hand.
ULA is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Boeing [BA]. The RD-180 is developed by NPO Energomash and is distributed in the United States by RD AMROSS, a joint venture of NPO Energomash and United Technologies Corp.– [UTX] subsidiary Pratt & Whitney.