Vulcan Aerospace intends to compete for smaller Defense Department launches after 2020 using its Stratolaunch carrier aircraft and multi-stage booster, company president Chuck Beames said Thursday.
Beames said Vulcan believes it can fill a niche with the trend it sees toward smaller, disaggregated satellites. Beames said Vulcan recently sent a letter to the Air Force expressing its interest in competing for launches, educating the service on its eventual capabilities while asking the Air Force if it is interested in modifying future acquisition strategies to allow a competitive launch marketplace to play.
Beames told Defense Daily Vulcan would keep costs competitive to established ground-launch techniques by using a reusable first stage. He also said convenience will be a factor as the company will use a smaller rocket, allowing small entrepreneurs to not wait out a ride share opportunity on a larger rocket as they now often do. Vulcan, Beames said, would put the Stratolaunch carrier aircraft and air-launched rocket through the normal Air Force launch certification process.
“It’s a competitive business, so we’ll be continuously looking at ways to make it more affordable,” Beames said after a presentation at the Future Space Leaders forum on Capitol Hill. “The big selling point will be convenience as much as cost.”
In a April blog post at Vulcan’s website, Beames said Stratolaunch continues to march toward demonstrating an air launch system capable of transporting payloads to low Earth orbit using a larger carrier aircraft acting as a mobile launch range. Stratolaunch’s mobile launch range, he said in the blog post, will optimize launch operations and improve flexibility and availability. Beames said this new architecture will expand mission and operational flexibility by decoupling launch service from its dependence on traditional ground launch ranges.
Though Beames told Defense Daily in April Stratolaunch was “very likely” to use two multi-stage boosters on its carrier aircraft, Beames was non-committal Thursday, saying the company was still working through that decision (Defense Daily, April 13). Beames also said Thursday the Stratolaunch carrier aircraft was over half assembled and should roll out of the hangar early next year. Vulcan did not respond to an additional request for comment by press time.
Stratolaunch has a 2016 first flight goal for its carrier aircraft. Scaled Composites President Kevin Mickey said in January the carrier aircraft was almost 40 percent assembled (Defense Daily, Jan. 22). Scaled Composites is building the carrier aircraft while Orbital ATK [OA] is designing, assembling and testing the 120-foot long multi-stage booster.
Orbital will also provide program management, systems engineering, space launch mission design, system integration and integrated support for the entire ALV. Stratolaunch is composed of Northrop Grumman [NOC] subsidiary Scaled Composites and Orbital ATK.
Vulcan is the parent company of Stratolaunch Systems, which is developing its namesake carrier aircraft. Stratolaunch’s entire air launch system is composed of four components: carrier aircraft, multi-stage booster, a mating and integration system and an orbital payload.
After years of being dominated by one company, United Launch Alliance (ULA), the military launch marketplace is starting to develop competition. Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) was recently certified to launch military and intelligence community (IC) payloads while Orbital ATK historically competes for smaller military launch missions.
ULA is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Boeing [BA].