ULA launch and discussion thread

[tater]

 

[tater]

In a 4 min hold for T-0 at the top of the hour

[tater]

T-0 is at 6 after (so 6 min from now)

[tater]

This is the 99^th Atlas V launch.

Didn't see any images of the actual spacecraft. They are treating this like an NRO launch, lol.

[Royalswissarmyknife]

2 hours ago, tater said:

They are treating this like an NRO launch, lol.

That's exactly what I thought!

[mikegarrison]

Seven months ago it was reported that ULA was up for sale, but I've heard nothing about this for months. Is it still true?

[darthgently]

On 10/6/2023 at 2:11 PM, tater said:

This is the 99^th Atlas V launch.

Didn't see any images of the actual spacecraft. They are treating this like an NRO launch, lol.

A Starshield alternative?  Hmmm

[SunlitZelkova]

12 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Seven months ago it was reported that ULA was up for sale, but I've heard nothing about this for months. Is it still true?

It was supposed to happen before the end of this year but there has been no news since it was first reported.

[Spaceception]

I'm curious, if ULA announced a fully reusable rocket, what would you expect out of it?

I don't think it'll be a direct Vulcan evolution, but with the trend of new rocket development in the last several years, I think they would stick to methane as a propellent for at least the first stage over hydrogen or kerosene. Engines wise, I actually think they could turn to Ursa Major as an option. Aerojet would likely have too low of a production volume, and too high of a cost, while Blue Origin will probably want to focus their engine production on New Glenn (that said, I wouldn't rule them out completely, and it would make this hypothetical vehicle a kind of Vulcan II).

ULA really likes their side boosters to boost payload, but rather than solids, they might go all-in on liquid boosters (either as a redesigned core like DIVH, or a smaller variant), either to propulsively land or fly-back. It would help give more margins for full reuse on larger payloads. There would be engine commonality between the boosters and core.

The second stage is probably trickiest to speculate about. Centaur is their workhorse, so I think it would factor somewhere into this. However, due to the low thrust of RL-10, and the fact that the vehicle would stage earlier, losing its efficiency advantage, I find it hard to see Centaur being its upper stage, and more likely being redesgined into an ACES-style dedicated tug. They have several options for an upper stage - a lifting body, basically a top-mounted shuttle or dream chaser with enough fuel to act as an upper stage - or a stage with side mounted engines and a bottom heatshield, like Stoke, or even Dragon V2 (I've seen neat concepts of a reusable F9 2nd stage that looks like it) - or an integrated upper stage and faring with a massive heatshield along the body, like Starship.

Payload to orbit would, at minimum, be 20-30 tonnes to remain competitive, though I could easily see it exceeding Vulcan and shooting to 30-40 tonnes, putting it in a similar payload class as Terran R expended or New Glenn. And this could be variable, depending on whether it launches as a single stick or with the twin boosters.

Edited October 18, 2023 by Spaceception

[Kerballlistic07]

21 hours ago, Spaceception said:

I'm curious, if ULA announced a fully reusable rocket, what would you expect out of it?

I don't think it'll be a direct Vulcan evolution, but with the trend of new rocket development in the last several years, I think they would stick to methane as a propellent for at least the first stage over hydrogen or kerosene. Engines wise, I actually think they could turn to Ursa Major as an option. Aerojet would likely have too low of a production volume, and too high of a cost, while Blue Origin will probably want to focus their engine production on New Glenn (that said, I wouldn't rule them out completely, and it would make this hypothetical vehicle a kind of Vulcan II).

ULA really likes their side boosters to boost payload, but rather than solids, they might go all-in on liquid boosters (either as a redesigned core like DIVH, or a smaller variant), either to propulsively land or fly-back. It would help give more margins for full reuse on larger payloads. There would be engine commonality between the boosters and core.

The second stage is probably trickiest to speculate about. Centaur is their workhorse, so I think it would factor somewhere into this. However, due to the low thrust of RL-10, and the fact that the vehicle would stage earlier, losing its efficiency advantage, I find it hard to see Centaur being its upper stage, and more likely being redesgined into an ACES-style dedicated tug. They have several options for an upper stage - a lifting body, basically a top-mounted shuttle or dream chaser with enough fuel to act as an upper stage - or a stage with side mounted engines and a bottom heatshield, like Stoke, or even Dragon V2 (I've seen neat concepts of a reusable F9 2nd stage that looks like it) - or an integrated upper stage and faring with a massive heatshield along the body, like Starship.

Payload to orbit would, at minimum, be 20-30 tonnes to remain competitive, though I could easily see it exceeding Vulcan and shooting to 30-40 tonnes, putting it in a similar payload class as Terran R expended or New Glenn. And this could be variable, depending on whether it launches as a single stick or with the twin boosters.

I would say the first stage would be Vulcan derived, basically it would be the main core of Vulcan, but different engines. I do agree that it would likely use Ursa Major engines. The only Ursa Major engine that uses methalox as its fuel is the currently under development Arroway. I think it would use multiple of these, with one in the center and 2-4 on the outside. This is because if they plane to propulsively land the booster, they wouldn’t want all the engines to fire at once otherwise it would have too high of a TWR. I say 2-4 because I’m not sure how much thrust would be needed for it to liftoff.
 

The side boosters are something I’m not sure of. I think they could go the Space Shuttle route and use big solid side boosters, and then have them splash down in the ocean under parachute, but they could attempt a fly back booster. I think that they might also go a different route and not have side boosters at all, similar to Falcon 9. They could do a Falcon Heavy move though and strap the 3 cores together for more performance. I feel like that is most likely.

 

The upper stage I feel would absolutely still be hydrolox because ULA knows how to handle it, and it has incredible performance. The RL10 would definitely not be used because is costs way too much to produce, and has low thrust. I think they might use a BE-3U, but as you said, Blue Origin might not want to do that. If they did use the BE-3U or something similar, it would probably have an extendable nozzle since it would need to land back on Earth. Another alternative I really like is doing something like Stoke Space, and using an aerospike engine and heat shield combined into one. It would be similar to ACES in the way that it could stay in space as a propellant depot, but then it could be brought back eventually. I think that if they don’t use an aerospike engine like Stoke, they would use an inflatable heat shield similar to what they currently plan to do with SMART reuse. (A Starship style second stage doesn’t seem likely to me.) They could either then try and flip the stage around and propulsively land it, or they could use parachutes and catch it with a helicopter.

 

As for its name? It could be something new, it could be basic like “Vulcan Evolved,” or it could be a resurrection of an old name, like Titan.

 

I think payload capacity would be on par with Terran R, maybe better.

Edited October 19, 2023 by Kerballlistic07

[sevenperforce]

31 minutes ago, Kerballlistic07 said:

I think that if they don’t use an aerospike engine like Stoke, they would use an inflatable heat shield similar to what they currently plan to do with SMART reuse. (A Starship style second stage doesn’t seem likely to me.) They could either then try and flip the stage around and propulsively land it, or they could use parachutes and catch it with a helicopter.

Agree that ULA is less likely to just ape SpaceX on the second stage.

A Stoke-like aerospike adaptation of ACES isn't out of the question. But of course I want to see new and better ideas. It would be really cool if they used SMART reuse as a testbed for an inflatable ballute heat shield. ULA is much more likely than SpaceX to utilize disposable elements on an otherwise-reusable vehicle (see, e.g., Starliner). Prior to re-entry, the upper stage could vent remaining hydrogen pressurant gas into a series of inflatable phenol-impregnated bladders that would form a ring around the payload adapter, stretch up the sides of the vehicle, and shroud the engine bay. Those inflatable bladders would both increase the re-entry cross-section (which decreases heating) and absorb the bulk of the heat flux, then finally act as airbags to cushion the vehicle on its desert touchdown.

It's still not the VTOL spaceplane we all REALLY want, but it would be cool if they could get it working.

If they REALLY wanted to think outside of the box, they could build a lifting-body design with aerospike engines located in the wing strakes, perpendicular to the long axis of the vehicle. The booster carries the vehicle up and out of the atmosphere, so after separation the vehicle could simply rotate 90 degrees and thrust to orbit that way. That helps with the descent and landing portions of the re-entry because the vehicle can glide to the landing site and then fire its landing engines to hover its way down.

[Kerballlistic07]

8 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

Agree that ULA is less likely to just ape SpaceX on the second stage.

A Stoke-like aerospike adaptation of ACES isn't out of the question. But of course I want to see new and better ideas. It would be really cool if they used SMART reuse as a testbed for an inflatable ballute heat shield. ULA is much more likely than SpaceX to utilize disposable elements on an otherwise-reusable vehicle (see, e.g., Starliner). Prior to re-entry, the upper stage could vent remaining hydrogen pressurant gas into a series of inflatable phenol-impregnated bladders that would form a ring around the payload adapter, stretch up the sides of the vehicle, and shroud the engine bay. Those inflatable bladders would both increase the re-entry cross-section (which decreases heating) and absorb the bulk of the heat flux, then finally act as airbags to cushion the vehicle on its desert touchdown.

It's still not the VTOL spaceplane we all REALLY want, but it would be cool if they could get it working.

If they REALLY wanted to think outside of the box, they could build a lifting-body design with aerospike engines located in the wing strakes, perpendicular to the long axis of the vehicle. The booster carries the vehicle up and out of the atmosphere, so after separation the vehicle could simply rotate 90 degrees and thrust to orbit that way. That helps with the descent and landing portions of the re-entry because the vehicle can glide to the landing site and then fire its landing engines to hover its way down.

 The only issue I can really see with using an inflatable heat shield is that it might not be reusable. I haven’t looked into it a ton, but wouldn’t it be too damaged to reuse? Also deflating it and getting it ready for reuse might be too much. If they can make it cheap enough, it might not matter though.

[sevenperforce]

47 minutes ago, Kerballlistic07 said:

 The only issue I can really see with using an inflatable heat shield is that it might not be reusable. I haven’t looked into it a ton, but wouldn’t it be too damaged to reuse? Also deflating it and getting it ready for reuse might be too much. If they can make it cheap enough, it might not matter though.

Oh, I doubt the recovery elements would be particularly reusable. That's in line with ULA's overall approach to reuse. With SMART, they aren't going to be reusing the tanks or the heat shield or the parachutes; just the engines. So it would make sense for them to use disposable recovery elements to recover the more expensive hardware.

I would really love to see an exploration of new recovery modes and an expansion of available data. One near-future concept for reusable re-entry vehicles is the reversible deployment of large-volume drag structures (deployed either by pressurants or electromagnetically) that slow vehicles rapidly at ultra-high altitude before there is appreciable heating. We need more data on inflatable heat shields to see how that would actually work.

[tater]

36 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

I would really love to see an exploration of new recovery modes and an expansion of available data. One near-future concept for reusable re-entry vehicles is the reversible deployment of large-volume drag structures (deployed either by pressurants or electromagnetically) that slow vehicles rapidly at ultra-high altitude before there is appreciable heating. We need more data on inflatable heat shields to see how that would actually work.

This has all sorts of other utility as well. Can be used for Mars, can also be used for reuse in space—aerobraking spacecraft not designed for EDL, doe example.

[darthgently]

12 hours ago, tater said:

This has all sorts of other utility as well. Can be used for Mars, can also be used for reuse in space—aerobraking spacecraft not designed for EDL, doe example.

 

 

[mikegarrison]

I do that all the time in KSP, and it works most of the time.

[Scotius]

Did you just broke the rule No. 1? You did!

[mikegarrison]

Also, any KSP player quickly learns that you can't do an orbital insertion with aerobraking. You can do a capture, yes, but you will inescapably (pun intended) end up with an unstable orbit that is going to quickly fail. You need another burn at the new  apoapsis in order to avoid that.

[tater]

The ability to run tanker flights to lunar space, with return only being a TEI burn and circularization after aerobrake would be huge though. A few km/s savings in dv.

[darthgently]

2 hours ago, tater said:

The ability to run tanker flights to lunar space, with return only being a TEI burn and circularization after aerobrake would be huge though. A few km/s savings in dv.

Hey, it works in KSP when returning fuel tankers from Minmus to LKO, so according to XKCD it should work in reality

[tater]

Cool.

[Spaceception]

How many Christmas/Christmas Eve space missions have there been? Off the top of my head, there's Apollo 8, where Christmas overlapped with the mission, and the launch of JWST, which was on Christmas, I don't know any others.

Either way, I'll definitely make some time to watch this live if we're not doing much. I expect a lot of meal prep/afternoon cooking, so hopefully it launches in the middle of that.

[StrandedonEarth]

3 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

How many Christmas/Christmas Eve space missions have there been?

Off on a tangent here, but the Canucks hockey team have a history of playing games on Christmas and New Years, and those games end up being turkeys. I don’t think they have ever won one, but I’m probably wrong on that..

[RCgothic]

That's certainly cutting a 2023 launch date fine.

[Royalswissarmyknife]

6 hours ago, Spaceception said:

How many Christmas/Christmas Eve space missions have there been? Off the top of my head, there's Apollo 8, where Christmas overlapped with the mission, and the launch of JWST, which was on Christmas, I don't know any others.

Either way, I'll definitely make some time to watch this live if we're not doing much. I expect a lot of meal prep/afternoon cooking, so hopefully it launches in the middle of that.

I think the maiden flight of Ariane 1 was on Christmas Eve not sure though.