Showing posts with label ULA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ULA. Show all posts

Thursday, November 6, 2014

Names have been changed to protect the guilty

That Wallops Island rocket crash last week.  The one they are blaming on Russian built engines.  The company called itself "Orbital Sciences"  and the failed rocket they called "Antares".
   Funny, up until the disaster at Wallops Island, the company was known as "United Launch Association" or "ULA" and the vehicle was called "Atlas".   ULA was formed some years ago when Boeing and Lockheed decided to stop competing for NASA business, and spun off their space divisions.  The two spun off divisions promptly merged, creating ULA.  Their vehicle,Atlas, despite the Russian engines, has a pretty good record launching commercial comm sats, and military payloads (recon sats probably).
   Up until last week, Aviation Week worried about the Russian engines, and the possibility of the Russians cutting off the supply of engines in a tit for tat over Ukraine sanctions.  And they said, several times, that the cost of developing a US built engine would be prohibitive.  Well, last release to the popular (low information) press blamed the disaster on the Russian engines and announced that they would be replaced, with a yet to be named, US engine.  Nothing like an explosion filmed in full color to expedite the decision making process. 

Update:    Nov 7 20014.  Aviation Week came in this morning.  Apparently I am wrong, there ARE two US rocket operations, both using Russian built engines.  Aviation Week discusses both.  ULA and Atlas use a big Russian engine still in production, Orbital Science and Antares are using an old Russian engine, going back to the 1960's.  Sorry about the misinformation. 

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Atlas V booster flies on Russian engines

Atlas V, one of America's three big booster rockets,  is powered by RD-180 rocket engines supplied by NPO Energomash in Russia.  Aviation Week ran a piece speculating upon the effects of a Russian embargo upon these engines.  Due to worries about the reliability of Russian suppliers, USAF maintains a two year stockpile of the engines.  That's gotta be expensive, although Aviation Week didn't comment upon the expense.  Anyhow  Atlas V could keep flying until the stockpile is exhausted.  And  launches could continue using the Delta IV rocket, which is powered by US built RS-68 engines.  Both Atlas and Delta are built and operated by United Launch Alliance, a spinoff/merger of the booster operations of Boeing and Lockheed Martin.  Pentagon sources say it would cost $1 billion and take five years to set up production of the Russian RD-180 in the US.  Which is prohibitively costly.  They would scrap Atlas V before spending that sort of money. 
   Elon Musk of SpaceX says that his Falcon 9 booster could handle all the launches.  Falcon has made several successful flights to the International Space Station carrying supplies.  USAF is "certifying" Falcon to launch national security payloads.  Certification could happen anytime USAF feels like it.  It's just a paperwork exercise. 
   All three boosters, Atlas, Delta and Falcon are in the same class.  They can all boost the same payloads, give or take maybe 10%.  So loss of Atlas isn't the end of the world. 
   The Russian have made no threats to cut off RD-180 engines.  Presumably they are making good money selling them to the Americans, and they don't want to ruin it.  I doubt that the Russians want to let a little unpleasantness over the Crimea mess up a good thing.