United Launch Alliance (ULA) is celebrating a successful maiden flight of its brand-new Vulcan rocket. Lifted off by a pair of Blue Origin’s BE-4 engines early this morning, the rocket sent towards the Moon Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander – the first U.S.-built lunar lander since the Apollo era.
Vulcan, a two-stage heavy-lift rocket burning a mix of oxygen and methane liquid fuel, is building on the legacy of the Atlas and Delta family of launch vehicles. With a height of 202 feet and 18 feet in diameter, the rocket aims to compete with SpaceX and other launch providers. It offers a payload capacity of 60,000 pounds to low Earth orbit or 15,000 pounds to geostationary orbit respectively.
You can watch the replay of Vulcan’s Cert-1 flight on ULA’s YouTube channel:
The rocket was a long time in the making, with its debut flight originally planned for 2019. The delay wasn’t caused only by issues and longer-than-expected development at ULA; the BE-4 engines played an important part, too.
The pair of BE-4 engines is the first piece of Blue Origin’s spaceflight technology to reach orbit. The private space launch company owned by Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos has been operating a smaller New Shepard rocket since 2015, but that is a sub-orbital vehicle. Its much larger sibling, New Glenn, is still in development and awaiting its maiden flight, which is currently scheduled for late 2024.
Both New Glenn and Vulcan rely on the BE-4 engines, and both are extremely important for Bezos. The reason is Amazon and its planned satellite mega constellation Kuiper, the future competitor of Elon Musk’s Starlink. Both Vulcan and New Glenn are contracted to get these spacecraft to space.
The lagging Vulcan has a huge backlog of missions already. Among them are 38 flights booked by Amazon to launch over a thousand Kuiper satellites. Jeff Bezos does not have time to spare, as he is obliged by the FCC license to build at least half of the constellation – 1,618 satellites – by summer 2026. Otherwise, he risks losing the license or facing other severe consequences.
The smooth and flawless premiere of Vulcan is, therefore, more than great news for Bezos, who was rooting for a competing launch provider this morning – and probably not for the last time, as he needs a much delayed European Ariane 6 rocket to repeat Vulcan’s feat in 2024.
Ariane 6 is the third and last brand-new rocket booked by Amazon for its Kuiper project. Bezos has also bought nine flights of ULA’s retiring workhorse Atlas V, but that payload capacity is far from what is needed to put Kuiper to life.
In summary, Jeff Bezos will remain the No.1 fan of ULA and European spaceflight for quite some time. However, as long as things go in the right – his – direction, he won’t mind…
Image: Blue Origin / United Launch Alliance