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\nCAPE CANAVERAL \u2014 United Launch Alliance vows a \u201cseamless\u201d switch from the Atlas 5 to the new Vulcan rocket in launches of Boeing\u2019s astronaut taxis.<\/p>\n
\nCAPE CANAVERAL \u2014 United Launch Alliance vows a \u201cseamless\u201d switch from the Atlas 5 to the new Vulcan rocket in launches of Boeing\u2019s astronaut taxis.<\/p>\n
ULA is the launch provider of Boeing\u2019s CST-100 capsule under NASA\u2019s commercial crew program that will start ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station from U.S. soil in 2017.<\/p>\n
On Monday, ULA unveiled its lower-cost, reusable Vulcan rocket family that will begin flying in 2019. Due to budget constraints, the company will develop the rocket in steps, with the first stage coming initially.<\/p>\n
The Vulcan to fly for the first four years will be powered by a pair of Blue Origin BE-4 methane main engines and up to six strap-on solid rocket boosters. The existing Centaur upper stage will be used until a new, advanced upper stage can be fielded starting in 2023, which is Step 2 of development.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause the front end of the rocket, the top half of it is the same as today\u2019s Atlas, at least in Step 1 (of development), all of the interfaces for the CST-100 at the launch pad and on the rocket are identical for what they are on Atlas,\u201d said George Sowers, ULA\u2019s vice president of strategic architecture and advanced programs.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny of the crew providers that are currently integrated to Atlas would have a seamless transition to this vehicle at a lower cost,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The Vulcan-Centaur, like the Atlas 5, will require a 422 vehicle variant, with two strap-on solid rocket boosters and a dual-engine Centaur upper stage to put the CST-100 capsule into low-Earth orbit.<\/p>\n
But the addition of the new, high-performance Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage replacing Centaur will eliminate the need for solid rockets, allowing CST-100 to fly on the entry-level Vulcan-ACES vehicle.<\/p>\n
Atlas 5 is being human-rated and Vulcan will be from the start.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile our baseline launch vehicle design for the CST-100 is for the Atlas 5, from the onset we\u2019ve designed our CST-100 to be launch vehicle agnostic, which means we can launch on any vehicle after some modifications. We will continue to work closely with ULA on their plans for future launch vehicles,\u201d said Boeing spokesman Adam Morgan.<\/p>\n
ULA chief Tory Bruno says it will be up to Boeing when the transition from Atlas to Vulcan occurs.<\/p>\n
At ULA\u2019s production factory in Decatur, Alabama, work has begun producing the first two Atlas rockets that will carry the Boeing capsules on test flights in 2017.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s two significant changes to the rocket that we\u2019re talking about. We\u2019ll go to a two RL10 engine version of the Centaur and we\u2019re doing some structural interfaces for the capsule,\u201d Bruno said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything else on Atlas is essentially identical. It\u2019s really a matter of going through the process of human-rating all of that existing rocketry to make sure it has the margins and pedigree and everything that goes along with that to be certified for human spaceflight.\u201d<\/p>\n
The CST-100\u2019s first two space missions will see an unpiloted test flight in April 2017 and a demo mission with a two-person crew in July 2017, leading to NASA astronaut taxi missions to the International Space Station beginning at the end of 2017.<\/p>\n
Those first two launches aboard Atlas 5 carry the tailnumbers AV-073 and AV-080.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe last time we were at this stage of development for a human spacecraft was in the 1970s when we were building the shuttle,\u201d said former astronaut Chris Ferguson, now Boeing\u2019s director of Crew and Mission Systems for the company\u2019s commercial crew division.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have Apollo manuals on my desk \u2014 not to copy designs but to understand how they did it and to validate the decisions we\u2019ve made with regard to provisions for the crew, what kind of spacesuits they wear, what kind of seats they sit in, and why they sit that way. Engineers put an enormous amount of thought into many low-level designs decades ago, but now we\u2019re trying to recreate the \u201cwhy\u201d behind all that. It\u2019s a little intimidating, but it\u2019s fun. You learn why the space program took the shape it is today over five decades ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
See our earlier Vulcan coverage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CAPE CANAVERAL \u2014 United Launch Alliance vows a \u201cseamless\u201d switch from the Atlas 5 to the new Vulcan rocket in launches of Boeing\u2019s astronaut taxis. ULA is the launch provider of Boeing\u2019s CST-100 capsule under NASA\u2019s commercial crew program that will start ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station from U.S. soil in 2017. On […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[724,670,524,1565,4087,2636,875,750],"class_list":["post-16388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-atlas-5","tag-boeing","tag-commercial-crew","tag-cst-100","tag-george-sowers","tag-ngls","tag-tory-bruno","tag-united-launch-alliance"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16388"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16388\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}