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CAPE CANAVERAL \u2014 United Launch Alliance revealed its visionary approach to space exploration in the next decade courtesy of the Vulcan rocket\u2019s new, long-duration upper stage that can be fitted with as many as four engines to perform cargo resupply and astronaut transportation to far-flung destinations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the real game-changer,\u201d Tory Bruno, the CEO and president of ULA, said in unveiling the company\u2019s next-generation rocket on Monday.<\/p>\n
It all starts with what Bruno calls \u201cdistributed lift\u201d to split the launches of supplies and people into two flights without needing a large rocket. That\u2019s when the Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Upper Stage, or ACES, takes over.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday, the concept for launching objects, for satellites, for missions into space is highly constrained. It\u2019s trapped into the notion that the spacecraft has to be completely self-contained, physically. If it\u2019s a satellite, it has to fit in the nose fairing. If it\u2019s a capsule, it has to fit inside that capsule envelope. And once it goes up, there\u2019s no opportunity to meaningfully, physically interact with it. That upper stage shatters that limitation and opens up this possibility of distributed lift.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can take our first launch, big fuel tanks, supplies, food, water, if it\u2019s a manned mission. And the next mission will bring up the spacecraft or the astronauts in their capsule. With this advanced upper stage, which can fly around for weeks, it\u2019s up there waiting, we can put these pieces together, and outside the deep part of Earth\u2019s gravity well with that much impulse and propellant, we can do anything.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can go out and tap the resources that are in space. We can asteroid mine, we can build the infrastructure required for a real and permanent human presence. Fuel depots, water depots, commercial human habitats. This is truly a game-changer and I couldn\u2019t be more excited about what this will do for the future of space, all enabled by that advanced, high-performance, ultralong-duration upper stage,\u201d Bruno said.<\/p>\n
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The ACES stage is scheduled to debut in 2023, a year before distributed lift, which is the fourth and final development step to bring the full potential of the Vulcan rocket system.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can do anything you might imagine a permanent presence, a true commercial exploitation of space would require. All of that infrastructure that\u2019s truly required to see the potential of space can now be put together,\u201d Bruno said.<\/p>\n
The existing high-energy Centaur upper stage will fly on Vulcan in the earliest years starting in 2019. The new upper stage will allow the new rocket to surpass the capability of the Delta 4-Heavy for U.S. National Reconnaissance Office spy satellites.<\/p>\n
The engines will be manufactured by either Aerojet Rocketdyne, Blue Origin or XCOR. A decision on which supplier to use will come later. The stage can use between one and four powerplants, carry three times more propellant than Centaur, burning liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, and operate in space for weeks instead of mere hours.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ACES is a concept we\u2019ve been working on for quite a few years,\u201d said George Sowers, ULA\u2019s vice president of strategic architecture and advanced programs.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a LOX\/hydrogen upper stage, high-energy, a balloon-tank, pressurize-stabilized tank, thin-walled stainless steel, a very efficient design. The Integrated Vehicle Fluids is really the key to expanding the capabilities of the stage.\u201d<\/p>\n
ULA is building the IVF with Roush, the NASCAR team. The internal combustion engine will take waste propellants and recycle them to repressurize the tanks, to generate electrical power and to provide attitude control thrust. It eliminated the need for helium and hydrazine to be carried on the stage versus today\u2019s stages.<\/p>\n
Cost to develop the Vulcan rocket, though, is being kept a secret. \u201cWe are not talking about how much it costs. We are paying for it, ourselves, ULA,\u201d Bruno added.<\/p>\n
See our earlier Vulcan coverage. CAPE CANAVERAL \u2014 United Launch Alliance revealed its visionary approach to space exploration in the next decade courtesy of the Vulcan rocket\u2019s new, long-duration upper stage that can be fitted with as many as four engines to perform cargo resupply and astronaut transportation to far-flung destinations. \u201cThis is the real game-changer,\u201d Tory Bruno, the CEO […]<\/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":[3010,2636,875,750,364],"class_list":["post-16394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-aces","tag-ngls","tag-tory-bruno","tag-united-launch-alliance","tag-vulcan"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16394"}],"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=16394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16394\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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