SpaceX, watch out! United Launch Alliance (ULA) has been hard at work on a new rocket program, and this is definitely not something new, although the name for this new rocket has just been decided on – and it will be called the Vulcan. A pleasant surprise for those Star Trek fans for sure, and it does seem as though the announcement of the Vulcan rocket was a carefully calculated move to put a damper on the SpaceX program. After all, SpaceX was all prepared to roll out a rocket yesterday, although the Falcon 9 mission did not take off (pardon the pun) due to weather issues.
ULA happens to be a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing which was formed close to 9 years ago, where it intends to provide commercial launch services to the Department of Defense and NASA. The Vulcan has the distinction of being ULA’s very first completely in-house rocket design, which would then place it on par with that of the SpaceX Falcon 9, although they are rather different beasts in their own right.
The Vulcan rocket is said to arrive in two parts, where the lower stage will be designed first and in all probability, be powered by two innovative BE-4 liquefied natural gas main engines that were designed by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space firm.
The second segment of the Vulcan rocket would see the upper stage known as the Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage (ACES) being worked out, where very little is known about it.
Filed in . Read more about Rocket, Science and Space. Source: extremetech