United Launch Alliance's newest rocket, Vulcan, arrives at Cape Canaveral launch site

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brockrwood said:
The Atlas V was such a workhorse. Seems a shame to retire it.

Blue Origin has to buy ULA now, just to ensure a ready made market for the BE-4 engine.
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The good ole days when Putin The Great was selling secretly left over Soviet motors at a huge discount. Made in the late 60's and early 70's they were better than anything the decadent and egotistical West could put out. Just bolt them on our existing supply of Atlas. Who said closed cycle was impossible?

And cheap motors made for lovely short term profits the pig dog capitalist corporate executives could not resist! Commrade Secretary Putin could never defeat the high and mighty West! Beautiful Billionaire Jeffrey B will have loads of superior BE-4s out by 2017. No worries, we will make those NRO contract deadlines and all the packages will fly! Capacity abounds, what could go wrong?
 
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mjennings said:
Found the date real interesting. When I was at Kennedy there was a policy of no major operations around a major holiday, as people's brains were generally not fully focused. Now orbital dynamics come into play as there is a payload going to the moon, but at the same time it's the moon.
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What about Apollo 8 and reading the Bible from the moon on Christmas Eve?
 
Daddyisabar said:
The good ole days when Putin The Great was selling secretly left over Soviet motors at a huge discount. Made in the late 60's and early 70's they were better than anything the decadent and egotistical West could put out. Just bolt them on our existing supply of Atlas. Who said closed cycle was impossible?

And cheap motors made for lovely short term profits the pig dog capitalist corporate executives could not resist! Commrade Secretary Putin could never defeat the high and mighty West! Beautiful Billionaire Jeffrey B will have loads of superior BE-4s out by 2017. No worries, we will make those NRO contract deadlines and all the packages will fly! Capacity abounds, what could go wrong?
Click to expand...
Or maybe Lockheed-Martin should buy ULA. All they have to do is buy out Boeing’s 50 percent, right? Guarranteed launch vehicle for their payloads. Of course, the BE-4 engine has to eventually get operational or the new Vulcan rocket has no engine, right?
 
brockrwood said:
Or maybe Lockheed-Martin should buy ULA. All they have to do is buy out Boeing’s 50 percent, right? Guarranteed launch vehicle for their payloads. Of course, the BE-4 engine has to eventually get operational or the new Vulcan rocket has no engine, right?
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Blue Origin will buy the lot from Boeing and LM. Jeff RULES!
 
brockrwood said:
The Atlas V was such a workhorse. Seems a shame to retire it.

Blue Origin has to buy ULA now, just to ensure a ready made market for the BE-4 engine.
Click to expand...

Daddyisabar said:
The good ole days when Putin The Great was selling secretly left over Soviet motors at a huge discount. Made in the late 60's and early 70's they were better than anything the decadent and egotistical West could put out. Just bolt them on our existing supply of Atlas. Who said closed cycle was impossible?
Click to expand...
That the RD-180 engines used in the Atlas V were leftovers from the 60's and 70's is a weirdly common misconception. Those leftover engines were NK-33's. Antares used them unti one failed in Orb-3, and then switched to the RD-181. RD-180's used by Atlas V were newly manufactured until ULA stopped buying them.
 
kuririn said:
I still find it amazing that the maiden flight is a moon shot.
No LEO shakedown or nothing.
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A moon trajectory isn't really much more advanced than an earth orbit. It's just a matter of less payload capacity and pointing it in the right direction. The Saturn V was so big and advanced because it had to heave a heavy manned spacecraft into TLI, not because pointing a rocket at the moon is all that hard.
 
Antares JS said:
A moon trajectory isn't really much more advanced than an earth orbit. It's just a matter of less payload capacity and pointing it in the right direction. The Saturn V was so big and advanced because it had to heave a heavy manned spacecraft into TLI, not because pointing a rocket at the moon is all that hard.
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Yes, both the USSR and the USA put both crash landers and soft landers on the moon long before the Sat V flew.
 
(writes years worth of dot dot dot)....and that's how you do that 👍

Credit where it's due, that was pretty as a picture. And the new Centaur can dance, right?
 
ReynoldsSlumber said:
Congrats to ULA!

Do they still have the booster engine section recovery and re-use concept in the works?
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The BE-4 engine section from Vulcan is designed to be resusable/refurbishable, although I'm not sure if that feature will be tested in this initial launch.
 
mh9162013 said:
The BE-4 engine section from Vulcan is designed to be resusable/refurbishable, although I'm not sure if that feature will be tested in this initial launch.
Click to expand...
They probably aren't going to test that feature until a few more flights. The next launch of Vulcan should be for Dreamchaser -- WOOT! I hope it's going to carry supplies for the ISS.
 
I just happened to be awake when they launched it and got to see the flight. Congratulations to ULA!
 

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