A great example of this from this week is United Launch Alliance’s Cert-2 mission.
If you’re in the weeds of the space world, hearing CEO Tory Bruno announce that ULA will bite the bullet and fly Cert-2 without a customer payload is a wild declaration. Aren’t rockets expensive though? Don’t rockets often wait months or even years until spacecraft are ready for launch? Why send A $100 million empty Vulcan in orbit with no one paying for it, especially if ULA has sold more than 70 launches to customers?
The simple answer is that Cert-2 does have a customer: the Pentagon. But let’s unpack this.
National security missions are the most lucrative launch contracts, accounting for billions of dollars a year in missile orders. Some of these are low-cost, experimental missions, but most are expensive, top-secret satellites that the Pentagon is reluctant to let anyone fly. Enter the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program.
Both ULA and SpaceX are already in the NSSL program, but every time they launch a new rocket, Space Force requires this specific the rocket completed a successful launch before certifying it for NSSL mission flight. Hence the name of the second Vulcan mission, Cert-2. The rocket first launched in January, which was the first launch toward certification.
“What the Space Force expects to see with Cert-2 is another successful flight just like Cert-1,” Bruno said during a news conference Wednesday.
After Cert-2, ULA will send the Space Force “gigabytes of data on all the instrumentation on every part of the rocket,” Bruno said, and assuming “they don’t find any surprises,” Vulcan will be able to start launching NSSL missions.
ULA had planned to fly Sierra Space’s inaugural Dream Chaser cargo spaceplane on Cert-2, but Bruno said the latter company’s CEO Tom Weiss “felt it was putting too much risk on the schedule against my needs.” The Dream Chaser is retiring to be replaced by an “inert payload” also known as a “mass simulator” (think big block of concrete and metal) so that Cert-2 can launch by September.
Why the rush?
Well, the Pentagon has already bought a bunch of Vulcan launches and expects two of those missions – USSF-106 and USSF-87 – to take off before the end of the year. Senior Air Force chief Frank Calvelli has already put pressure on Bruno and ULA in a letter sent last month to the rocket company’s joint owners, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, outlining concerns “over Vulcan delays.” The Air Force also imposed a financial penalty on ULA, of an undisclosed amount, because of the Vulcan delays.
One question mark that hung over the next three Vulcan missions is at least largely resolved: Blue Origin’s ability to supply BE-4 engines for the rockets. The company supplied ULA with the six engines needed for the three launches, and Bruno noted that he has “a lot more confidence” in that relationship. A year ago, that wasn’t the case, Bruno said, noting that his company had “great concern” about securing the engines ULA needed. That’s when Blue Origin’s BE-4 engine exploded during acceptance testing — an engine that was intended to launch Cert-2.
Timely deliveries of the BE-4 engines become even more important next year, as Bruno expects ULA to make 20 launches in 2025, half on its Atlas V rockets and half on the Vulcan. In all, the company has 16 Atlas V rockets left to launch before going all-in on Vulcan.
The Pentagon is ULA’s most important customer. So while the military may not be paying directly for Cert-2, the NSSL order backlog is why ULA is willing to pay out of pocket to get the mission off the ground.
Oh, there’s the other open question of the long-rumored ULA sale process. I thought, as did others, that the Vulcan’s successful debut earlier this year would seal the deal. Also, Jeff Bezos’ multiple stock sales earlier this year made Blue Origin look like the likely winner. I’m speculating, but whoever wants to buy ULA can wait until Cert-2 – or maybe a friendlier FTC if there’s a change in the White House this November.
