Vulcan SMART Reuse

[meekGee]

Uh-oh. No one can say anymore that SMART is only a paper program one one with subscale demonstrator hardware. It's real now, and this shows that, at least for now, ULA is committed.

Well it was a paper program for decades, now transitioning into a too little too late program.

I mean, seriously, how would it make any difference?

Makes as much financial sense as fishing fairings out of ocean and reusing them.

Fairings are a small fraction of the total cost of the rocket, maybe around 3%?

If you're throwing away the entire rocket, that saving is small in the grand scheme of things. But if you're already reusing the booster which is probably 70% of the cost, then 3 out of the remaining 30 starts making sense.

Recovering engines is better than nothing, but in the grand scheme of things is kinda pointless since you still have to build everything else and reintegrate. Especially on a rocket that also expends solids.  It doesn't move the needle.

It was a gimmick when it was first introduced, which is part of the reason it remained in paper, and now it's being frog-marched through development.

Unlike other developments by various competitors, this won't change ULA's predicament one Iota, and hardly impact the bottom line.

Remember that they're not going to be competing against Falcon.

[Robert_the_Doll]

Uh-oh. No one can say anymore that SMART is only a paper program one one with subscale demonstrator hardware. It's real now, and this shows that, at least for now, ULA is committed.

Well it was a paper program for decades, now transitioning into a too little too late program.

I mean, seriously, how would it make any difference?

SMART is not "decades old". At least where ULA is concerned. Vulcan has only been a program since 2014 and then only by geopolitical dictate. at most it is 11 years old.

There was a precursor program by Boeing during the early years of the EELV program in the 1990s that would have used a somewhat different engine module recovery scheme, but that had a number of significant differences that sets it apart from SMART.

[meekGee]

Uh-oh. No one can say anymore that SMART is only a paper program one one with subscale demonstrator hardware. It's real now, and this shows that, at least for now, ULA is committed.

Well it was a paper program for decades, now transitioning into a too little too late program.

I mean, seriously, how would it make any difference?

SMART is not "decades old". At least where ULA is concerned. Vulcan has only been a program since 2014 and then only by geopolitical dictate. at most it is 11 years old.

There was a precursor program by Boeing during the early years of the EELV program in the 1990s that would have used a somewhat different engine module recovery scheme, but that had a number of significant differences that sets it apart from SMART.

Repackaged, retitled, obviously re-touched a bit, but it's still an engine pod retrieval by way of parachute, on an Atlas-derivative, same as it was pre-ULA even, not to mention pre-Vulcan.

Whether it saves them a penny or not remains to be seen, but ULA's problem is not the pennies.

They used to be the leaders. They squandered it all. If they want to be relevant they need to innovate majorly, or even just keep up, but instead they're doing this, which pretty much guarantees that they won't.

[Robert_the_Doll]

Uh-oh. No one can say anymore that SMART is only a paper program one one with subscale demonstrator hardware. It's real now, and this shows that, at least for now, ULA is committed.

Well it was a paper program for decades, now transitioning into a too little too late program.

I mean, seriously, how would it make any difference?

SMART is not "decades old". At least where ULA is concerned. Vulcan has only been a program since 2014 and then only by geopolitical dictate. at most it is 11 years old.

There was a precursor program by Boeing during the early years of the EELV program in the 1990s that would have used a somewhat different engine module recovery scheme, but that had a number of significant differences that sets it apart from SMART.

Repackaged, retitled, obviously re-touched a bit, but it's still an engine pod retrieval by way of parachute, on an Atlas-derivative, same as it was pre-ULA even, not to mention pre-Vulcan.

Whether it saves them a penny or not remains to be seen, but ULA's problem is not the pennies.

They used to be the leaders. They squandered it all. If they want to be relevant they need to innovate majorly, or even just keep up, but instead they're doing this, which pretty much guarantees that they won't.

So is vertical landing, which as a concept is decades old as well. We can cite SERV, ROMBUS, DC-XA, DC-Y, etc.. Return to launch site of a booster is also just as old as many early Space Shuttle concept of operations included that for the big flyback boosters, which included doing boostback burns. There is nothing that SpaceX is doing conceptually that is new, nor Blue Origin, for that matter. It is the fact that they made it happen on space-going boosters and with real operability in mind.

Was it a lost opportunity by Boeing in the 1990s to not have a recoverable engine module? Yes. Would it be one now for ULA? Absolutely. A combination of an ACES-technology Centaur V and the modules would be a form of reuse that saves them "pennies" because they plan on relatively large flight rates that make it economically viable go with some form of reuse.

[meekGee]

[
So is vertical landing, which as a concept is decades old as well. We can cite SERV, ROMBUS, DC-XA, DC-Y, etc.. Return to launch site of a booster is also just as old as many early Space Shuttle concept of operations included that for the big flyback boosters, which included doing boostback burns. There is nothing that SpaceX is doing conceptually that is new, nor Blue Origin, for that matter. It is the fact that they made it happen on space-going boosters and with real operability in mind.

Was it a lost opportunity by Boeing in the 1990s to not have a recoverable engine module? Yes. Would it be one now for ULA? Absolutely. A combination of an ACES-technology Centaur V and the modules would be a form of reuse that saves them "pennies" because they plan on relatively large flight rates that make it economically viable go with some form of reuse.

Yeah you're right. SMART is the future, and ULA is taking this bold initiative which nobody believes is even feasible in order to leapfrog the industry and become leaders again.

Seriously - the lost opportunity was to not compete with F9.1 when it came out. But the combination of board and mgmt and team were nowhere close to capable of doing that.

With SMART, at best they'll save pennies. More likely, they'll have a comparatively low flight rate and fall back even more.

[DanClemmensen]

[
So is vertical landing, which as a concept is decades old as well. We can cite SERV, ROMBUS, DC-XA, DC-Y, etc.. Return to launch site of a booster is also just as old as many early Space Shuttle concept of operations included that for the big flyback boosters, which included doing boostback burns. There is nothing that SpaceX is doing conceptually that is new, nor Blue Origin, for that matter. It is the fact that they made it happen on space-going boosters and with real operability in mind.

Was it a lost opportunity by Boeing in the 1990s to not have a recoverable engine module? Yes. Would it be one now for ULA? Absolutely. A combination of an ACES-technology Centaur V and the modules would be a form of reuse that saves them "pennies" because they plan on relatively large flight rates that make it economically viable go with some form of reuse.

Yeah you're right. SMART is the future, and ULA is taking this bold initiative which nobody believes is even feasible in order to leapfrog the industry and become leaders again.

Seriously - the lost opportunity was to not compete with F9.1 when it came out. But the combination of board and mgmt and team were nowhere close to capable of doing that.

With SMART, at best they'll save pennies. More likely, they'll have a comparatively low flight rate and fall back even more.

SMART may break even, but only if new BE-4 price remains high, which it will because it's a third-party engine that will not reach high volumes. If BE-4 price could come down to Raptor 3 price, then SMART would cease to make sense.  SpaceX asserts that Raptor 3 will drop to an internal unit cost of $250,000, which might equate to an OEM price of $1M in small volumes.  Maybe ULA should switch to Raptor 3.

[spacenut]

Landing a rocket is not only what SpaceX is doing.  They have developed the ability to mass produce rocket engines to cut cost.  ULA buys 3rd party engines.  Now Blue with New Glenn may get costs down to mass produce their own rockets and be able to sell them cheaper to ULA.  Maybe not.  SMART reuse is based on the theory that ULA would only have about 20 launches per year.  They made fun of SpaceX when they began trying to land the entire first stage.  I have been around since 2007 here.  Now with LEO constellations, SMART isn't smart.  It is a dead in.  Mass production of rocket engines cuts costs more. 

[Robert_the_Doll]

[
So is vertical landing, which as a concept is decades old as well. We can cite SERV, ROMBUS, DC-XA, DC-Y, etc.. Return to launch site of a booster is also just as old as many early Space Shuttle concept of operations included that for the big flyback boosters, which included doing boostback burns. There is nothing that SpaceX is doing conceptually that is new, nor Blue Origin, for that matter. It is the fact that they made it happen on space-going boosters and with real operability in mind.

Was it a lost opportunity by Boeing in the 1990s to not have a recoverable engine module? Yes. Would it be one now for ULA? Absolutely. A combination of an ACES-technology Centaur V and the modules would be a form of reuse that saves them "pennies" because they plan on relatively large flight rates that make it economically viable go with some form of reuse.

Yeah you're right. SMART is the future, and ULA is taking this bold initiative which nobody believes is even feasible in order to leapfrog the industry and become leaders again.

Seriously - the lost opportunity was to not compete with F9.1 when it came out. But the combination of board and mgmt and team were nowhere close to capable of doing that.

With SMART, at best they'll save pennies. More likely, they'll have a comparatively low flight rate and fall back even more.

Interesting, you failed in each case to address my points. I therefore except your concession in this matter.

[meekGee]

Landing a rocket is not only what SpaceX is doing.  They have developed the ability to mass produce rocket engines to cut cost.  ULA buys 3rd party engines.  Now Blue with New Glenn may get costs down to mass produce their own rockets and be able to sell them cheaper to ULA.  Maybe not.  SMART reuse is based on the theory that ULA would only have about 20 launches per year.  They made fun of SpaceX when they began trying to land the entire first stage.  I have been around since 2007 here.  Now with LEO constellations, SMART isn't smart.  It is a dead in.  Mass production of rocket engines cuts costs more.

SMART (which is still a future program) is no longer going up against F9.  It's going up against Starship fuel-and-go.  And it'll be late even for that party.

Tory's bravado, which is the essence of his job, comes down to simply selling fiction to those willing or incentivised to believe it.

[Chris Bergin]

Everyone put their big boy pants on please and only post if you're adding something, and not mumbling you don't like something

[sdsds]

Moving this here from the ULA General Discussion thread:

Is this the first time Bruno has acknowledged that reusuability is at least a little bit cheaper? He's certainly right that the marginal cost of producing an additional set of Vulcan booster tanks is low. Has he spoken recently about any plans for engine pod recovery?

AIUI, Mr. Bruno interprets reusability as recovering the engine pod only, and expending the remainder of the vehicle. He has no vision of recovering the entire vehicle the way SpaceX does and the way Blue Origin plans to. But to date, as far as I know, there has been no timeline released for the first attempt at engine pod recovery.

Has there been anything significant from Bruno since the tweet 6 months ago?

[spacenut]

What about Rocketlab and the Neutron rocket?  Mostly reused.  Then you have several other companies working on reusing their entire first stage boosters.  ULA with "Smart" reuse is very late to the game.  Vulcan is a good rocket, but if only the engines are reused, others will pass them by.  SpaceX has already reused one Superheavy booster.  If SpaceX only had an expendable upper stage, they can get 200-250 tons to orbit for probably cheaper than Vulcan on a $/kg basis. 

Everyone is passing Vulcan with reusable first stages.  Now SpaceX and others are working on reusable upper stages putting ULA even further behind. 

Five years from now, Vulcan may be obsolete with 4-5 reusable rocket companies.  Boeing and Lockheed either need to come off of some development money or by then finally get out of the launch business. 

[TrevorMonty]

For the range and volume of missions Vulcan was designed to support booster reuse wasn't feasible. Multi launch LEO constellation deployments wasn't on design brief otherwise they'd have done things differently. 
I do think its possible to redesign booster for recovery, need to add couple smaller engines for landing. Would need totally new US with more fuel and thrust as it needs to stage lot earlier.

[TheRadicalModerate]

I do think its possible to redesign booster for recovery, need to add couple smaller engines for landing. Would need totally new US with more fuel and thrust as it needs to stage lot earlier.

It's certainly possible to architect a completely new rocket, which is what you're describing.  But it's not a "redesign".

[catdlr]

Tory demos his Smart Reuse

https://twitter.com/torybruno/status/1940808219921936669

[StarryKnight]

Tory demos his Smart Reuse

https://twitter.com/torybruno/status/1940808219921936669

Actually, that demo is the opposite of SMART - the engine is not reusable but the rest of the rocket is.

[edzieba]

Tory demos his Smart Reuse

https://twitter.com/torybruno/status/1940808219921936669

Actually, that demo is the opposite of SMART - the engine is not reusable but the rest of the rocket is.

Direct (re)Use of Main Booster?

A fun video, I bet everyone wishes their vehicle operations manual was a one-pager (with illustrations)!

[matthewkantar]

For the range and volume of missions Vulcan was designed to support booster reuse wasn't feasible. Multi launch LEO constellation deployments wasn't on design brief otherwise they'd have done things differently. 
I do think its possible to redesign booster for recovery, need to add couple smaller engines for landing. Would need totally new US with more fuel and thrust as it needs to stage lot earlier.

Add a blade or two and it’ll make Julianne fries.

[lightleviathan]

For the range and volume of missions Vulcan was designed to support booster reuse wasn't feasible. Multi launch LEO constellation deployments wasn't on design brief otherwise they'd have done things differently. 
I do think its possible to redesign booster for recovery, need to add couple smaller engines for landing. Would need totally new US with more fuel and thrust as it needs to stage lot earlier.

They could do a tricore and be like Falcon Heavy, expending core but recovering side boosters. If Blue gets reliable BE4 restart than the two-engine design could work. Of course, the structural reverification of the launcher would be difficult but Tory has expressed a want for Vulcan Heavy.