ULA long term plans

[JEF_300]

We started having some discussion in the ULA sale thread about what the long term plans for ULA should be. This is a dedicated thread for that.

In the short-to-mid term, Vulcan is ready and has a strong manifest. But with Starship, New Glenn, MLV, Terran R, Neutron, Nova, etc. all coming online in the next few years, it seems increasingly unlikely that Vulcan will be able to remain competitive and keep adding to it's manifest, making it's long term prospect uncertain.

So what do you think ULA should do about that?

[DanClemmensen]

ULA is currently a launch services firm focused on providing services to USSF and NROL. They are very good at it, except for not yet having a certified rocket. They should focus exclusively on providing these services, perhaps even using other companies' rockets.

[dglow]

1. Continue hiring former AF and SF personnel.
2. Continue convincing DOD that Centaur is the best sherpa for taking precious payloads to high-energy orbits.
3. Profit.

[TrevorMonty]

With current owners plan is likely to be business as usual. This thread may have to wait for a new owner.

[JEF_300]

As I said in the other thread, my pet theory is that ULA should start an SSTO project. It provides an at least plausible route to leapfrogging reusable TSTOs on cost to orbit, fits the LEO heavy launch market that seems to be the future (mega constellations and depots), and leans into ULA's existing expertise / tendency towards with high performance vehicles.

It would probably take something as radically different from prior standard SSTO concepts as F9 was from the Shuttle. Perhaps with a return to something more like the Delta Clipper or Chrysler SERV, instead of the winged SSTOs that seem to have been people's baseline from the 90s through to today, it could be made to work. I don't know. What I do know is, no major company has taken a serious look at the SSTO problem in almost a quarter century. I figure enough has changed that it's at least worth another look, and ULA strikes me as better positioned to do that than most.

(NOTE: I don't want this to turn into an SSTO thread, since we have plenty of those already. I mostly just wanted to acknowledge it as an option, without getting too into the weeds about it.)

[JEF_300]

With current owners plan is likely to be business as usual. This thread may have to wait for a new owner.

That's why I made it a thread about what "you think ULA should do about that", not a thread about what ULA will do about it.

[Coastal Ron]

I'll restate what I said over on the "ULA Long Term Plans" thread, that I don't think it makes sense for ULA's future owners to try and compete with the SpaceX Starship. That would be what is known as competing in a "Red Ocean", where "Cutthroat competition turns the ocean bloody red. Hence, the term ‘red’ oceans."

The future owners of ULA need to find uncontested market space, and focus their efforts there. This is what's known as a "Blue Ocean" strategy. More info here.

Since the beginning of the humans to launch payloads and people to space, there has been a competition in many ways for how to do that. SpaceX today is focused on dramatically lowering the cost to move payloads, and eventually people, to space, with the goal of making it cost effective to try to colonize Mars.

But while Elon Musk is focused on colonizing Mars, the same cost savings will allow for experimentation by others, including wealthy individuals, companies, and countries.

What Starship is positioned to do well is to move mass to low Earth orbit (LEO), where for Mars colonization purposes the ship will wait in orbit to be refueled before departing for Mars. The Starship ship has been designed to launch from a world with an atmosphere, land on a world with or without an atmosphere, and then return to a world with an atmosphere. However it is not really optimized for moving payloads and people exclusively through space, without returning to the surface of a world.

Creating the first generation of reusable space-only transportation systems is an opportunity that I think ULA's future buyers could focus on. It is a small market today, but that is because it costs too much to move payloads and people to space, but Starship will be solving that problem soon. Meaning that they could help start, and potentially dominate, this future market space.

ULA has experience building upper stages, and ULA in the past focused company resources on studying space transportation systems like ACES (see - "A Commercially Based Lunar Architecture").

Trying to compete with everyone else on creating a reusable or semi-reusable launcher doesn't make sense. Fly Vulcan for as long as they can, but otherwise launching mass from Earth is a commodity market that SpaceX has already won, and is positioned to dominate in the future. It would be a waste of money to try and compete in such a crowded field.

Creating the next market, which is enabled by Starship but not dominated by it, makes the most sense to me.

[Vultur]

I'm glad this is not my job.

I really don't see much of a path for them in the longer term.

 ULA's value proposition is largely the trust they've built for reliability with the US government/military. So they can't change their company culture to a fail-fast one without losing that.

Space systems is a much better idea than competing head to head with SpaceX on launch, but even for space systems do they have any real competitive advantage versus say Rocket Lab or, yeah, SpaceX? They're going to be higher overhead, etc

[deltaV]

I see 4 options for ULA (not mutually exclusive):
1. Use Vulcan as long as it's profitable, then close ULA down. This is the probable outcome if ULA isn't sold but seems less likely if ULA is sold.
2. Make a new partially or fully reusable launch vehicle (with 2-3 stages for LEO, 3 stages for GEO). There's a lot of competition here, including Falcon, Starship, Terran R, Nova, New Glenn, Neutron, and MLV. ULA could use a variant of SMART for reusing the expensive parts of the second and third stages.
3. Make a reusable in-space transportation system and propellant depots using Centaur/IVF/ACES tech. They could sell transport services, liquid hydrogen (to chemical and nuclear thermal stages) and liquid oxygen. If ULA's current owners had acted differently they could have been the leader at this with a NASA HLS contract but now Blue Origin will probably be the leader. There's less intensive competition here than with launch but there are still several competitors: Helios, the Blue Origin/Lockheed cislunar transporter, solar electric propulsion, and some launch vehicles.
4. Combine ULA's liquid hydrogen experience with someone else's nuclear experience to sell nuclear thermal stuff to silly parts of the government. Nuclear thermal is a bad idea but that's not a show-stopper if you're a cost-plus contractor.

[Tywin]

Copy from the other thread:

Why cargo and not people?

The great advantage of Dream Chaser is the LOW G on the reentry for the astronauts...

Maybe an evolution Dream Chaser SSTO, is the big next thing, IF, and only IF, the space tourist start to be great soon...

[meekGee]

With current owners plan is likely to be business as usual. This thread may have to wait for a new owner.

That's why I made it a thread about what "you think ULA should do about that", not a thread about what ULA will do about it.

The problem is that it's harder to turn ULA with all its baggage around, than it is to start fresh - and several companies are trying exactly that.

The question is just 10-20 years too late.

[Todd Martin]

Well, it may be people have focused too much on the price challenge in chasing available payloads rather than focus on what payloads ULA could themselves bring to the market.  After all, while SpaceX has been successful with Falcon 9, it is Starlink that was developed as the major long-term revenue generator for the company rather than launch services.  My personal preference is SBSP (space based solar power) as a potential BIG market.  ULA would start by partnering with a company like Sierra Space that has space-craft experience, leverage DOD contacts to get a purchase order to supply SBSP to the military, and then grow from there.  With high flight rate comes lower launch costs which is a virtuous cycle.  ULA wins, the planet Earth wins, and we keep competition in the domestic launch market.  Anyway, that's my wish.

[dglow]

Off-topic AF, but: take the money you'd invest in SBSP and build earthbound solar fields instead. Invest the leftover in high-efficiency transmission lines to get that power from the sunny southwestern deserts across to the eastern seaboard.

[Vultur]

Off-topic AF, but: take the money you'd invest in SBSP and build earthbound solar fields instead. Invest the leftover in high-efficiency transmission lines to get that power from the sunny southwestern deserts across to the eastern seaboard.

That works for the continental US. Not so much for Alaska and the northern half of Europe.

I agree SBSP does not make sense for most of the world's population, but it might well make sense for high latitudes - which includes a number of wealthy nations with strong desire for clean energy.

[LouScheffer]

Off-topic AF, but: take the money you'd invest in SBSP and build earthbound solar fields instead. Invest the leftover in high-efficiency transmission lines to get that power from the sunny southwestern deserts across to the eastern seaboard.

That works for the continental US. Not so much for Alaska and the northern half of Europe.

I agree SBSP does not make sense for most of the world's population, but it might well make sense for high latitudes - which includes a number of wealthy nations with strong desire for clean energy.

There are already projects to power southern Europe via undersea cables from solar fields in the Sahara.  Expanding this, the Sahara has plenty of room to power all of Europe, which would need cables to be extended to the northern half of Europe.  Even large capacity transmission lines are a lot cheaper than SBSP.

[DanClemmensen]

Off-topic AF, but: take the money you'd invest in SBSP and build earthbound solar fields instead. Invest the leftover in high-efficiency transmission lines to get that power from the sunny southwestern deserts across to the eastern seaboard.

That works for the continental US. Not so much for Alaska and the northern half of Europe.

I agree SBSP does not make sense for most of the world's population, but it might well make sense for high latitudes - which includes a number of wealthy nations with strong desire for clean energy.

There are already projects to power southern Europe via undersea cables from solar fields in the Sahara.  Expanding this, the Sahara has plenty of room to power all of Europe, which would need cables to be extended to the northern half of Europe.  Even large capacity transmission lines are a lot cheaper than SBSP.

As far as I know, the Morocco-to-UK transmission scheme is still being pursued.
     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xlinks_Morocco%E2%80%93UK_Power_Project

[butters]

Their current position in the launch industry and lack of engine development experience suggests that the launch industry isn't their best prospect after Vulcan orders dry up. But it's tempting to reframe ULA as a United Pressure Vessel Alliance and consider their prospects for building space station modules. Can't ULA do what Thales Alenia is doing for Axiom? Plus the avionics suite and spacecraft bus functionality from Centaur. A lot of what they currently do, minus the powerful pump-fed engines they outsource, and exiting the relatively low-margin launch segment where they face formidable competition.

[Vultur]

Off-topic AF, but: take the money you'd invest in SBSP and build earthbound solar fields instead. Invest the leftover in high-efficiency transmission lines to get that power from the sunny southwestern deserts across to the eastern seaboard.

That works for the continental US. Not so much for Alaska and the northern half of Europe.

I agree SBSP does not make sense for most of the world's population, but it might well make sense for high latitudes - which includes a number of wealthy nations with strong desire for clean energy.

There are already projects to power southern Europe via undersea cables from solar fields in the Sahara.  Expanding this, the Sahara has plenty of room to power all of Europe, which would need cables to be extended to the northern half of Europe.  Even large capacity transmission lines are a lot cheaper than SBSP.

Yes but you are then dependent on the sunny country. Satellites can be owned by the country needing the power.

[Asteroza]

Off-topic AF, but: take the money you'd invest in SBSP and build earthbound solar fields instead. Invest the leftover in high-efficiency transmission lines to get that power from the sunny southwestern deserts across to the eastern seaboard.

That works for the continental US. Not so much for Alaska and the northern half of Europe.

I agree SBSP does not make sense for most of the world's population, but it might well make sense for high latitudes - which includes a number of wealthy nations with strong desire for clean energy.

There are already projects to power southern Europe via undersea cables from solar fields in the Sahara.  Expanding this, the Sahara has plenty of room to power all of Europe, which would need cables to be extended to the northern half of Europe.  Even large capacity transmission lines are a lot cheaper than SBSP.

Yes but you are then dependent on the sunny country. Satellites can be owned by the country needing the power.

Would that actually happen though? I would imagine a lease or power purchase agreement arrangement, leaving the ops to the builder who is equipped to actually do things, as opposed to some island nation without a space program.

The SunCable program to link Australian solar to Singapore via a subsea cable is apparently pushing forward, so transnational power+transmission arrangements are still a thing.


But more to the point, the middle letter of ULA is LAUNCH so that has to sustain ULA until they can reach long term goals. Pivoting to in-space/beyond-LEO services+equipment can be a valid plan, but will Vulcan be enough to keep ULA going until such a business unit can stand on it's own (either via government lunar largesse or actually being a significant member of the LEO services community)? If Vulcan is really ULA's last rocket, then pushing for SMART and squeezing the last launch contracts until the other semi-reusable/reusable entrants push them out of the market is going to be tough road until the LEO stuff gets on it's feet.

But for a LEO+ pivot, in my mind ULA has to be bought by someone to allow for a depot push. This is where heavy lobbying to congress to establish a strategic LEO propellant reserve for the space force might play out, but the risk there is will LEO+ services/equipment generate enough revenue when you aren't the bulk propellant provider. Can ULA survive merely as a value adding depot creator/operator.

[Solarsail]

FWIW, I actually DO think that ULA is well positioned to build an SSTO...  But only if we're asking about engineering and not markets, and SSTO means expendable rather than reusable...  SSTO mass fractions improve substantially with tripropellant engines, thrust augmented nozzles, and balloon tank structures.  ULA (or...  maybe Corvair) has / had experience with balloon tank design in both Centaur and the old Atlases.  I suspect ULA could build a three part balloon tank rocket with RP-1, oxygen and hydrogen tanks separated by common bulkheads (the hard part is the one they still do for Centaur).  And AR knows how do to oxygen rich turbopumps as well as thrust augmented nozzles.  Combine those and I bet you could orbit (expendably) with a payload somewhere above zero.

</rocket daydream>