ORLANDO, Fla. — As rumors of a potential sale of United Launch Alliance reach a crescendo, the company’s chief executive argues the successful inaugural launch of its Vulcan rocket is a vindication of both the company’s technology and its transformation.
Speaking at the SpaceCom conference here Jan. 31, ULA Chief Executive Tory Bruno said the long-delayed first flight of its Vulcan Centaur rocket Jan. 8 went exceedingly well, with no issues reported during the countdown or after liftoff.
“That was a perfect mission,” he said of the launch, which placed Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander on a highly elliptical lunar transfer orbit. “Dead nominal flight throughout, and a bullseye insertion in the end.”
That was in contrast with the reputation first launches of new vehicles have, which historically have high failure rates. “I’ve done about three dozen first launches, and generally one of two things happen: either it blows up or it has significant anomalies in flight,” he said. “I have never seen as clean a first launch” as Vulcan.
He credited that to ULA’s approach to designing the rocket. “You can fly, fail, fix; nothing wrong with it,” he said. ULA instead took a “rigorous design process: have your failures in ground tests, have them in the computer, have them in the sim lab and have them on paper. That’s how this was done and my guys just did an outstanding job.”
Another factor, he argued, was a transformation of the company he led after joining the company in 2014. He described the company then as one in crisis, having lost access to Russian-built RD-180 engines used by the Atlas 5 after Russia’s annexation of Crimea as well as competition from SpaceX, which sued the U.S. Air Force to gain access to national security launches that ULA then held a monopoly on.
“A business in that situation might go broke. In fact, most of them do,” Bruno said. He undertook several measures to turn the company…
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