WASHINGTON — United Launch Alliance is leaning more into reusability as it advances work on recovering the engine section of the Vulcan rocket and embarks on another project.
Tory Bruno, president and chief executive of ULA, said during an episode of his “The Burn Sequence” podcast published Aug. 19 that the company was working on a new initiative related to reuse of the Vulcan Centaur rocket beyond recovery of the engine section of the vehicle’s first stage.
“Engine recovery is not the only reuse thing we have cooking, but I haven’t told people what it is,” he said during the podcast, stating that “it’s not time yet” to disclose details about it.
In the podcast, he interviewed Amanda Bacchetti, a program engineering director at ULA overseeing upgrades to Vulcan. She also did not disclose details about the new reusability effort and indicated that even some on the team were unaware of it.
“I’ll say half the team doesn’t know what it is, but they’re excited that we have another big development coming towards us. I think they’re also excited to see us put our money where our mouth is, right?” she said.
“I think that that next item is going to be a really good one,” she added. “It’s a little different than what we’ve done before, so it challenges the team, makes them think a little bit outside the box.”
The podcast was not the first time Bruno suggested that ULA was making new efforts in reusability. During a call with reporters Aug. 7 to preview the first national security space launch of Vulcan, Bruno said one new ambition for the company was “an expansion of reusability” of the vehicle.
“We have other ambitions for reuse that I’m not ready to elaborate on,” he said, “but I’ll share with you that recovering the aft section of the booster is not the end of that journey for us.”
ULA has, for years, discussed recovering the engine section of Vulcan, a concept known as Sensible Modular Autonomous Return Technology or SMART. That involves detaching the aft section of the vehicle and have it descend using an inflatable hypersonic decelerator and parachutes, landing in the ocean for recovery and reuse.
The company has argued that that recovering only the engine section is more economical than landing the entire first stage, as SpaceX now does routinely with its Falcon 9. An analysis from about a decade ago by ULA concluded that SMART reuse could provide cost savings with as little as two flights, versus 10 for full booster recovery. SpaceX has used some Falcon 9 boosters more than 25 times.
Bruno said in the media call that ULA was moving ahead with SMART reuse on Vulcan, having completed a component-level and system critical design review of the technology. “That allows you to feel that your design is mature enough to start building flight-like hardware in order to get through qualification,” he said.
ULA plans to recover the aft thrust structure of the Vulcan booster, which includes the engines as well as fluid management systems, avionics and other components. “As time goes forward, we’re going to move more things into the back side of the booster that can be recovered,” he said. “By the time we get done through that evolutionary path, really almost the only thing that is being discarded from the booster core will be the fuel tank itself.”
Bruno said that ULA expected to start flying experiments related to SMART reuse in 2026, but did not elaborate on what those experiments would include. “Implementation will be timed depending on what we learn and how that matures the design, and where it fits neatly into our customers’ needs.”
One issue with reusability, including SMART reuse, is reduced payload capacity because of additional weight from reuse components. That requires improvements in performance that he said ULA is pursuing in parallel to reusability. Those improvements include planned upgrades to the BE-4 engine from Blue Origin that incorporate increased thrust and reduced weight.
Both the performance upgrades and the SMART reuse may be bundled together into a block upgrade of Vulcan, he said, although the performance improvements could come first.
Bruno offered no timeline on the podcast about the other, undisclosed reuse plans for Vulcan, but suggested they were a priority. “We’re going to go soon. We’ve got to as fast as we can, actually.”