A good example of this this week is United Launch Alliance’s Cert-2 mission.
If you’re in the space business, it’s a wild statement when CEO Tory Bruno announces that ULA is going to bite the bullet and fly Cert-2 without a payload from the customer. After all, aren’t rockets expensive? Don’t rockets often wait months or even years before spacecraft are ready for launch? Why would you? an empty $100 million Vulcan in orbit without anyone paying for it, especially when ULA has sold over 70 launches to customers?
The simple answer is that Cert-2 does have a customer: the Pentagon. But let’s unpack that.
National security missions are the most lucrative launch contracts, accounting for billions of dollars a year in rocket orders. Some of these are cheap, experimental missions, but the majority are expensive, top-secret satellites that the Pentagon doesn’t want just anyone to fly. Introducing the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program.
ULA and SpaceX are both already part of the NSSL program, but every time they launch a new rocket, Space Force requires specific rocket successfully before certifying it for an NSSL mission. Hence the name of Vulcan’s second mission, Cert-2. The rocket was first launched in January, which was the first launch towards certification.
“What Space Force wants to see with Cert-2 is another successful flight, just like Cert-1,” Bruno said during a press conference on Wednesday.
After Cert-2, ULA will send the Space Force “gigabytes of data for all instruments on every part of the rocket,” Bruno said, and assuming they “run into no surprises,” Vulcan will be ready to launch NSSL missions. .
ULA had planned to fly Sierra Space’s first cargo plane, Dream Chaser, on Cert-2, but Bruno said the latter company’s CEO, Tom Vice, “felt he was too much of a schedule risk for my needs.” Dream Chaser is being stepped aside and replaced with an “inert payload,” also known as a “mass simulator” (think a big block of concrete and metal), so that Cert-2 can launch in September.
Why all the rush?
Well, the Pentagon has already purchased a bunch of Vulcan launches and expects two of those missions—USSF-106 and USSF-87—to fly before the end of the year. Air Force CEO Frank Calvelli already pressured Bruno and ULA in a letter sent last month to the rocket company’s joint owners, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, expressing concern “over the Vulcan delays.” The Air Force also imposed a financial penalty of an undisclosed amount on ULA for the Vulcan delays.
At least one question mark hanging over the next three Vulcan missions has been largely resolved: Blue Origin’s ability to provide BE-4 engines for the rockets. The company provided ULA with the six engines needed for the three launches, and Bruno noted that he has “much more confidence” in that relationship. That wasn’t the case a year ago, Bruno said, noting his company had “major concerns” about securing the engines ULA needed. That was when Blue Origin exploded a BE-4 engine during acceptance testing – an engine intended for the Cert-2 launch.
On-time deliveries of the BE-4 engines will become even more important next year, as Bruno expects ULA to make 20 launches in 2025, half with its Atlas V rockets and the other half with Vulcan. The company has a total of sixteen more Atlas V rockets to launch before going all-in on Vulcan.
The Pentagon is ULA’s most important customer. So while the Army may not pay directly for Cert-2, the backlog of NSSL orders is why ULA is willing to pay out of pocket to launch the mission.
Oh, and there’s one other open question about the long-awaited ULA sale process. I, like others, thought Vulcan’s successful debut earlier this year would close a deal. Plus, Jeff Bezos’ series of stock sales earlier this year made Blue Origin look like a likely winner. I’m speculating, but anyone looking to buy ULA might want to wait until after Cert-2—or maybe until a friendlier FTC comes along if there’s a change in the White House in November.