РН Вулкан - Vulcan Centaur heavy-lift launch vehicle (Планов громадье в ULA)

[Salo]

https://twitter.com/ulalaunch/status/667423676195856388

ULA Подлинная учетная запись ‏@ulalaunch
#ULACubeSats will launch on the Aft Bulkhead Carrier (ABC), developed in partnership with @NatReconOfc #AtlasV
 
 11:26 - 19 нояб. 2015 г.

  Andrew ‏@flyingandrew 15 часов назад
@ulalaunch @NatReconOfc any risk to the cubesats being so close to the RL-10?
 
  ULA ‏@ulalaunch 15 часов назад
.@flyingandrew @NatReconOfc We've flown 55 CubeSats, many on the ABC, including 13 on the recent #NROL55 launch. #ULACubeSats

[Salo]

Эта музыка будет вечной:
http://spacenews.com/possible-showdown-looms-in-congress-over-rd-180/

Possible Showdown Looms in Congress over RD-180
by Mike Gruss — November 20, 2015
  A ULA Atlas 5 emerges from the Vertical Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral in preparation for July's launch of GPS 2F-10. Credit: ULA  
 
WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) is considering adding language to a federal spending bill that would allow full U.S. military access to a controversial Russian-made rocket engine until an alternative becomes available, a spokeswoman for the office said Nov. 19.
The language, if approved, would take the sting out the current ban that threatens to undermine competition in the U.S. national security launch market. United Launch Alliance's Atlas 5 rocket, powered by the Russian built RD-180 engine, is considered the only viable competitor to SpaceX's Falcon 9, which only recently entered the market.
But Shelby could face stiff resistance in both houses of Congress. Leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services committees negotiated a deal in the defense authorization bill that would give ULA access to four RD-180s for upcoming U.S. Air Force launch competitions. The House wanted a larger number, but the Senate position prevailed in conference.
Shelby, a senior member of the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee, said in July that Air Force leaders, including Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh, told him ULA needed 18 to 22 more engines to maintain uninterrupted access to space and ensure competition within the launch industry.
The Atlas 5 is built at ULA's plant in Decatur, Alabama.
ULA cited the RD-180 engine availability issue as one of the reasons behind its decision not to big against SpaceX in a competition to launch a GPS 3 satellite in 2018. The Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture says it effectively needs unfettered access to the engine over the next several years to keep it competitive until its next-generation Vulcan rocket comes on line around 2021.
The U.S. Defense Department, like the rest of the government, is currently funded under a continuing resolution that expires Dec. 11. Shelby is eying the follow-on spending bill, which must pass to avoid a government shutdown, as the vehicle for relaxing the RD-180 ban, said Torrie Matuos, a spokeswoman for the senator.
Shelby did not yet have specific language he hoped to introduce, Matous said.

[Salo]

http://spacenews.com/ula-making-cubesat-dispenser-standard-on-all-atlas-5-rockets/

ULA Making Cubesat Dispenser Standard on all Atlas 5 Rockets
by Mike Gruss — November 23, 2015
A United Launch Alliance animation showing two cubesats deploying from the 24-cubesat dispenser the Denver company says its making standard on all Atlas 5 rockets beginning in 2017. Credit: ULA  
 
WASHINGTON — United Launch Alliance announced Nov. 19 it will carry as many as 24 cubesats on each launch of its Atlas 5 rocket beginning in mid-2017.
The initiative comes amid continued complaints from small-satellite companies and universities about a lack of timely and affordable access to space.
 ULA President and CEO Tory Bruno. Credit: ULA video
"There is a growing need for universities to have access and availability to launch their CubeSats and this program will transform the way these universities get to space by making space more affordable and accessible," Tory Bruno, ULA's president and chief executive, said in a statement.
About 160 cubesats launched last year worldwide, according to Bruno. Assuming the Atlas 5 launches 10 times year, Bruno said, ULA could launch as many as 240 per year as part of the new program.
ULA has launched 55 cubesats into orbit as secondary payloads to date, most recently on an Atlas 5 mission carrying a classified satellite for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office. The cubesats were deployed from a special adapter called the Aft Bulkhead Carrier attached to the vehicle's upper stage.
The Aft Bulkhead Carrier will now become a standard part of the Atlas 5 offering, Bruno said.
"You won't pay to put cubesat carriers on our rockets; you would have to pay to take them off," Bruno said in a short video about the cubesat initiative. "This is going to change everything and completely open that world."
Bruno made the cubesat announcement  at the University of Colorado, Boulder, which ULA said  will have a free slot for a cubesat in 2017. Other universities will be able to compete  in the coming year for up to six free slots on an upcoming launch.
"We want to be America's ride to space for all cubesats," said Chris Chavez, ULA's director of community and government affairs.

[Salo]

http://spacenews.com/mccain-urges-appropriators-to-uphold-rd-180-ban/#sthash.TU0aremk.dpuf

McCain Urges Appropriators To Uphold RD-180 Ban
by Mike Gruss — November 23, 2015
 
U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in October. Credit: Adrian Cadiz/OSD/Flickr
 
WASHINGTON –  U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has asked the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), to reject the idea of inserting a provision into a must-pass federal spending bill that would give the U.S. military access to a controversial Russian rocket engine until an alternative becomes available.
The provision, if approved, would effectively neutralize the Russian engine ban imposed by Congress following Russia's incursion into Ukraine in 2014. Government launch services provider United Launch Alliance, whose workhorse Atlas 5 rocket is powered by the Russian-built RD-180 engine, has said the ban will leave it unable to compete for future U.S. military business against newcomer SpaceX.
McCain, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, supported a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2016, now awaiting the president's signature, that gives ULA access to four more RD-180s for upcoming competitions, a number the company says is not nearly enough to keep it in the military launch business until it can field a new rocket around 2021. The House version of that bill would have granted ULA access to nine more engines, but the Senate position prevailed.
Now, however, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, is considering adding language to a spending bill that would give the Air Force access to the RD-180 until an alternative becomes available, his office has said. The Defense Department, like the rest of the federal government, is currently funded under a continuing resolution that expires Dec. 11, and a new bill must be passed to avoid a government shutdown.
ULA builds the Atlas 5 at its factory in Decatur, Alabama.
In a Nov. 19 letter,  McCain asked Cochran to "respect the well-informed work my committee took" and to avoid the "year-over-year relitigation" of the engine issue.
"Recent attempts by the incumbent contractor to manufacture a crisis by prematurely diminishing its stockpile of engines purchased prior to the Russian invasion of Crimea should be viewed with skepticism and scrutinized heavily," McCain wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by SpaceNews. "Such efforts should not be misconstrued as a compelling reason to undermine any sanctions on Russia while they occupy Crimea, destabilize Ukraine, bolster Assad in Syria, send weapons to Iran and violate the 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty."
McCain said the NDAA achieves a "delicate balance" that gives ULA time to transition to new technology.
"I believe avoiding the year-over-year re-litigation of this matter between our authorizing and appropriating committees is in our best interest, inasmuch as such back-and-forth only delay our shared to desire to eliminate Russian technology from our space launch supply chain and injects instability into the [Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle] program – not conducive to its success in ensuring the reliable launch of our most sensitive national security satellites or the stability of the fragile industrial base that supports them," he said.

[Salo]

http://www.reuters.com/article/usa-airforce-engine-idUSL1N13X2TW20151209#QDDZz3w7kye1OeA6.99

US Air Force eyes contracts for Russian engine follow-on in months
 WASHINGTON  |  By Andrea Shalal
   
 Dec 8 The U.S. Air Force expects to award initial small-scale contracts in two months or sooner for work on a replacement for banned Russian rocket engines, General John Hyten, commander of U.S. Air Force Space Command said on Tuesday.
The Air Force has received a wide range of proposals for a U.S. built engine to end U.S. reliance on the Russian RD-180 engine, which powers the workhorse Atlas 5 rocket, Hyten told reporters after an event hosted by the Air Force Association's Mitchell Institute.
"I would expect those awards in the next two month, probably sooner," Hyten said.
Reuters reported Monday, quoting two sources familiar with the matter, that the Air Force was in talks with Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings Inc about government funding for the AR-1 rocket engine that it is developing.
The Air Force is also in discussions about a possible contract with privately held Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, according to a source familiar with the issue.
Work on the new engines gained urgency after U.S. lawmakers passed a ban on use of Russian RD-180 engines for launches of U.S. military or spy satellites following Russia's annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine last year.
Hyten said the Air Force "desperately" wanted to end its use of the Russian engines, but needed relief from the ban in the short term to ensure that it always had two separate ways to launch satellites into space in case one rocket failed.
The Air Force had been expected to award initial contracts for work on the new engines in the fourth quarter of 2015, but that date has now slipped by several months. The Air Force plans to split a total of about $160 million among rival bidders.
It was not immediately clear if Blue Origin, owned by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, was also in the mix.
Blue Origin is developing an engine for United Launch Alliance (ULA), a 50-50 rocket launch venture of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co, although ULA is also maintaining a contract with Aerojet as a back-up plan.
The Air Force did not initiate contract talks with another industry team that included Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies Corp, which had proposed building a U.S. version of the RD-180 engine, according to one of the sources cited by Reuters on Monday. (Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by David Gregorio)

[Salo]

https://twitter.com/Gruss_SN/status/674280140344545280

Mike Gruss ‏@Gruss_SN  
Air Force plans to sole source two Delta 4 Heavy launches to United Launch Alliance. Launches in '21 and '22.
  9:31 - 8 дек. 2015 г.  

[Salo]

http://spacenews.com/mccain-will-consider-wider-russian-engine-ban/#sthash.6VPP6EqU.dpuf

McCain Will Consider Wider Russian Engine Ban
by Mike Gruss — December 9, 2015
 
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in a Dec. 8 letter he would consider an "unrestricted prohibition" on a Russian rocket engine. Credit: U.S. Army Chief of Staff  
 
WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said he would consider an "unrestricted prohibition" on the Russian rocket engine that powers United Launch Alliance's Atlas 5 rocket following the company's decision not to bid on the Defense Department's first competitive launch contract in a decade.
In a Dec. 8 letter to U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, McCain, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, also requested an audit of ULA's accounting systems and a report on whether the company tried to "subvert" Congress by assigning non-military missions to its controversial Atlas 5 rocket, which is powered by the Russian-built RD-180 engine.
Both requests relate to ULA's explanation of why it did not bid to launch a GPS 3 satellite in 2018, effectively ceding the contract to rival SpaceX of Hawthorne, California. McCain said he was "troubled" by ULA's explanation, which cited the congressionally imposed ban on future use of Russian engines for military launches and issues related to the structure of the procurement.
Specifically, ULA said it did not have an engine available for the mission in question, nor did it have the accounting systems to certify that its existing Air Force business would not benefit its bid, as the procurement required. In addition, ULA said the Air Force's selection criteria gave little weight to past performance and reliablity, two of the company's strengths.
"These tactics are inappropriate and intended to support an effort in the Congress to subvert the authorization process," McCain said. The recently passed National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016, drafted in part by McCain's committee, exempted four engines from the ban for future competitions, but ULA is seeking much broader relief.
Jessica Rye, a spokeswoman for Denver-based ULA, declined to comment.
In the letter, McCain said he found ULA's claim that it did not have an engine available for the competition "especially dubious."
The National Defense Authorization Act for 2015, which imposed the Russian engine ban, exempted five engines the company already had in possession to enable ULA to compete for national security launches. But in early October, shortly after the Air Force issued a request for bids on the GPS launch, ULA said those engines had been allocated to nonmilitary missions, which are not covered by the ban.
"Instead of setting those engines aside for national security launches, ULA rushed to assign them to non-national security launches that are unrestricted in their use of Russian engines," McCain wrote.
McCain asked the Defense Department to report on "when ULA first began assigning rockets to specific launches and when it first started to reassign launches to prevent the use of RD-180s that were originally available for competitive launches." The senator also asked Carter to work with the NASA administrator to determine "whether ULA's reassigning those engines was early-to-need and if ULA could have procured other engines in time to meet actual launch dates."
Finally, McCain said he was worried that ULA accounting system could undermine future Air Force launch competitions. The GPS 3 mission is the first of nine medium-class launches the Air Force intends to put out for bid by the end of 2017. Of the nine, six are for GPS 3 satellites.
ULA has said modifying its accounting system would throw it out of compliance with those existing contracts. The Air Force requires certification that ULA's other Air Force business does not benefit its bids.
Each year, the Air Force pays ULA about $800 million to $1 billion to help cover overhead costs and services not necessarily associated with a given launch. This contract has been branded as a subsidy by ULA's competitors.
"ULA asserts it is unable to differentiate such costs sufficiently in order to submit a compliant proposal," McCain wrote. "It would also suggest that ULA will not be able to compete for any future launch that would require an 'apples-to-apples' comparison between the highly-subsidized incumbent and unsubsidized new entrants."
McCain's letter did not elaborate on his plan to broaden the ban on Russian-made engine technology. Banning the use of the RD-180 for NASA missions, for example, likely would require a legislation that typically falls under the jurisdiction of different congressional committee.

[Salo]

http://www.vz.ru/news/2015/12/10/782953.html

Маккейн пригрозил окончательно запретить российские ракетные двигатели в США
10 декабря 2015, 05:24

Сенатор-республиканец Джон Маккейн в письме главе Пентагона Эштону Картеру пригрозил немедленно установить полный запрет на использование российских ракетных двигателей РД-180.

В своем послании Маккейн обвинил компанию United Launch Alliance в попытках манипулировать Конгрессом США, чтобы добиться разрешения на закупку дополнительного количества РД-180, передает ТАСС.

Он назвал тактику ULA «неприемлемой и направленной на срыв бюджетного процесса в Конгрессе». В связи с этим сенатор, возглавляющий комитет по делам вооруженных сил, сообщил министру, что намерен «рассмотреть возможность введения неограниченного запрета на использование российских ракетных двигателей».

Сотрудники аппарата Конгресса пояснили, что под этим имеется в виду отмена всех исключений, установленных по поводу РД-180.

Представители Пентагона сообщили в среду, что ответы председателю сенатского комитета по делам вооруженных сил будут даны в установленный срок, но от каких-либо комментариев воздержались. В ULA эту сложную проблему также решили пока не комментировать.

Напомним, что ракеты Atlas V используют российский двигатель РД-180 и заменить его США фактически нечем. Военный бюджет США на 2015 финансовый год разрешил консорциуму ULA закупить пять таких двигателей, а бюджет на 2016 финансовый год – еще четыре.

ВВС США и ULA обратились с просьбой к Конгрессу смягчить жесткие требования.

[Дмитрий В.]

Salo пишет:
http://www.vz.ru/news/2015/12/10/782953.html

Маккейн пригрозил окончательно запретить российские ракетные двигатели в США
10 декабря 2015, 05:24

Сенатор-республиканец Джон Маккейн в письме главе Пентагона Эштону Картеру пригрозил немедленно установить полный запрет на использование российских ракетных двигателей РД-180.

В своем послании Маккейн обвинил компанию United Launch Alliance в попытках манипулировать Конгрессом США, чтобы добиться разрешения на закупку дополнительного количества РД-180, передает ТАСС.

Он назвал тактику ULA «неприемлемой и направленной на срыв бюджетного процесса в Конгрессе». В связи с этим сенатор, возглавляющий комитет по делам вооруженных сил, сообщил министру, что намерен «рассмотреть возможность введения неограниченного запрета на использование российских ракетных двигателей».

Сотрудники аппарата Конгресса пояснили, что под этим имеется в виду отмена всех исключений, установленных по поводу РД-180.

Представители Пентагона сообщили в среду, что ответы председателю сенатского комитета по делам вооруженных сил будут даны в установленный срок, но от каких-либо комментариев воздержались. В ULA эту сложную проблему также решили пока не комментировать.

Напомним, что ракеты Atlas V используют российский двигатель РД-180 и заменить его США фактически нечем. Военный бюджет США на 2015 финансовый год разрешил консорциуму ULA закупить пять таких двигателей, а бюджет на 2016 финансовый год – еще четыре.

ВВС США и ULA обратились с просьбой к Конгрессу смягчить жесткие требования.

Маккейну, видимо, здорово отбили мозги во вьетнамском плену

[Старый]

Дмитрий В. пишет: 
Маккейну, видимо, здорово отбили мозги во вьетнамском плену  

Откуда у лётчика мозги?  :oops:

[Salo]

"такую личную неприязнь я испытываю, что кушать не могу ..."  

[silentpom]

интересно, кто ему бабла занес....

[Apollo13]

silentpom пишет:
интересно, кто ему бабла занес....

Первый кандидат как бы очевиден...    

Впрочем есть еще длинный список тех кто _не_ занес, но по его мнению должен был бы...  

[triage]

Apollo13 пишет:
Первый кандидат как бы очевиден...

А кто? Неужели Маск?

[Apollo13]

pnetmon пишет:

Apollo13 пишет:
Первый кандидат как бы очевиден...    

А кто? Неужели Маск?

Я же говорю очевиден

[silentpom]

Apollo13 пишет:

pnetmon пишет:

Apollo13 пишет:
Первый кандидат как бы очевиден...    

А кто? Неужели Маск?

Я же говорю очевиден  

не уверен. скорее рокетдайн, у Маска бизнес ок, а вот у них

[Apollo13]

silentpom пишет:

Apollo13 пишет:

pnetmon пишет:

Apollo13 пишет:
Первый кандидат как бы очевиден...    

А кто? Неужели Маск?

Я же говорю очевиден    

не уверен. скорее рокетдайн, у Маска бизнес ок, а вот у них

Тогда скорее Безос

[silentpom]

Безосу надо, чтобы атлас продержался хоть как-то до подхода вулкана.  А вдруг атлас все, вулкана еще нет, а рокетдайн успеет?

[Apollo13]

silentpom пишет:
Безосу надо, чтобы атлас продержался хоть как-то до подхода вулкана. А вдруг атлас все, вулкана еще нет, а рокетдайн успеет?

Так у Безоса двигатель будет готов на 2 года раньше чем у Аэроджета. Аэроджету тем более надо чтобы Атлас продержался.

[silentpom]

А толк от безосовского двигателя без готовности всего вулкана? Аэроджет же намекает, что как только сделают двигатель, то в атлас его вставить быстро