When asked on Twitter if the current schedule for BE-4 is still faster than if ULA designed an engine in-house Tory’s answer was just “Yes.” He has also said that ULA has “been able to accommodate” the delay, “but I’ll be straight with you, the dates we’ve set up for them now, we really don’t have the ability to make any big moves after this.” And he expects to have the rocket ready before the payload. Bruno recently stated that engine readiness will pace the availability of the rocket but that the pacing item for the first flight remains payload readiness.Īctually, what I said was that the availability of the payload will place the first flight, and the availability of the engines will pace the rocket (ahead of that)īruno had said recently at the 2021 Space Symposium that he does not expect to receive the BE-4 flight engines before the end of the year.īruno has recently been a little sharper in his public words when talking about the BE-4 engine delay, saying, “I need them to diligently work through the plans we have and get done on time.”īruno also responded to this on Twitter by saying that he does expect the engines before the end of the year and that the engine is currently performing well and is in pre-qualification testing, the flight engines have begun fabrication. Second, ULA has yet to receive flight-qualified BE-4 engines from Blue Origin. First is the readiness of Astrobotic’s spacecraft, which is not yet prepared for flight. That launch was originally scheduled to launch in 2021 but has been delayed for a few reasons. Astrobotic selected ULA and Vulcan to launch their robotic Peregrine moon lander, a scientific mission as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. The first flight of Vulcan will be an operational launch with a commercial customer. CEO Tory Bruno recently shared a photo of an advanced Centaur V tank nearing completion in their new robotic weld center at their rocket factory in Decatur, Alabama. ULA is in the process of building the flight hardware for the first few Vulcan launches. I spy with my little eye… An advanced Centaur V tank nearing completion in our new robotic weld center at the rocket factory in Decatur, AL. This booster will be swapped out for another, which has the first flight engines, and will conduct a static fire test at SLC-41, after which they will integrate their first payload and roll out for Vulcan’s first flight. The booster that is taking part in this testing arrived in Florida on ULA’s RocketShip in February 2021 and was rolled to the Vertical Integration Facility (VIF), where teams stacked the vehicle on the mobile launcher, after which ULA performed preliminary testing with Vulcan, and its launch pad when they first rolled it out in March 2021.Ĭurrently, ULA has this one flight-ready booster with development BE-4 engines at the cape. While this booster will not be the first to fly, it will have its pathfinder BE-4 engines replaced with flight engines once testing is complete in order to support a future Vulcan launch. United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan pathfinder has rolled out to SLC-41 at Cape Canaveral for tank testing as part of a continuing campaign towards the rocket’s maiden flight.
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