Written by Joey Roulette
ORLANDO (Reuters) – Boeing (NYSE:) and Lockheed Martin The United Launch Alliance (ULA) joint rocket venture plans to upgrade a version of its Vulcan rocket to challenge SpaceX's Starship in the low-Earth orbit satellite launch market, the company's CEO said.
ULA wants to develop a Vulcan model tailored to the increasingly lucrative low-Earth orbit (LEO) market, mainly because SpaceX has launched thousands of satellites there for its Starlink internet service.
“We recently completed a large commercial study of what we want to be able to compete in the low-Earth orbit market in the future,” ULA CEO Tory Bruno told Reuters on Thursday on the sidelines of the Military Space Conference in Orlando.
“We chose a modification to Vulcan that gives us a much greater mass than LEO and puts us in a competitive range.”
ULA's Vulcan rocket, powered by engines from Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, made its first launch this year and is designed primarily to meet the Pentagon's mission requirements in various orbits.
Among the options ULA had for an improved version of LEO was “Vulcan Heavy,” or three Vulcan boosters strapped together, Bruno said. He also said there are “other volcanic formations that are very unique, and have thrust in unusual places.”
Although SpaceX's Starship vehicle is primarily designed for crewed missions to the Moon and Mars, the company plans to use it to accelerate the deployment of massive batches of Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit.
This has put pressure on SpaceX's rivals to match Starship's capabilities as other companies like Amazon (NASDAQ:) scramble to build competing satellite networks, increasing demand for large launch pads.
Bruno said ULA expects to have completed development of the replacement by the time Musk's Starship — a giant rocket that's supposed to eventually go to Mars — is thought to start launching LEO satellites, which he suggests could be several years from now.
“We won't face it in this specific market for a while,” Bruno predicted.
Musk has said he wants to nearly double the power of Starship and improve the rocket's ability to quickly return to Earth with giant mechanical arms, suggesting SpaceX is several months to more than a year away from launching LEO Starlink satellites.
ULA has several Vulcan missions booked with Amazon to deploy its Kuiper Internet satellites in space, making the rocket an important part of Amazon's strategy to challenge Starlink. Amazon has also booked launches with other rockets as part of a record multiple launch agreement for 2022.
SpaceX has launched six Starship test flights into space from its Starbase rocket campus in South Texas, demonstrating a dramatic test-to-fail ethos that includes successive upgrades and incremental test milestones before a commercial design is installed. Other companies, including ULA, will not launch a new rocket until its design is finalized.
ULA aims to launch eight Vulcan missions next year and 12 missions with Atlas (NYSE:) V, Vulcan's retired predecessor.
Vulcan starts with a launch price of about $110 million — a little more than the base price of the SpaceX Falcon 9 — and has a written order for nearly 70 missions including its own at Amazon, adding more urgency to routinely launching the rocket.
Reuters previously reported that ULA, formed in 2006 from the merger of Boeing and Lockheed's space launch programs, has been up for sale for more than a year, attracting interest from Bezos' Sierra Nevada Space unit and Blue Origin.
Bruno declined to comment on the takeover talks.
