A U.S.-designed replacement for the Russian-made RD-180 rocket engine can be
delivered for certification tests by the end of the decade, the president of
Boeing’s network and space systems division said March 8.
“We should
have engines available around the 2019 timeframe for certification,” Craig
Cooning said at a briefing on the sidelines of the Satellite 2016 conference in
National Harbor, Maryland.
Boeing and Lockheed Marrtin are the two
partners comprising United Launch Alliance, and Cooning sits on its board of
directors. The company has relied on Russian-made engines for its Atlas V
rockets to launch national security space satellites. Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine sparked Congress in 2014 to halt future acquisitions of the engine,
although ULA has since been given a reprieve until a domestic engine has been
developed.
Cooning said there should be two concurrent programs going
forward, the BE-4 being developed by Blue Origin, a start-up founded by
Amazon.com billionaire founder Jeff Bezos and the AR-1 from Aerojet
Rocketdyne.
“Anything that United Launch Alliance does is ultimately to
assure mission success and we think the best way to assure that is to hedge our
bets and go forward for as long as possible with two engine providers,” he
said.
ULA is developing its own new Vulcan family of rockets. “What ULA
is doing is investing in a new rocket engine, and we’re doing it incrementally
as we understand what the ultimate acquisition policy is here.”
The
government is providing seed money for engine development to several companies,
he noted. But the engine is only one component, he added.
“We think that
is a step in the right direction, but an engine alone does not make a rocket,”
he said. The corresponding investment to integrate the engine with the rest of
the system needs to happen, he added. There is money in the 2017 budget proposal
for rocket development. That is encouraging, but there should be an alignment
between the Defense Department and Congress as development moves forward, he
said.
Before Congress reversed its decision to completely stop RD-180
procurement, it appeared that rival SpaceX and its Falcon family of rockets
would have a competitive advantage over ULA. Now that the alliance can continue
to procure RD-180 engines for as long as needed, it is pushing ahead with
investments using private and public funding, Cooning said.
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