By Doug Cameron
To bring down high costs, the Pentagon's main space-launch
provider is proposing a technique that sounds like a mixture of
science fiction and circus act: catching rockets as they fall back
to earth with an airborne hook so they can be reused.
United Launch Alliance LLC surprised many in the rocket industry
this week with its plan, which would involve large helicopters with
extendible booms to snare spent engines as they parachute down from
the edge of space after delivering their payload.
ULA, a joint venture between Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin
Corp., is competing with Elon Musk's rocket venture, Space
Exploration Technology Corp., which has shaken up the launch
industry over the past five years with its low-cost rockets.
SpaceX already is testing its own plan to reuse the first stage
of its Falcon 9 rocket, by using the engines to bring the first
stage back to a gentle landing on floating barge in the Atlantic
Ocean. On Tuesday, however, it narrowly failed in its latest test
of that system, with the rocket stage reaching the barge but
landing too hard to survive, according to a message on Mr. Musk's
official Twitter account.
The competing efforts are designed to solve the toughest
challenge facing rocket scientists: cutting stubbornly high costs
with reusable rockets. Currently, there are no reusable big
rockets, as their first stages, packed with sophisticated
electronics and guidance hardware, typically burn up while falling
back to earth or return too damaged to be used again.
ULA started evaluating ways a decade ago to land rocket stages
softly on a pad or parachute them into the sea for recovery. It
decided the cost was outweighed by potential damage if they landed
in the sea or heavily on the pad, making them more costly to
refurbish than building a new one.
But SpaceX's efforts suggested the technical and economic
barriers are now more surmountable.
ULA's new plan, announced on Monday, represents a change of
heart, though its approach is less ambitious and won't be ready
until 2024. It is focusing on retrieving only the two main engines
of its planned new Vulcan rocket, which account for 65% of its
total cost--$100 million to $200 million, depending on the load
being carried. The rest of the first stage, including the fuel
tanks, would continue to be jettisoned into the sea.
ULA's plan has some precedent: the U.S. used midair snags to
recover film canisters parachuted down from Cold War spy satellites
in the 1960s.
The joint venture says it has tested its system with smaller
objects, using a helicopter to snare first a sky diver and then a
750-pound weight. Now it needs to scale this up to handle the
combined 25,000-pound weight of the Vulcan's two engines.
Under ULA's plan, those boosters would separate from the rest of
the stage at a height of 750,000 feet, slowed from hypersonic speed
by an inflatable heat shield. They would then be steered toward the
waiting helicopter by special parachutes equipped with GPS
trackers.
Tuesday's outcome for SpaceX underscores the technical
challenges facing reusable rockets, and the fact that success of
such efforts may take longer than proponents have projected.
And catching the used engines is only part of the battle. Space
experts said the tougher issue will be refurbishing them,
persuading customers they are ready to fly again and harvesting a
whole rocket.
"Reusing the first stage is a good first step, but for major
savings the question is how many times can the engines be reused,"
said George Torres, a former industry executive and author of two
space books. "For instance, the space shuttle reused its engines 10
times."
SpaceX says its Merlin engines can be used up to 40 times,
though without a surge in demand for launches, the cost of building
each one would soar as it lost economies of scale.
ULA is confident its new Vulcan engine could be used several
times, though its chief executive, Tory Bruno, has said he's
reluctant to push for a model where each is used for a dozen or
more launches.
Early designs for the space shuttle also included recovering
more of the rocket after launch, and efforts to recover and
refurbish engines designed to be used as many as 55 times proved
problematic, and only managed 10 launches.
France and Germany this year said they'd revived research
previously conducted with Russia on retrieving and reusing rocket
stages, but it won't be employed on the planned new Ariane 6 rocket
due to fly in 2020. Similarly, the Boeing-built Space Launch
System, a huge rocket designed for the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration to ultimately send manned missions beyond the
moon into deep space, isn't being designed with reusability in
mind.
Andy Pasztor contributed to this article.
Write to Doug Cameron at doug.cameron@wsj.com
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