New, bigger, bolder and more advanced rockets — most built by private companies — are coming to a space port near you.
This next generation of boosters is key to transforming the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station launch bases into the 21st-century multiuser launch center that officials have been talking about since the space shuttle program ended in 2011.
First up will the Falcon Heavy. SpaceX hopes to debut its newest, most-powerful rocket, with a test launch from Cape Canaveral later this year.
After that, SpaceX plans to launch it regularly from Kennedy Space Center, at least until a new site under development in Texas is completed. The rocket, essentially its Falcon 9 attached to two side boosters that increase total thrust to about 4 million pounds, would for the time being be the nation’s most powerful. It would allow SpaceX to compete to carry heavy payloads into space and to go to deep space.
Earlier this month the United Launch Alliance unveiled plans for its next generation rocket, called Vulcan. That rocket, with 1.1 million pounds of thrust and options to increase that with up to six side boosters, also would launch from Cape Canaveral.
ULA already is the nation’s busiest rocket launcher, but the Vulcan would jump-start the company into better competitive position with SpaceX for the low-price launch business, while also providing capabilities SpaceX’s Falcons do not have.
In 2018, NASA hopes to debut its new rocket, the Space Launch System, which the agency plans to use to send astronauts into deep space and eventually to Mars.
At 322 feet, the SLS [which will be getting a new name] will be almost as tall as the retired Saturn V, and more powerful, with 8.4 million pounds of thrust, making it the world’s most powerful ever.
Finally, Blue Origin, which like SpaceX is a private company run by an enigmatic billionaire, is preparing to announce plans later this spring for its first rocket, also set to compete with SpaceX and also likely to be launched from Cape Canaveral, according to a recent report in Florida Today.
While most of the new rockets still are several years away, competition for the space launch business is heating up now, as developers of satellites and other spacecraft make their long-term plans, said Dale Ketcham, chief of strategic alliances for Space Florida, the state’s space business development agency.
“That’s all a good thing. You’ve got competing technologies and approaches. Who’s going to win that race, and how it’s going to be play out is still to be determined,” Ketcham said.
The Vulcan, which will be tested in 2019 and probably go into full service two to four years after that, includes a second-stage designed to be able to provide multiple, long, continuous burns.
That means it can get satellites into geo-synchronous orbits and deeper-space orbits, so the satellites won’t have to have their own engines.
“That’s where most of the telecommunications payloads are headed,” ULA president Tory Bruno said in an interview. “That’s the new-generation rocket. Vulcan brings game-changing capabilities, partly because of the upper stage. Our Vulcan rocket, our upper stage will not just operate for many hours, it’ll actually be able to operate for weeks. It can refuel and stay operational indefinitely.”
The Vulcan also will use new first-stage engines created in partnership with Blue Origin, which is run by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, allowing the company to stop using the Russian-made RD-180 engines that are becoming increasingly more difficult to obtain. ULA plans to retire its Delta IV rocket, which uses those engines, as the Vulcan gets phased in.
None of the rocket companies has announced any plans to manufacture their new boosters in Florida, though Florida Today reported that Blue Origin is considering a factory in Brevard County. The SLS’s prime contractor, Lockheed Martin, intends to do the final assembly of side boosters at its facilities at Kennedy Space Center, and Boeing plans the same thing for the Orion capsules that would go on top.
NASA, SpaceX and ULA also are each spending hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild existing launch complexes at Kennedy and Cape Canaveral to handle their new rockets, and Blue Origin may follow, as it has options to use the Air Force station’s Launch Complex 36.
The launch of new rockets might have yet another economic effect: It could bring new waves of tourists.
“People will still come to watch launches, especially if it is a significant launch going to Mars or some planet that has real scientific value to it that captivates the tourists,” Ketcham said.
Historically, there have only been about 30 space launches a year from any of the space ports around the globe, including those at Cape Canaveral, California, Virginia and overseas. But space industry experts all believe that will change as the new technologies and competition drive down prices and increase options and capabilities.
“There are a lot of satellites with a lot of capabilities that are sitting on the ground because they can’t get into orbit, because the cost of getting them into orbit exceeds the cost of the satellites,” Ketcham said.
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