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The Vulcan Centaur is built by ULE, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing. It would thus be the logical choice for launching Starliner. The problem
by wongarsu 3y ago
The Vulcan Centaur is built by ULE, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing. It would thus be the logical choice for launching Starliner. The problem is that Vulcan Centaur uses BE-4 engines from Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin. The BE-4 is arguably the most promising product Blue Origin has produced in the past 22 years, but it is three to four years behind schedule because of technical and managerial problems. The first two engines are now finally mounted to a rocket and are currently undergoing flight readiness testing, so I guess the next weeks or months will show how bright the future of the Vulcan looks like.
- sebazzz 3y agoLatest status is that they had a Flight Tanking Test and needed to roll back, and just yesterday aborted a Flight Readyness Firing (or what SpaceX calls "static fire"). > Standing down for today. We test the BE4 ignition system during the count. Timing and response doesn’t look right. Need to understand it. https://twitter.com/torybruno/status/1658084513963192320 https://twitter.com/torybruno/status/1658084513963192320 https://twitter.com/torybruno/status/1661834466032238592 https://twitter.com/torybruno/status/1661834466032238592
- ericcumbee 3y agoand Vulcan is not human rated. and ULA has said they have no plans to Human Rate Vulcan. I feel like that is kind of the writing on the wall that Starliner won't fly beyond what they have Atlas boosters earmarked for.