US group aims to cut costs of rocket launches in half

The company that handles all the US's national security satellite launches has outlined audacious plans to end its reliance on Russian rocket engines within four years and slash the cost of launches by at least half.

United Launch Alliance said the first flight for the new rocket - to be called Vulcan - will be in 2019, the deadline that Congress had set the company to end its reliance on Russian RD180 rocket engines. The new rocket will save money partly by jettisoning its engines back to earth to be captured by helicopters and reused on future flights.

The new rocket - also known as the Next Generation Launch System - would eventually offer the US the capability to fly successive components of a spacecraft to be assembled in orbit, said Tory Bruno, ULA's chief executive. It could then conduct an interplanetary mission, such as a flight to Mars.

"Because the Next Generation Launch System will be the highest-performing, most cost-efficient rocket on the market, it will open up new opportunities for the nation's use of space," Mr Bruno told reporters at a press conference in Colorado Springs.

Vulcan will be carried into space on two BE-4 engines developed by Blue Origin, a start-up founded by Jeff Bezos, the man behind Amazon. The engines - powered by methane, a new propellant for US-built engines - will initially power a similar rocket to the Atlas V that ULA powers with Russian-built RD180 engines.

ULA's reliance on Russian engines has caused concern ever since Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's deputy prime minister, last year threatened to withhold the engines for US national security launches. Congress last year ruled that ULA - a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin - was allowed to buy no more RD180s after its current launch contract expired in 2019.

Many observers - including Mr Bruno - have previously cast doubt on whether the company could produce a new, highly innovative, US-produced engine in such a short timeframe.

Mr Bruno acknowledged the continued risks on Monday by saying the company would continue to work with Aerojet Rocketdyne, an established manufacturer, on an alternative engine.

"Our back-up is Aerojet Rocketdyne," Mr Bruno said. "We're going to take both of them forward until at least 2016."

However, Vulcan's more colourful innovations are likely to attract most attention. A new, more powerful upper stage - which will first fly in around 2024 - will use an engine developed for racing cars and be capable of flying for weeks in space, rather than the hours of current upper stages. ULA could then conduct successive launches and assemble in space an interplanetary spacecraft too large to assemble and launch from earth.

Even from the start, ULA plans to jettison the RE4 engines back to earth, protected by inflatable heatshields, and retrieve them with helicopters as they parachute down.

That will play a significant role in slashing the cost of ULA's launches - which it puts at more than $200m each - to an average $100m, according to Mr Bruno.

That will bring ULA's costs far closer to those of SpaceX, the start-up run by Elon Musk, the entrepreneur, which is expected to gain authorisation for national security launches later this year.

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