United Launch Alliance Pushes for Greater Reusability In Vulkan Centaur Rocket

Tory Bruno, president and CEO of the United Launch Alliance (ULA), has hinted that the company is working on improving the reusability of its Vulkan Centaur heavy-lift launch vehicle. He suggested that the plans were still quite secretive but that ULA was looking to build additional reusability into the design, beyond just recovering and repurposing the engines from the first stage. Such moves could allow ULA to compete more favorably with SpaceX, which has had great success with its reusable Falcon 9 rocket.

The Vulkan Centaur is a two-stage to orbit launch vehicle designed to replace the ULA’s Atlas V and Delta IV rockets. It’s meant to compete with SpaceX’s Falcon 9, but also to phase out the use of Russian-made engines, like the RD-180 that’s used with the Atlas V. Vulkan Centaur now uses BE-4 engines in its first stage, which the ULA hopes to repurpose as part of its SMART reuse system. A proposal would have the engines, avionics, and thrust structure detach with their own heat shields for later recovery.

But now the CEO is hinting at much more than that.

“Engine recovery is not the only reuse thing we have cooking, but I haven’t told people what it is,” he said (via SpaceNews) during an episode of The Burn Sequence podcast, stating that “it’s not time yet” to provide any additional details about it.

The BE-4 engines on the Vulkan could be recovered in a detached module.
Credit: ULA

During the podcast, he interviewed Amanda Bacchetti, a program engineering director at ULA who is overseeing upgrades to Vulcan. She suggested that the next item on reusability with the rocket was going to be a “really good one.” She suggested that it would be different from what ULA had worked on before and that it involves a bit of outside-the-box thinking, but it could have a big impact on the rocket’s development.

ULA has been discussing the SMART recovery system for some time and has already completed component-level tests for the idea. It should begin implementing it sometime in 2026, with the first flights looking to make the important booster engine components recoverable and reusable. To make that possible, however, Vulkan’s engines must be upgraded with additional performance. They should come together as a single upgrade in a new block design, but there are no planned launch dates for such a design at this time.

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