James Dean

FLORIDA TODAY

United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno last week reiterated a promise to transform ULA into a more affordable and nimble launch provider as it braces for increased competition from SpaceX.

But ULA won't mimic SpaceX's focus on developing reusable rockets any time soon.

Bruno said reusable rockets' time will come, but it's not here yet.

"For the near-term, expendable (rocket flight) is going to be the most practical and cost-effective access to space," he said Thursday during a talk at the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C.

Why?

Bruno said firing engines to control a rocket's flight back to Earth, as SpaceX is now trying to do with its Falcon 9 booster, wastes fuel that could help deliver payloads to orbit.

"That's how rocket engineers see the world," he said. "That's all energy you could have used to put a bigger payload in the same orbit, or the same payload further up."

Bruno, who took the helm at ULA in August, said a fundamental breakthrough in technology will be needed to change that math.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk sees the world a bit differently. He believes reusability is essential to reducing launch costs that would make more missions possible, including human exploration, and thinks SpaceX may succeed in recovering and re-flying a rocket within the next year.

The company has soft-landed boosters in the ocean several times and as soon as its next launch, planned no earlier than Dec. 9 from Cape Canaveral, could try to land a Falcon 9's first stage on a platform in the ocean.

SpaceX only attempts the tests during missions with payloads bound for low Earth orbit, such as International Space Station cargo, not with satellites headed to much higher geosynchronous orbits, which require more fuel.

But the company expects boosters from those missions will also be flown back when launched by a Falcon Heavy featuring three first-stage boosters. That heavy-lift rocket is targeting a first flight next year.

ULA recently announced a partnership with Blue Origin, the Jeff Bezos-backed company that sees itself as a future competitor to SpaceX and is also a proponent of reusability. Blue Origin is developing an engine that could end ULA's reliance on a Russian provider for Atlas V rockets' main engine within about five years.

Bruno noted how Blue Origin has worked steadily and quietly – some say secretively – for years, and delivered an apparent dig at SpaceX in the process.

"The hype and sort of flamboyance that we've seen in some new entrants in this industry was really absent there (at Blue Origin)," he said.

SpaceX by the end of this year or early next is expected to earn Air Force certification to compete for launches of some national security missions that ULA has launched exclusively since the Boeing-Lockheed joint venture was formed in 2006.

MMS spacecraft arrive

All four spacecraft comprising NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale mission, or MSS, have arrived on the Space Coast in advance of a planned March 12 launch from Cape Canaveral, NASA reported last week.

The second pair of identical spacecraft arrived Wednesday at the Astrotech processing facility in Titusville, following a first pair that arrived in late October.

The new arrivals will be launched on top of an earlier pair, forming a 20-foot stack atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.

Flying in a tetrahedron formation as far as 99,000 miles up, the satellites will study interactions between solar energy and Earth's magnetic field, taking 3-D snapshots of explosions that occur through a process called "magnetic reconnection."

The two-year mission will study fundamental physics and add to understanding of space weather that can impact GPS navigation, communications networks and power grids.

Orion contract signing

European officials on Monday will celebrate the signing of a contract to develop and build the propulsion module that will power NASA's Orion exploration capsule when it launches for the first time from Kennedy Space Center atop the agency's Space Launch System rocket, targeted for 2018.

The European Space Agency awarded a contract to Airbus Defense and Space to develop and build the service module that sits beneath the crew module and provides an engine, power-producing solar arrays, environmental control and supplies water and gas to the astronauts.

The service module is based on ESA's ATV cargo ship that has flown to the International Space Station for the last time.

Launch of the first SLS rocket and Orion with its international service module — but without a crew — is targeted for 2018. The first crewed launch is targeted for 2021.

NASA and Lockheed Martin, Orion's lead contractor, last week moved a test capsule to a Cape Canaveral launch pad in preparation for a Dec. 4 unmanned, two-orbit test flight.

Teams on Wednesday completed the final full mission dress rehearsal planned before the launch by a United Launch Alliance's Delta IV Heavy rocket.

Space shot

A camera Mercury astronaut Wally Schirra used to snap pictures from space in 1962 sold at auction last week for $275,000.

It was the first Hasselblad camera body and Zeiss lens flown in orbit, according to Mass.-based RR Auction. The lens flew again the next year with Gordon Cooper on the Mercury program's final manned flight.

Schirra bought the camera at a Houston photo supply shop and some modifications were made in an Air Force laboratory.

Apollo astronauts later used Hasselblad cameras to take pictures on the moon's surface.

ISS dodges debris

The International Space Station needed to dodge out of the way of space junk last week.

Engineers feared the small piece of a spent Chinese satellite could whiz within seven-tenths of a mile of the orbiting research complex that spans the length of a football field.

A European cargo craft docked to the outpost fired its engines to lift the station. That eliminated the need for an orbit-raising move that had been planned the same day in preparation for the launch next Sunday of three new crew members including NASA astronaut Terry Virts.

NASA said three station residents including American Butch Wilmore were never in danger.

Morpheus returns to flight at KSC

Look for NASA's Morpheus team to resume test flight activity soon at Kennedy Space Center.

The prototype lander is targeting a test flight Tuesday tethered to a crane. Two free flights are planned next month.

The tests will be the first since the Johnson Space Center-led team wrapped up a program of 12 flights back in May, when it was unknown if funding would allow the work to continue.

The program has been testing a liquid methane-fueled engine and laser landing sensors.

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 or jdean@floridatoday.com. Follow on Twitter at @flatoday_jdean