Aerojet Rocketdyne Secures Largest RL10 Engine Contract From United Launch Alliance
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (Aerojet Rocketdyne PR) – United Launch Alliance (ULA) recently awarded the largest RL10 contract ever to Aerojet Rocketdyne to deliver 116 RL10C-X engines for its Vulcan Centaur rocket. The new engines will support ULA as it works to fulfill its commitments under a contract they recently received from Amazon, as part of the largest commercial launch contract in history, to support the launch of its Kuiper satellite constellation.
“The RL10 engine is the nation’s premier upper-stage engine and a true workhorse in the industry,” said Aerojet Rocketdyne CEO and President Eileen P. Drake. “With the RL10C-X, we’ve leveraged our industry-leading 3D-printing technology to significantly reduce the cost of the engine while at the same time increasing its performance to provide our customer with enhanced mission capability.”
The RL10C-X uses a 3D-printed main injector and main combustion chamber, as well as a 94-inch monolithic lightweight composite (carbon-carbon) nozzle. The specific impulse, or Isp, of the RL10C-X is 461 seconds, which puts it near the very top of the RL10 engine family in terms of performance. Similar to gas mileage in a car, specific impulse measures the amount of thrust generated by a rocket engine per unit of propellant consumed per second.
“The RL10 is the highest performance upper-stage rocket engine flying today,” said ULA President and CEO Tory Bruno. “We’re proud to be launching the Kuiper constellation with the next generation of this incredibly reliable and high-performance engine.”
The RL10C-X engine is designed, fabricated, assembled and tested at Aerojet Rocketdyne’s facility located in West Palm Beach, Florida. Well over 500 RL10 engines have flown in space during nearly six decades of operation. The RL10 engine currently powers the upper stages of ULA’s Atlas V and Delta IV launch vehicles, and will soon begin supporting ULA’s Vulcan Centaur and NASA’s Space Launch System.
About Aerojet Rocketdyne
Aerojet Rocketdyne, a subsidiary of Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:AJRD), is a world-recognized aerospace and defense leader that provides propulsion systems and energetics to the space, missile defense and strategic systems, and tactical systems areas, in support of domestic and international customers. For more information, visit www.Rocket.com and www.AerojetRocketdyne.com. Follow Aerojet Rocketdyne and CEO Eileen Drake on Twitter at @AerojetRdyne and @DrakeEileen.
6 responses to “Aerojet Rocketdyne Secures Largest RL10 Engine Contract From United Launch Alliance”
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Good times in the launch business!
Meanwhile, down Texas way, the Raptors are coming and you have to love SpaceX’s style.
https://twitter.com/BocaChi…
its an interesting style. a lot of money has been spent on a lot of scrapped vehicles they are not even going to get a test fire out of the 4
Yes, but remember that he is also training a workforce to build them efficiently.
and he might find that valuable. As I have said endlessly I think eventually Elon will get SpaceX to get Starship to something that is financially useful for him. it wont be what he is claiming it will be, but it will be economically useful to him….and we should celebrate that when it happens it will be a business case closure for private rocket development and that is a good thing
The cult of Elon and how he plays to that I find amusing. but we are at that point in our national life where a lot of people need to have a person that they believe in…and watching how vulnerable they are to predators like Elon is to me both scary and entertaining. I assume we as a nation will get over it eventually
AJR lucked out that Blue is a hot mess