Paul Allen Launches 'Vulcan Aerospace' to Boost Private Space Travel

Billionaire Paul Allen has formed a new company to help make spaceflight more affordable and efficient.

Vulcan Aerospace, which was unveiled Monday (April 13), will spearhead the space projects of Vulcan, Inc., a company Allen and his sister Jody formed in 1986.

"Vulcan Aerospace is the company within Vulcan that plans and executes projects to shift how the world conceptualizes space travel through cost reduction and on‐demand access," Vulcan Aerospace president Chuck Beames and his colleague Kyu Hwang wrote in a paper describing the company that was presented at the 31 st Space Symposium in Colorado Springs this week.

"Vulcan Aerospace has its heritage in SpaceShipOne and oversees the Stratolaunch Systems project," they added. "Additionally, Vulcan Aerospace collaborates across Vulcan Inc. for projects dealing with space."

SpaceShipOne won the $10 million Ansari X Prize in 2004 for becoming the first privately funded manned vehicle to reach space twice in the span of two weeks. The project was a joint venture involving Allen and Scaled Composites, the California-based aerospace firm headed by engineer Burt Rutan.

This space biz is getting confusing quickly. ULA has Vulcan rockets (see article below release 2 days ago) and Paul Allen is starting Vulcan Aerospace which uses X-Prize winner SpaceShipOne heritage. Spock dies and now everyone's horning in on the Vulcan brand.

http://www.space.com/29100-vulcan-rocket-united-launch-alliance.html

'Behold Vulcan': Next-Generation Rocket Unveiled by United Launch Alliance

by Robert Z. Pearlman, collectSPACE.com Editor | April 14, 2015 06:47am ET

United Launch Alliance, the U.S. company behind the Atlas and Delta family of rockets, has unveiled Vulcan, its next generation launch system.

The new Vulcan rocket, which got its name through a poll that attracted more than a million votes, incorporates new engines, a reuse approach that features a mid-air recovery and a new upper stage aimed at enabling complex on-orbit operations.

"[Vulcan is] going to take the best parts of Delta and Atlas and combine them with new and advanced technology to provide a rocket that is not just as reliable and certain as Atlas has been, but also much more powerful, with higher performance, greater flexibility and [is] significantly more affordable," Tory Bruno, United Launch Alliance CEO, said in a press conference held Monday (April 13) at the Space Symposium in Colorado.

The people who should sue are the Russians.

The Vulkan launch vehicle was much bigger and more powerful then anything that a bureaucrat like Chuck Beames has ever come up with.

Allen has hired a bunch of bumbling ex-NRO types who specialize is moving Sloooooooow at pretty much everything.

Guess Allen figures he can get back some of his tax dollars by demanding a few major programs.

Vulkan:

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