Firefly Aerospace
BRIGGS, Texas – A new medium-lift rocket being developed by Firefly Aerospace and Northrop Grumman will eventually feature a recoverable booster that will return to its launch site in Virginia for reuse.
Firefly has previously suggested that reuse of the rocket is on the cards for the new rocket — known for now only as a Medium Launch Vehicle (MLV) — but officials revealed new details of the plan during a recent visit by Ars to Firefly’s rural rocket factory. central texas.
“Northrop and Firefly have a similar perspective, and that means that for this class of rocket, reusability is a requirement for many reasons,” said Bill Weber, CEO of Firefly. “Economically, it becomes an advantage because we don’t have to build out additional floor space… Likewise, the pricing structure for customers is becoming super competitive, which we absolutely love and will be right in the middle of.”
Firefly is one of several companies trying to build new midrange rockets, all of which will be at least partially reusable. Rocket Lab, perhaps the most dominant company in the Firefly class, is developing the Neutron rocket while continuing to fly the smaller Electron launcher, which has now accumulated 50 missions. Relativity Space, a well-funded private company based in California, is developing the semi-reusable Terran R rocket after abandoning its smaller Terran 1 vehicle after a single test flight. Stoke Space is working on a new rocket design with a reusable booster and upper stage.
All of these launch vehicles are sized to compete with SpaceX’s current market leader, the Falcon 9 rocket. It will eventually join a list of launch providers for the U.S. military’s national security missions that currently includes only SpaceX, United Launch Alliance and, most recently, Blue Origin.
Necessary to compete
Until now, Firefly has provided few details about its rocket reuse plan. But details revealed by Ars show that MLV will use a known recovery method.
“For our basic design, we are proposing a powered landing around the return to the launch site,” said Merritt d’Elia, propulsion manager for the MLV program. “We’ll go through all of these things, but basically we’re creating an architecture for reuse. Not just an architecture, we’re planning to do that.”
Firefly may choose to include the ability to land on sea barges downward, as SpaceX does with the Falcon 9 and Blue Origin plans to do with the New Glenn rocket. Rocket Lab and Relativity also plan to land rockets at shorter distances. However, d’Elia said this approach is expensive, requires ship maintenance and delays the return of boosters to the launch site for refurbishment.
Testing of the MLV’s booster recovery technology will begin with the rocket’s first flight, according to d’Elia, when Firefly will fly the control thrusters to demonstrate the first stage’s flip maneuver to return to the launch site after separation from the MLV’s upper stage.
Weber, Firefly’s chief executive, said the company’s goal is to recover a full MLV booster and use it again on about the rocket’s sixth flight. “As it stands now, it will be somewhere around Flight 6,” he said. “That’s likely if it works well to introduce this capability in flight.”
On the ground, Firefly is designing Miranda’s engines to be able to perform multiple burns in a single flight, a capability it will need for a powered landing. Engineers are testing the MLV’s composite structures to make sure they can withstand multiple launches and landings, including the heat of re-entry into the atmosphere.
“To meet the launch cadence, to go as fast as we need to, to do it at a cost that makes sense, and to do it in a way that doesn’t cause more damage to the planet along the way, no. I don’t know how you can achieve that without reusability,” Weber said.