Early Monday morning ULA plans to launch its first of two certification missions for its Vulcan rocket. What does this have to do with SpaceX‘s CEO Elon Musk? Well after a prediction made over five years ago, he’s now safe from an eating your hat moment.

周一清晨，ULA 计划为其 Vulcan 火箭启动两项认证任务中的第一项。这与 SpaceX 首席执行官埃隆·马斯克有什么关系？经过五年多前的预测，他现在已经安全了，不会吃掉你的帽子。

Musk on Vulcan’s timeline

In a tweet dug up by Eric Berger, back in 2018 Musk talked about ULA pricing and the eventual development of its competitor’s Vulcan rocket. “I will seriously eat my hat with a side of mustard if that rocket flies a national security spacecraft before 2023,” Musk said.

马斯克谈 Vulcan 的时间线 在埃里克·伯杰 (Eric Berger) 挖掘的一条推文中，早在 2018 年，马斯克就谈到了 ULA 的定价及其竞争对手 Vulcan 火箭的最终开发。马斯克表示：“如果这枚火箭在 2023 年之前搭载国家安全航天器，我会心生芥蒂。”

Discussion of a new rocket began as soon as ULA was formed in 2006 from the merger of Boeing‘s and Lockheed Martin‘s launch teams. However, Vulcan wasn’t formally announced until 2014 in light of political attacks for Atlas V’s reliance on the Russian made RD-180 engine.

2006 年，波音公司和洛克希德·马丁公司的发射团队合并成立 ULA 后，关于新型火箭的讨论就开始了。然而，由于 Atlas V 依赖俄罗斯制造的 RD-180 发动机而受到政治攻击，Vulcan 直到 2014 年才正式宣布。

Early updates had Vulcan’s debut for 2019 but were quickly delayed to 2020. One of the first items to be marked as a problem was with the new US produced engine being developed by Blue Origin, now known as the BE-4. The GAO’s report in 2021 noted it was “experiencing technical challenges related to the igniter and booster capabilities required.”

Vulcan 的早期更新于 2019 年首次亮相，但很快被推迟到 2020 年。最先被标记为问题的项目之一是 Blue Origin 开发的美国生产的新发动机（现在称为 BE-4）。 GAO 在 2021 年的报告中指出，它“正在经历与所需的点火器和助推器功能相关的技术挑战”。

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 and 2021 forced even more delays both across the industry but also to ULA’s first Vulcan customer. Astrobotic‘s Peregrine lander would be delayed several years because of the pandemic and other technical issues.

2020 年和 2021 年的 COVID-19 大流行迫使整个行业以及 ULA 的第一个 Vulcan 客户遭受更多延误。由于疫情和其他技术问题，Astrobotic 的 Peregrine 着陆器将被推迟几年。

Add in the addition of developing the Centaur V, Vulcan was originally designed to use an Atlas V variant Centaur III, and then its redesign in 2023, you get a launch date of January 8, 2024.

除了开发 Centaur V 之外，Vulcan 最初设计是使用 Atlas V 的变体 Centaur III，然后在 2023 年重新设计，发布日期为 2024 年 1 月 8 日。

Not sure what information Musk had at the time, or was just a good guess, but what a prediction.

不确定马斯克当时掌握了什么信息，或者只是一个很好的猜测，但这是一个多么好的预测。

Vulcan to launch NSSL mission this year?

Following a hopefully successful launch of Peregrine Mission One, Vulcan’s second certification mission will fly the first Dream Chaser spaceplane.

Vulcan 今年将启动 NSSL 任务？继“游隼一号”任务成功发射后，Vulcan 的第二个认证任务将驾驶第一架“追梦者”太空飞机。

This was also a mission heavily delayed by both COVID and development problems. However, the Dream Chaser slated for flight is finishing up final testing before it flies a demo mission to the ISS.

这也是一项因新冠疫情和发展问题而严重延迟的任务。然而，计划飞行的追梦者号正在完成最后的测试，然后再飞往国际空间站进行演示任务。

Once these two certification missions are complete, the Space Force will then allow ULA to fly national security payloads using Vulcan. First up will be GPS III SV07, which in a Space Systems Command report from September, shows a launch no earlier than June 2024.

一旦这两项认证任务完成，太空军将允许 ULA 使用 Vulcan 飞行国家安全有效载荷。首先是 GPS III SV07，在 9 月份的太空系统司令部报告中显示，它的发射时间不早于 2024 年 6 月。

If ULA didn’t run into any problems at the beginning of 2023, we might just have had a repeat of Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck dining on a hat. Amazon could have moved its two demo Kuiper satellites back onto Vulcan for its second flight. Although if there would have been time for the Space Force’s GPS satellite to be integrated and launched is not known.

如果 ULA 在 2023 年初没有遇到任何问题，我们可能会重演火箭实验室的彼得·贝克 (Peter Beck) 在帽子上吃饭的故事。亚马逊本可以将其两颗演示柯伊伯卫星移回火神星进行第二次飞行。不过，尚不清楚太空部队的 GPS 卫星是否有时间集成并发射。