This is a

a series of the world. I'm John Bachelor. Behind the Black Bob Zimmerman keeps the website.

We go immediately to the U.L.A. second launch of Vulcan.

Sounds like good news.

But, Bob, a very good evening to you.

What is Vulcan?

Vulcan is the United Launch Alliance's new rocket to replace both as Delta Four

family of rockets which it has retired and it's Atlas Five rocket which it has

retired not building anymore but they still have some launches on the manifest

Vulcan is about four or five years behind schedule it finally launched in the spring for the first time

successfully in order to get approved for commercial

launches with the space force with the Pentagon it had to complete two successful

launches and so uh... last week it very it's successfully completed its second launch

Getting a dummy payload into orbit into the orbit plan and so they haven't yet announced whether it will be

certified for military launches I suspect it will be but it's an interesting situation that that it will be but it's an interesting situation that it will be because during the

launch 38 seconds after lift-off an explosion occurred in one of the two strap-on solid-fueled boosters.

Think of the shuttle. It had two solid rocket boosters on either side.

Same on this particular configuration launch of Vulcan, it had two solid rocket

boosters on its side as well, both built by Northrop Grumman.

And one of them had an explosion at its base and apparently its nozzle blew off.

And what we saw next was that the

the material being thrust from the rocket, the jet, was no longer matching the

...