Centennial-based United Launch Alliance wants the public to decide the name of its Next Generation Launch System rocket.
The three choices — fingers crossed the ‘Nimoy Vulcan’ is among them — were culled from a list of about 400 submissions from ULA employees. They will be released at 9:30 a.m. Monday.
Online voting will open at that time and continue through April 6.
“We decided that since this is America’s next ride to space, we ought to let America name it,” ULA CEO Tory Bruno said in an interview last month.
ULA has been slowly softening its militaristic image, both with involving the public more and with Bruno’s foray into social media. He interacts with people on Twitter every day, answering questions about rocket science and chatting with parody account @FakeToryBruno.
It’s all part of the plan to get more people excited about space.
“Space touches everyone’s lives,” he said, “but the industry is kind of mysterious to people. I really want to make the space industry much more accessible to people and to the general public.”
Although details of the capabilities of Next Generation Launch System, or NGLS, remain secret, Bruno told The Denver Post in February that the rocket will be adaptable to the future of space exploration, including outer planetary exploration, low-Earth-orbit science missions, military satellite launches or even ferrying workers to space and back on a daily basis.
“We decided the span of requirements to go to space is going to be even broader than it is today,” Bruno said. “We’ve designed NGLS to do everything we do today plus more.”
ULA, formed in 2006 as a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing Co., has about 3,400 employees, with about 1,500 in Colorado.
Employees who work on the company’s Delta and Atlas rocket programs are shifting onto the NGLS team — the majority of them in the company’s Centennial headquarters.
NGLS will be unveiled officially at the 31st annual Space Symposium in Colorado Springs in April, the space industry’s premier international conference.
