Andy Pasztor makes the same mistake as Bloomberg and many others have in this WSJ piece about the potential new administrator:
One of the first big questions confronting NASA is whether the new team will embrace the Bush administration’s concept of building a new fleet of space shuttle-derived rockets to reach the orbiting International Space Station and return to the moon. In the past few weeks, there have been increasing calls by outsiders to scrap some of those plans in favor of using existing military rockets.
The Atlas and Delta are not “military rockets.”
They are commercial launch vehicles, developed partly with a subsidy from the Air Force. Anyone can fly on them who has the money, and they are built and operated by commercial contractors. They fly out of a military range, but almost all commercial vehicles do. There is nothing “military” about them. Why can’t people get this straight?
I’m with you in frustration over the hysteria, but didn’t Boeing end their commercial sales in a last-ditch effort to avoid repercussions from their LM documentation scandal?
My info may be old. That may have become a non-issue after forming ULA.
The media doesn’t seem to get anything straight nowadays I’m afraid.
As I recall, many of the expendable launch vehicles started as military missiles. For instance, Atlas was developed as an ICBM and Delta as the Thor IRBM.
Ditto for the now retired, Titan-II and its’ progeny.
Also, didn’t Sputnik I go up on an ICBM?
Likewise, didn’t early versions of the air launched Pegasus vehicle use a Minuteman 1st stage?
In fairness, perhaps these boosters should be called military derived or some such.
Isn’t the continuation of the Atlas name, and the Atlas ICBM heritage, to blame for the confusion? I realize it is part of the Atlas line, but they could have given it a new name if they wanted to avoid the Atlas connotations. I presume they everyone involved either doesn’t care or is proud of the Atlas history. I suppose the other reason for the confusion is because reporters look up an EELV overview and read that the DOD wanted a new launcher after Challenger. The confusion seems understandable.
Any comments on the selection of Scott Gration as NASA chief?
http://www.space.com/news/090113-obama-nasa-administrator.html
Roderick, plenty of commentary in threads below. It’s worth remembering that the selection is still rumor (from checking Google News).
In fairness, perhaps these boosters should be called military derived or some such.
What would be the point? Every rocket is “military derived”. Don’t use labels that have no resolving power.
In addition, Delta and Atlas are launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, on the East Coast, and Vandenberg AFB, on the West Coast.
That in itself is enough will convince most reporters that they’re “military rockets.”
In addition, Delta and Atlas are launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, on the East Coast, and Vandenberg AFB, on the West Coast.
I guess that means that the Falcon 9 is a “military rocket,” too.
I guess that means that the Falcon 9 is a “military rocket,” too.
Guilty!! We should scrap spaceflight activities and turn money over to education to encourage students to learn science and engineering. [/snark]
Why can’t people get this straight?
Considering how much their graduates get wrong, I think journalism schools teach courses like Creative Misrepresentation, Rumor Laundering and Elementary Fact Fabrication.
Raoul, we had a thread about low risk cheating in universities. My take is that this is exactly what’s being taught in a lot of schools and colleges.
I guess that means that the Falcon 9 is a “military rocket,” too.
Isn’t SpaceX building a new launch pad on Merritt Island? That would make it a “NASA rocket.” 🙂
Tom Hill:
Boeing did take the Delta IV off the commercial market, and there have been no plans to put it back on the commercial market since the ULA formation.
I’m sure that part of the problem, too, is that ULA aspires not to lower the cost of getting to orbit, but to be the government’s launch provider. ULA doesn’t even book commercial flights on its workhorse, the Delta II–those are handled through Boeing Launch Services.
“What would be the point? Every rocket is “military derived”. Don’t use labels that have no resolving power.”
Actually, there are and have been rockets that weren’t so derived. Old R. H. Goddards work for (a trivial) example. I don’t know either way so I’ll just ask, what of the ESA Arianne? Likewise, the space shuttle. (Although I seem to remember that the SRB fuel bears more than a nodding relation to that of the Minuteman.) Or how do we classify the Saturn-5? It’s derived from Von Brauns earlier V-2.
I don’t give a tinkers dam one way or the other. I was just addressing the original question. I don’t have the anti-military reflex that so many seem to carry in our decadent era.
Who really cares whether a rocket was designed to carry a warhead or a science package? What I care about is what can be done with it now and the costs.
Fair enough?
“Military rockets” has bigger sales potential than “rockets”. If anyone reading this is giving these people money then stop please.
As I recall, commercial lift rockets/military rockets/whatever are cheaper because they’re not “man-rated” and therefore can only be used to launch unmanned payloads. They blow up on the launch pad too often to be used to send men into space.
The Shuttle is not man rated. It has been launched over 120 times and has killed two crews. In the meantime, no Delta IV or Atlas V has exploded on or off the pad. The last US pad explosion that I can recall was a Delta II back in the 1990s.
Delta-4 and Atlas-V are not viable “military rockets” in their weight class i.e. ICBMs. Anyone who wanted to make an ICBM would not certainly not use LOX or even worse, LH2 as fuel today. The Russians did use LOX/Kerogen in the R-7 ICBM in the 1950s, but it was a pretty unresponsive launcher taking twenty hours to prepare for launch. If you used one of those today, the US satellite network would detect launch preparations hours before launch, and could do a pre-emptive strike almost immediately.
Hypergolic rockets such as R-36, or solid rockets such as Peacekeeper are viable ICBMs. Even third-rate nuclear powers or aspiring ones use hypergolic or solid fuel for their ICBMs.
Sure the military use EELVs but they use jeeps and trucks as well. Following that point of view HMMVs are not suitable for civilian use either.
Atlas-V in particular uses Russian RD-180 engines in the first stage. It is basically all new compared to the first Atlas generations and designed for satellite launch. Delta-4 also has a new first stage and engine and was designed for satellite launch. No one in their right mind would think of using either of these vehicles as ICBMs.
Sputnik was launched in an R-7 aka Soyuz rocket using LOX/Kerosene. The Russians do not use those as ICBMs since the 1960s.
As for ESA: Ariane 1 hypergolic liquid rocket technology was indirectly developed from French Diamant launcher technology, which was military derived.
Ariane 5 shares none of that hypergolic liquid rocket technology as far as I know. But the solid engines are made by the same people that make the French M45 SLBM. Then again, US Shuttle solid engines are made by the same people who make the first stage used in the Peacekeeper ICBM.
So does that make the Shuttle a “military vehicle” too?