Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

It’s Not The End Of American Leadership In Space

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So sayeth Dana Rohrabacher.

[Update mid afternoon]

Jay Barbree has finally noticed that there’s more to the commercial space industry than SpaceX, but he’s still drinking the ATK koolaid:

he key here would be the launch vehicle for Boeing’s CST 100.

Standing by is arguably the world’s most reliable rocket: a U.S.-European vehicle which is an upgraded version of the space shuttle’s solid booster rocket that has flown perfectly 216 times, and France’s Ariane-5 rocket as a second stage that has flown 41 times successfully.

The rocket, called Liberty, is being offered by ATK Space Launch Systems. It’s capable of carrying all crew vehicles in development today.

“Both stages of Liberty were designed for human rating from the beginning,” said ATK Vice President Charlie Precourt, a veteran astronaut and former director of NASA’s flight crew operations. The other rockets haven’t yet gone through the time-consuming process to be certified as safe for flying humans.

Without getting too deep into the details of this nonsense (any discussion containing the phrase “human rating” are almost predestined to be nonsense), he writes this as though Liberty exists in any form other than marketing viewgraphs. Here’s a question I have. Can an Ariane-V even handle the vibration environment on the top of an SRB without major beefing up of the structure?

9 thoughts on “It’s Not The End Of American Leadership In Space”

  1. Here’s a question I have.

    I’ll add another two: how difficult is it going to be to develop an air-started variant of Vulcain and is it going to suffer from the same lack of thrust it has on the Ariane 5 core stage?

    but he’s still drinking the ATK koolaid

    I’ll repeat what I said elsewhere: it’s more than just koolaid, this looks like a blatant lie to me.

  3. So the SRB has flown perfectly 216 times? This may be a bit obscure, but does that count the time an O-ring burned completely through?

    And if the Ariane 5 has flow successfully 41 times, why does it have 58 launches? I think there’s a math error lurking around somewhere, perhaps related to the math conversion bug that caused Ariane’s first flight to end in destruction.

    But not counting the three explosions (one from an SRB and two on Ariane 5), and not counting a couple partial Ariane failures and partially burned SRB O-rings, yes, they have a perfect performance record.

    As for potentially severe SRB vibration problems affecting the Ariane on top, I wouldn’t worry. Worrying just wastes mental energy, causes stress, increases your stomach acid, and can suppress your immune system.

  4. In their myopic space race view it’s all about government dollars. SpaceX has other things in mind. Bigelow isn’t exactly a potted plant either.

  5. Ugh. Vulcain is not my first choice for a first stage rocket engine at all. Also, WTF is wrong with just using Delta IV Heavy instead Boeing?

  6. If ATK is so confident that Liberty is a winner, build one and do a demo launch. SpaceX has two successfull Falcon 9 launches and was also ‘designed for human rating from the beginning’. Lockheed would like to ‘human rate’ Atlas V and Boeing would like to put Delta IV Heavy forward as a manned launcher too, if NASA would ever make clear what that means.

  7. I was stupid enough to ride the mechanical bull back in the day. I had to sign a waver first. Human rating means someone is willing to ride that candle. Or as Rand says, anybody using the phrase immediately discredits themselves.

  8. In a space industry without government money ATK wouldn’t make silly claims about rockets that don’t make sense, they’d just build it and start taking marketshare.. or fail. People can say Microsoft Windows sucks as much as they like (and do) but ultimately it is the market that decides its true worth. So should it be with launch.

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