Orbital ATK negotiating lease for part of VAB
The competition heats up: Orbital ATK has begun negotiations with NASA for possibly leasing part of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) for use in connection with a military rocket.
Virginia-based Orbital ATK is one of two rocket companies that launch resupply missions to the International Space Station, but this deal would not involve those missions or that rocket, the company’s Antares. The Antares launches from NASA’s space port at Wallops Island, Va., carrying the Orbital ATK Cygnus capsule.
The new rocket that Orbital ATK hopes to develop and one day assemble in the VAB would be a medium- to heavy-lift rocket.The planned rocket currently referred to by the name the Air Force set for it, the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle-class rocket.
It sounds like Orbital ATK is putting together a bid to compete for the Air Force rocket contract, and needs to get a handle on the costs for using the VAB at Kennedy in order to make the offer credible.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
The competition heats up: Orbital ATK has begun negotiations with NASA for possibly leasing part of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) for use in connection with a military rocket.
Virginia-based Orbital ATK is one of two rocket companies that launch resupply missions to the International Space Station, but this deal would not involve those missions or that rocket, the company’s Antares. The Antares launches from NASA’s space port at Wallops Island, Va., carrying the Orbital ATK Cygnus capsule.
The new rocket that Orbital ATK hopes to develop and one day assemble in the VAB would be a medium- to heavy-lift rocket.The planned rocket currently referred to by the name the Air Force set for it, the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle-class rocket.
It sounds like Orbital ATK is putting together a bid to compete for the Air Force rocket contract, and needs to get a handle on the costs for using the VAB at Kennedy in order to make the offer credible.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Current speculation seems to center on an Ares-1-like vehicle with one or two booster stages based on the Shuttle-size, but re-engineered solid booster segments Orbital-ATK is building for SLS along with an upper stage powered by a vacuum-optimized Blue Origin BE-3 engine. The fact that Orbital recently landed an Air Force contract to develop a vacuum-optimized version of the BE-3 lends credence to this speculation.
So does the fact that SLS’s projected flight rate is so low, even if it’s never cancelled, that Orbital won’t be selling many SRB segments for that purpose. Thus, Orbital has a considerable incentive to find ways to use more segments produced at marginal cost.
Using the VAB and an MLP means also using the NASA crawler-transporters that were recently upgraded to handle SLS and, of course, using the only remaining launch facility where these other items can be employed, namely Kennedy’s LC-39B. NASA has said it will share SLS’s home pad with commercial users. Looks as though Orbital aims to be the first – and perhaps only – such time share.
The Ares-1 famously suffered from vibration issues. This new rocket won’t carry people, but national security satellites probably don’t appreciate a cement-mixer-esque ride to orbit any more than human bodies do. Perhaps Orbital will dodge the worst of the vibration issue by using two booster stages, each based on two SRB segments, instead of a single booster stage with four or more segments.
The interest in the VAB and mobile launch platform (MLP) stems from the fact any EELV-class vehicle based on SRB segments as lower stage booster(s) will be a lot heavier than any comparable liquid-fueled vehicle. The beast must be stacked from mostly heavy parts and national defense payloads require vertical integration with their boosters anyway.
I’m dubious about the long-term viability of this whole scheme, but if it works out, Orbital could conceivably take an additional VAB high bay and MLP off NASA’s hands a few years hence if the launch cadence becomes sufficient to require this. It’s always good to see expensive sunk-cost government facilities repurposed to support commercial endeavors.
Dick,
I mostly agree. Where I differ is that a satellite can be designed to withstand vibrations in the 20Hz range, but a human cannot. Human internal organs have their natural frequencies in this order-of-magnitude range, so they could amplify the vibration and the bumping and rubbing with each other and cause terrible, unsurvivable internal damage.
http://ergo.human.cornell.edu/studentdownloads/dea3500pdfs/whole-bodyvibration.pdf
Depending upon the amplitude of the Ares-1 vibration (a solid rocket motor can act like a pipe in a pipe organ) and whether current satellite designs can withstand such vibration, they may not have to “re-tune” the rocket motors by using fewer segments than Aries 1 used.