Comments on: Briefs: letters, amendments, and agreements

By: Rand Simberg

Rand Simberg — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 17:57:27 +0000

Impressive, considering Musk has yet to loft a monkey.

Are you volunteering?

By: common sense

common sense — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 18:54:22 +0000

@ Coastal Ron wrote @ February 10th, 2011 at 1:03 pm

“Republican House wonâ€™t choose it because itâ€™s got a French upper stage.”

Yeah. They actually wanted to rename the upper stage… You know… Freedom. Not Liberty. After all the Statue of Liberty structure was designed by a frenchman…

Just wondering whatever happened to the menu at the cafeteria…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_liberty

By: Coastal Ron

Coastal Ron — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 18:03:27 +0000

Dennis Berube wrote @ February 10th, 2011 at 9:11 am

“Falcon may yet be pushed out of the picture, or maybe not.”

Your usual stream of consciousness is really random today. New meds?

What does Falcon 9 have to do with Liberty?

“I still say those 5 segment boosters lighting up are something to see.”

So are the fireworks, but that doesn’t mean you should launch an astronaut on one.

An SRM is just a component of a launcher – sometimes they make sense, sometimes they don’t. It depends on the application.

In this case the proposed French/American Liberty launcher is smaller than existing med-heavy launchers like Ariane 5 (where it gets it’s upper stage) and Delta IV Heavy, and costs more than the medium launchers like Atlas V, Delta IV and Falcon 9 that will be used for Dragon, CST-100 and Dream Chaser.

NASA management won’t choose it because it doesn’t do anything better than existing launchers, and the Republican House won’t choose it because it’s got a French upper stage.

This will soon end up in the dustbin of powerpoint rockets…

By: Dennis Berube

Dennis Berube — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 14:11:25 +0000

Disputes are under way here. some of you are saying Liberty cannot lift Orion, when ATK says it can. Now who knows more, you or them? I dont blame them for wanting to hold people in jobs. If you worked there, you would be sweating too, wouldnt you. I see Liberty as yet another option for reaching space. If it can prove itselfl, great. With NASAs already 9 Bil. in it, they indeed may consider it a bargain to continue with. I still say those 5 segment boosters lighting up are something to see. I think many of you will be surprized at the outcome of all this. I believe Orion will b e continued, now what launcher takes it to space, remains to be seen. You all seem to want competition, so ATK is jumping in. Now you are all yelling about it. NASA has made no decisions yet. All is waiting to see what money comes forth first. If fair competition is to materialize, then ATK has a right to get in on the ground floor too. Falcon may yet be pushed out of the picture, or maybe not. Lets keep the competition going.

By: Fred Willett

Fred Willett — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 07:38:19 +0000

The more I think about Liberty the more I wonder what it’s really for.
They claim you can put any spacecraft on top of it. But can you?
The abort requirements for an all liquid rocket are relatively benign. Not so a solid.
Dragon or CST-100 can fly on any of Delta, Atlas or Falcon. But for Liberty both would need entirely new LAS.
Is this likely?
If CST-100 needs a back up launch vehicle there are two others available without any need to change the LAS.
Ditto for Dragon.
Perhaps Liberty hopes to attract the Dream Chaser or the Prometheus.
But why would either vehicle choose Liberty when a liquid rocket offers a less exacting LAS and the option of 3 LVs?
So what is Liberty for?
I’m beginning to think it has been put out there purely as a spoiler.
Naw.
That’s getting to paranoid.

By: DCSCA

DCSCA — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 04:18:04 +0000

amightywind wrote @ February 8th, 2011 at 8:31 pm

It’s doubtful SpaceX will never fly a crewed Dragon, (although they’ll most likely get a cargo Dragon up and running to the ISS) given its current status, not for any lack of technical talent on hand or desire but because it makes little business sense to pump millions into a LEO HSF capability to come on line, with any luck, by the middle of the decade as the space station is on its down hill slide to scheduled splash by the end of the decade, more or less. It just doesnt make any business sense for a profit-motivated enterprise.

By: Beancounter from Downunder

Beancounter from Downunder — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 01:32:17 +0000

Ben Russell-Gough wrote @ February 9th, 2011 at 3:56 am
I think that we are now seeing the trajectory for the end of NASA HSF. The USA and ATK proposals will allow the pork-addicts in the Senate to extend Shuttle…

No matter what the pollies may try to do, the Shuttle is finished. It’ll maybe fly the last 2 missions this year and then that’s it. People continue to be let go and the manufacturing capability will be lost as well.

The only alternative for NASA HSF in any reasonable timeframe will be commercial and if they’re smart they’ll use CCDev Rd 2 to fund a max of 3 providers. Any more won’t get them the capability in the time-frame required. That will be SpaceX, Boeing, with the 3rd one being less certain.

NASA will, in the meantime, have to revise it’s astronaut coups into a scientific / trades corp (I’m reminded of the SpaceX chappie with the tin snips – LOL) in order to maintain and utilise the ISS. No more PR stunts like flying into the Cape in your personal jet fighters. What a lot of BS. No more mythical heros, just people doing the jobs they’re paid to do and want to do and about time.
JM2CW

By: Ben Russell-Gough

Ben Russell-Gough — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 08:56:14 +0000

I think that we are now seeing the trajectory for the end of NASA HSF. The USA and ATK proposals will allow the pork-addicts in the Senate to extend Shuttle and resume work on Ares-I in place of investing in commercial launch. The cost of maintaining ‘commercial’ shuttle and ‘commercial’ development of Ares-I will quickly start draining funding from SLS.

By 2020, Liberty will still not have flown (problems with the upper stage – People who actually build the thing have said on NSF that it can’t be done), safety concerns will have finally grounded the shuttle and SLS will be five years off in its LEO form because of budget cuts. The BEO version would still be Ares-V-style vaporware. NASA would be dependent on Soyuz and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. Soyuz will have grown steadily more and more expensive; Recent news reports out of Russia suggest that the Russian government has been refusing to pay even enough to cover production costs, so commercial customers (including NASA) will have to pick up the tab.

All this can very easily be avoided but I am afraid that the politicians will not be able to do so.

By: Major Tom

Major Tom — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 04:56:55 +0000

“ATK would supply the human-rated first stage, which it developed under NASAâ€™s Space Exploration Program.”

How can a “first stage” be “human-rated”? Vehicles are human-rated, not their components. Both jet engines and my wife’s Honda Civic are “human-rated”, but I don’t use the former in the latter.

Even if it could be human-rated independent of its application in a vehicle configuration, how can a five-segment motor be human-rated before it has flown? Since when did NASA drop flight testing from its human-rating requirements?

And had NASA finalized its human-rating requirements before Constellation imploded? How can anything be human-rated in the absence of human-rating requirements?

Stop drinking the kool-aid and think before you post.

Ugh…

By: Bennett

Bennett — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 04:29:25 +0000

@Fred Willett

Ha! Great stuff, Fred. This:

Perhaps they think NASA will insist on the Liberty being used.

Classic.

What, after all of those taxpayer dollars spent on upgrading the crawler and roadway? And all those years of ATK “developing” something that no sane engineer wants or needs?

How dare they expect a launch at the advertised price!