Orbital ATK next-generation launch vehicle

[silentpom]

" It also says that two or more cores would be strapped to the basic core if more lift were needed." - то есть водородная ступень  в core  не входит

[Apollo13]

Мне вот интересно в Хэви варианте боковушки тоже будут двухступенчатыми, или все таки только первую ступень будут добавлять.

[Salo]

Jeff Foust ‏@jeff_foust  7 ч.7 часов назад  
Thompson: decision in the first half of next year on whether to proceed; overall program would take about four years.
 
Jeff Foust ‏@jeff_foust  7 ч.7 часов назад  
Dave Thompson: Orbital ATK starting work on a "modular" large launch vehicle; Air Force contract earlier this year covers initial work.

[Apollo13]

https://twitter.com/StephenClark1/status/735180704233971712

Stephen Clark‏@StephenClark1

Orbital ATK's John Steinmeyer: Proposed next-gen launcher is three stages, crowned with Blue Origin BE-3 third stage

[Apollo13]

1-6 ТТУ GEM-63 XL. Даже систему нумерации у Атласа взяли  

[Seerndv]

Опять Ares I ?

[Apollo13]

Чуть лучше качество.

[Дмитрий В.]

Seerndv пишет:
Опять Ares I ?

Поменьше. Но наследие АТК, да.

[Apollo13]

https://www.reddit.com/r/OrbitalATK/comments/4kvdih/orbital_atks_john_steinmeyer_proposed_nextgen/d3i4ci4

Boosters:

[/li]
• 1-6 GEM63XL (same as on Vulcan, maybe also on Atlas V later on)
  

Stage 1:

[/li]
• Intermediate - 2 segment SRM
• Heavy - 4 segment SRM
  

Stage 2:

[/li]
• Castor 300? or XXL? can't read it
  

Stage 3:

[/li]
• BE-3U-powered
  

Fairing:
*5.25x15m

Интересно, что тяжелый вариант не трехблочный, а 4-сегментный. Сходство с Арес-1 становится уже совсем неприличным

Тяга BE-3U - 120 klbf = 56 тс

[Salo]

ronatu пишет:
http://www.reuters.com/article/space-orbital-rocket-idUSL5N18L67O

Tue May 24, 2016 5:08pm EDT
Orbital planning new rocket to compete for U.S. military launches
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. | By Irene Klotz

 May 24 Orbital ATK on Tuesday unveiled plans for a new rocket to compete against United Launch Alliance and Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies for missions to launch U.S. military and commercial satellites.
Orbital's Next Generation Launcher is based on the solid-rocket strap-on boosters that flew on NASA's space shuttles, Orbital Business Development Director John Steinmeyer said at the 2016 Space Congress conference in Cape Canaveral.
The company plans to buy the rocket's second stage from Jeff Bezos' space company, Blue Origin.
Currently, United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co and Musk's SpaceX, as the California-based firm is known, are the only companies certified to launch U.S. military and national security satellites.
"We're working cooperatively with the Air Force to make sure there's room for three players," Steinmeyer said in an interview with Reuters.
Orbital would launch the rocket from one of the space shuttle's old launchpads at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
If the Air Force maintained requirements for a West Coast launch site as well, Orbital could refurbish a pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, Steinmeyer said.
Orbital in January won an Air Force contract worth up to $180 million to develop rocket propulsion technologies. Steinmeyer declined to say how much Orbital was investing in the project.
Orbital, meanwhile, is preparing to return its refurbished Antares rocket to flight, following a launch accident in October 2014 that destroyed a cargo ship bound for the International Space Station.
The rocket, which has been outfitted with new engines, is scheduled for a test firing at the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on May 31, Steinmeyer said. The rocket is scheduled to fly in early July to deliver another cargo capsule to the station for NASA.

[silentpom]

1) как и было обещано, SRB не заменяет первую ступень, добавился еще один кастор.
2) отсюда не вижу никакого сходства с аресом - две ступени бустера, а не 1, да еще боковушки рассыпухой на выбор
3) у ареса все же 5 сегментный бустер

[Apollo13]

silentpom пишет:
3) у ареса все же 5 сегментный бустер

Так это его просто разбили на 2 ступени 1 + 2 или  1 + 4 сегмента. Castor-300/600/1200 как раз подходит под их систему именования. 

Кстати их каталог

silentpom пишет:
отсюда не вижу никакого сходства с аресом

1. Низ ТТУ на основе ускорителя шаттла
2. Верхняя водородная ступень, правда раза в 2 меньше чем была у Ареса-1
3. Старт с LC-39B, вертикальная интеграция в VAB

Это одинаково можно считать и Мини-Аресом-1 и твердотопливным Атласом.

[Salo]

http://spaceflightnow.com/2016/05/27/details-of-orbital-atks-proposed-heavy-launcher-revealed/

Details of Orbital ATK's proposed heavy launcher revealed             
 May 27, 2016 Stephen Clark  
 
A fivei-segment solid rocket motor designed as a strap-on booster for NASA's Space Launch System undergoes a test firing at Orbital ATK's Utah plant. The company's Next-Generation Launcher would use a derivative of the booster with composite casings and only two or four segments. Credit: NASA
 
The launch vehicle Orbital ATK wants to face off against SpaceX and United Launch Alliance for lucrative U.S. military contracts would be made of two internally-built solid rocket motors and an upper stage engine supplied by Blue Origin, the entrepreneurial space firm led by Jeff Bezos, an Orbital ATK official said this week.
The new rocket, dubbed the Next-Generation Launcher for now, would offer the U.S. Air Force a third option to launch the military's communications, navigation, early warning and intelligence-gathering satellites.
"The intention is that this will be a new family of launchers developed and qualified as a public-private partnership with joint Air Force and industry investment, and available for satellite launches as early as 2020," said John Steinmeyer, director of strategy and business development for Orbital ATK's launch vehicle division.
Only SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and ULA's Atlas 5 and Delta 4 launchers are currently certified to fly the Defense Department's most sensitive and costly payloads.
But ULA is retiring the base, medium-lift version of the Delta 4 around 2018, and a new Vulcan rocket with U.S.-built main engines is scheduled to debut in 2019, eventually replacing the Atlas 5 in the early 2020s.
At that time, ULA's Vulcan rocket and SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy vehicles will likely share the military's space launch load. The Pentagon requires two independent rocket families to ensure its satellites have a ride to space if one booster is unavailable.
Steinmeyer said Orbital ATK will only go forward with its new rocket development if assured of Air Force funding support, but he said the company's launcher design has "moderate" development costs.
The Air Force awarded contracts to Orbital ATK, ULA, SpaceX and engine-maker Aerojet Rocketdyne earlier this year, helping seed the design and testing of new rocket engines to wean the U.S. launch industry off of Russian propulsion systems, such as the RD-180 engine launching on the Atlas 5's first stage.
The agreements are structured in a cost-sharing scheme. For its part, Orbital ATK pledged $31.1 million to go with the Air Force's initial investment of $46.9 million. Orbital ATK's contract with the Air Force has a maximum value of $180.2 million, and the company's own funding of the propulsion work could go as high as $124.8 million, assuming all contract options are exercised, according to the Defense Department.
Orbital ATK chairman and chief executive David Thompson said earlier this month that the company will decide next year whether to proceed with the Next-Generation Launcher program.
"If the market indicators and the product performance continue to move in a favorable direction, (it) could lead to a decision some time about this time next year or little later relating to the remaining work to actually build and test the vehicle," Thompson said May 5.
"We're evaluating our options," Steinmeyer said. "It's kind of like a political campaign, where you have an exploratory committee."
No U.S. company currently offers a kerosene-fueled rocket engine in the same performance class as the RD-180. ULA's Delta 4 rocket is powered by a hydrogen-burning RS-68 engine manufactured by Aerojet Rocketdyne, and SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket uses a cluster of nine kerosene-fueled Merlin engines to produce the thrust required for takeoff.
"The dollar value that we are requesting from the Air Force to go forward would be substantially less than others have stated is required for their RD-180 replacement activities," Steinmeyer told reporters Tuesday at the Space Congress 2016 industry conference in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
He declined to share Orbital ATK's cost projections for the Next-Generation Launcher.
Orbital ATK officials have previously acknowledged the new rocket concept, but Steinmeyer revealed details of its design for the first time this week.
The three-stage rocket would be made of two solid-fueled lower stages, each made in-house by Orbital ATK, and a cryogenic third stage consuming liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The engine for the third stage would be the BE-3U powerplant, a derivative of the engine Blue Origin currently flies on its New Shepard suborbital rocket.
The basic version of the Next-Generation Launcher would have a two-segment Castor 600 first stage, topped with a Castor 300 second stage motor, which is essentially one segment of the rocket's first stage, according to Steinmeyer.
The solid-fueled motors are similar to the solid rocket boosters Orbital ATK and its predecessor companies built for the space shuttle and NASA's Space Launch System. But the new rocket's motors would use pre-packed propellants inside composite cases, which are lighter than the metallic steel casings flown on the shuttle and SLS.
That development of the lightweight casings is one focus of the Air Force's initial funding award to Orbital ATK earlier this year, Steinmeyer said.
The two-segment Castor 600 first stage could be lengthened to a four-segment version called the Castor 1200.
"It's a very modular design tailored to meet the full specturm of EELV launch capability, and by adding two additional segments to that two-segment first stage, in other words a four-segment first stage, we can meet heavy launch capability as well," Steinmeyer said.
Up to six strap-on solid rocket boosters — the same 63-inch-diameter auxiliary motors Orbital ATK is developing for ULA's Vulcan and Atlas 5 rockets — could be stacked around the base of the Next-Generation Launcher.
The BE-3U engine on the 5.25-meter diameter (17.2-foot) third stage would produce up to 120,000 pounds of thrust and fire multiple times per mission.
A payload shroud spanning 5.25 meters (17.2 feet) in diameter will top off Orbital ATK's proposed rocket.
According to Steinmeyer, the basic intermediate-class launcher, without strap-on motors, can put about 12,125 pounds (5.5 metric tons) into geostationary transfer orbit, the destination for most commercial and military communications satellites.
"This new vehicle concept leverages existing flight-proven elements," Steinmeyer said.
Orbital ATK's business case requires five or six launches of the rocket per year for the military, NASA, or commercial customers, he said.
Designers plan to put the rocket together inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, then roll it out to launch pad 39B. NASA sel ected Orbital ATK in April to begin negotiations to take over one of the high bays inside the mammoth assembly building.
Orbital ATK would share pad 39B with NASA's Space Launch System, a huge rocket the agency is developing to send astronauts into deep space. But the SLS will not fly more than once per year, leaving the launch pad available to other users most of the time.
The new launcher shares some design elements with the Liberty rocket concept pushed by ATK, one of Orbital ATK's predecessor companies, after the retirement of the space shuttle. The Liberty launcher would have had a large solid-fueled first stage resembling the shuttle's booster and a cryogenic upper stage based on Europe's Ariane 5 rocket.
The rocket now proposed by Orbital ATK would use different propulsion systems, but like Liberty, it would be assembled in the VAB and blast off from pad 39B.
"There are elements of that concept — the segmented booster — and actually a lot of the work that they did on the launch infrastructure here at KSC," Steinmeyer said. "We're taking full advantage of the extensive work that ATK had done previously with Liberty, primarily on the launch vehicle infrastructure side."
Orbital ATK has an eye on renovating Space Launch Complex 2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, for a West Coast launch site for the Next-Generation Launcher. A facility there would access polar orbits unreachable from Cape Canaveral.
Steinmeyer said the Air Force is expected to request proposals fr om industry for a complete launch vehicle design, and Orbital ATK will likely be up against ULA and SpaceX for government financial assistance. It is not clear how many companies the Air Force could support with funding.
Unlike SpaceX and Blue Origin, Orbital ATK is a public company, and Steinmeyer said development of the Next-Generation Launcher will require some level of government funding.
"At this time, it's contingent on some cooperative assistance with the Air Force," Steinmeyer said. "It's a different paradigm, but we're a publicly traded company. We have stockholders and a board of directors we have to answer to. The business case has to close."

[silentpom]

Apollo13 пишет:

silentpom пишет:
3) у ареса все же 5 сегментный бустер

Так это его просто разбили на 2 ступени 1 + 2 или 1 + 4 сегмента. Castor-300/600/1200 как раз подходит под их систему именования.

Кстати их каталог

silentpom пишет:
отсюда не вижу никакого сходства с аресом

1. Низ ТТУ на основе ускорителя шаттла
2. Верхняя водородная ступень, правда раза в 2 меньше чем была у Ареса-1
3. Старт с LC-39B, вертикальная интеграция в VAB

Это одинаково можно считать и Мини-Аресом-1 и твердотопливным Атласом.

"Но его просто разбили на двк ступени" - ну вот потому с статье про антарес и говорилось, что одним мощным бустером не обойтись, надо минимум 2 или даже 3. 

мне не нравится логика, по которой две любые ТТ-ракеты объявлены одинаковыми - у них просто чуток другое разбиение ступеней  

"1. Низ ТТУ на основе ускорителя шаттла" - любой мощный ускоритель будет на его основе, он лучший в этом плане (да и выбор не богат). в каталоге ATK была еще куча вариантов урезанных 1 и 2х сегментых ускорителей шаттла. 

2. Ну у американцев столь глубокие традиции водорода, что можно записать в родственники кому угодно. Но тут ключевая разница с аресом в соотношении тяг и числа ступеней

3. А откуда еще стартовать можно, чтоб самим не стоить? ТТУ всегда интегрируются вертикально вроде. 

по мне так это самобытная ракета ну или твердотопливная дельта. хотя и на нее не похоже

[triage]

Интересно можеть быть конкуренция с Маском если у него получится с повторными запусками. Ускорители шаттла как-бы использовали повторно - интересно тут смогут использовать повторно первую ступень?

[Seerndv]

- и всё-таки зачем им тысячи списанных двигателей МБР? (задумчиво   :oops:  )
Ну нет таких тысяч ПН, нету.

[Seerndv]

Salo пишет:
"It's a very modular design tailored to meet the full specturm of EELV launch capability, and by adding two additional segments to that two-segment first stage, in other words a four-segment first stage, we can meet heavy launch capability as well," Steinmeyer said

- вот и тут модульность конструкции. Будет ли она успешней модульности "Ангары"? - посмотрим 

[Salo]

pnetmon пишет:
Интересно можеть быть конкуренция с Маском если у него получится с повторными запусками. Ускорители шаттла как-бы использовали повторно - интересно тут смогут использовать повторно первую ступень?

Композитную? Не думаю.

[silentpom]

Seerndv пишет:
- и всё-таки зачем им тысячи списанных двигателей МБР? (задумчиво  :oops: )

откуда тысячи списанных МБР? их вроде всего то около 1000.

[Seerndv]

silentpom пишет:

Seerndv пишет:
- и всё-таки зачем им тысячи списанных двигателей МБР? (задумчиво  :oops:  )

откуда тысячи списанных МБР? их вроде всего то около 1000.

- даже этого больше чем достаточно на порядок.