Antares (Taurus II)

[SpaceR]

us2-star
Нигде не смотрелось на достаточном серьёзе прежде всего из-за ограниченного числа НК-33-AJ-26.

Хотя, такая комбинация: Орбитал смотрит на то Трифалькон и решает, что выводить тяжелые военные спутники - дело выгодное. Разрабатывает и пускает Триантарес, который всем очень нравится особенно ввиду бесконечных переносов сроков СпейсЭкса. Инвесторы помогают Орбиталовцам, в.т.ч. восстановить производство НК-33 на "Кузнецове", которых нужна прорва.

В таком варианте - ещё шансы есть, но вопрос именно в том, насколько можно надеяться на выпуск НК-33 в нужном количестве, и к какому году можно реально их ожидать.

Дело за малым - продать РД-0124, без которого никакой Триантарес невозможен.

А вот это как раз совершенно необязательное условие. Есть большая куча вариантов, в том числе и со штатным Castor-30XL.

[Salo]

http://qn.som.yale.edu/content/there-profit-outer-space

Is there profit in outer space?[/size]

December 2011

By Ted O'Callahan

Getting a rocket into space is complicated business. In addition to expertise in physics, materials science, and electronics, you need the business savvy to create a sustainable company in an industry replete with flameouts.
 
Inside an immaculate but otherwise nondescript industrial building just outside the Beltway in suburban Virginia, half a dozen engineers and technicians, wearing lab coats, shoe covers, and hairnets, hover beside a silver-grey 10-foot-diameter metal puck.

For years, the bulk of Orbital Sciences Corporation's work has been designing, building, and launching commercial, scientific, and defense satellites—probably the closest thing there is to a reliable, profitable niche in the space business. Now the company is trying something new. In 2012, this silver and gold puck bristling with guidance sensors and wing-like solar arrays—Orbital's cargo-carrying Cygnus Advanced Maneuvering Spacecraft—is scheduled to navigate itself to a rendezvous with the International Space Station.

Any company in the business of space must be prepared for extreme complexity, as technical, logistical, regulatory, political, operational, and management challenges collide. The up-front costs are tremendous; the returns are uncertain. Tolerance for error is close to zero, yet the materials and engineering must push the bounds of what is currently possible. And though they seem innumerable, every contingency must be planned for. This isn't just rocket science; it's the business of rocket science.

Orbital has to complete a test mission to show that Cygnus, once released from a rocket about 150 miles above Earth, can navigate itself to the space station, which is orbiting at an altitude of 250 miles. It is an exercise akin to a car automatically merging onto a freeway and matching speeds with a particular car—but in three dimensions. Once Cygnus has found the space station, it must hold a position about 30 feet away while astronauts complete the hookup using a grappling arm.

Because it's a test flight, the cargo will be inexpensive, but needed, items like t-shirts, underwear, and food. The astronauts on the Space Station will unload the cargo, and then repack it with trash. Cygnus is an expendable craft, meaning that when it re-enters the atmosphere, much of it will burn up any surviving pieces will fall into a remote part of the Pacific.

Before Cygnus can head out on its demonstration flight, the engineers and technicians must grind through tedious, meticulous tasks such as testing every possible combination of connections among 17,000 wires running through the device. Nonetheless, there is real energy in the room: people at Orbital say that it's exciting and fun to build a spacecraft. But the company also has a lot on the line: a successful demonstration by Cygnus enables a $1.9 billion contract with NASA for eight additional missions.

Risking to Grow

Cygnus is new, but it draws on the technology and production practices that Orbital has been developing for nearly 30 years. It will be carried into orbit in the nosecone of Orbital's new Antares rocket (originally branded as the Taurus II), which will launch from a new launch pad developed by the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) and the Virginia Spaceflight Authority at NASA's Wallops Island facility on the Virginia shore. Any one of these three projects—spacecraft, rocket, or launch pad—would be a major undertaking for any organization. Orbital's ability to bring all three together will define the company's future.

The company has been building rockets and spacecraft long enough to know that each one is a new gamble. "With craft manufacture where you're making a few a year—and these are very complex, very high-energy devices that operate near materials and physical limits—the chance of accurately predicting how long it will take to develop these systems is, I think, near zero," says Bill Claybaugh '83, senior director for human space systems at Orbital.

One thing is certain: it won't be cheap. Aerospace compensation can average $200,000 a year, and, Orbital has more than 600 employees contributing to Cygnus, the rocket, and the launch pad. From 2007 through the 3rd quarter of 2011, Orbital had $350 million in research and development costs, primarily attributed to the Antares and Cygnus programs.

The Commercial Space Industry

People who get into the space industry tend to be passionate about it. Claybaugh worked with NASA and invested venture capital in the industry before joining Orbital. To unwind after a hard week, he builds amateur rockets—not the cardboard, light-a-fuse-on-the-bottom sort, but the kind that starts as a block of aluminum on his lathe and eventually flies to 60,000 feet at four times the speed of sound. And he isn't an engineer at Orbital; he's a business guy, one of the few who wears a suit at a company where jeans and t-shirts are more common.

Claybaugh reports to Frank Culbertson, a former astronaut who went on three shuttle missions and was the only American in space on September 11, 2001 (from the windows of the International Space Station, Culbertson saw the smoke plume coming from Manhattan and the gash in the Pentagon). The CEO of Orbital is a NASA and Hughes Aircraft veteran with aeronautics degrees from Caltech and MIT and an MBA from Harvard. It's a company and industry of high performers.

Claybaugh suggests internal drive is a key factor for people who get into commercial space, since it's never been easy to make a buck. "Total profitability of the entire American airline industry since 1903 is negative," he says. "And that's almost certainly true of space transportation as well. It's the kind of business that is unlikely to generate any significant profit, and will probably, in the long run, generate a negative profit. This is due to what is called the public benefit, private cost problem: the often very large benefit of transportation is in the increased economic activity that it allows, but that benefit is generally captured by government (through taxation) rather than by the transportation industry—the industry is a commodity business in which prices are inevitably driven to near—or below—cost."

Henry Hertzfeld, professor of space policy and international affairs at George Washington University, says, "The overall return from space is, I believe, positive, but it's so diffused through so many sectors there isn't any equivalent to a business ROI for government R&D." He adds, "A lot of things that we take for granted, people don't see as coming out of expenditures on the space program... They just see the shuttle accidents. They read about how expensive it is."

A great many daily activities are touched by the space program—some everyday technologies come directly from the space program; for others, development was sped up and stimulated by the business of getting into space. These include things like GPS systems, weather tracking, many noninvasive medical procedures, electronics and computer miniaturization, and clean-room systems, along with numerous materials and lubricants. And, of course, much of our communication and entertainment passes through satellites.

NASA's budget is around $18 billion annually. The Department of Defense spends more than that on space but the full figures aren't known. In difficult economic times, there's pressure on those budgets. Government agencies try to reduce costs by passing risks and uncertainty to private firms. Many aerospace startups have burned brightly and briefly before disappearing over the past forty years.

Orbital employs some 3,700 employees in six facilities around the country; it had revenue of $1.3 billion and net income of $47 million in 2010. The company has been around since 1982, making it much younger than the old guard of Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and General Dynamics (and also entirely space focused, unlike those behemoth aerospace/defense corporations). On the other hand, Orbital represents demonstrated experience compared to a crop of recent startups led by Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), started in 2002 by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, which is also building a cargo delivery system with a NASA contract.

Because space companies tend to depend on anchor customers—typically NASA or the DOD—small- and mid-sized companies can face challenges in trying to work with those massive organizations.

"One of the shocking things that all startups go through in dealing with the government is the day that they're holding some review and the company has four people and the government shows up with fourteen," says Claybaugh. "Boeing and Lockheed know to send twenty even though the presentation only takes four because this is a contact sport. You need to be one-on-one with every one of those government guys to make sure they are getting what they want."

Another barrier to entry into the business is the bureaucracy involved. Here's an example: components for the communication system of the International Space Station are made by a Japanese company. To order a part, Orbital must go through the State Department, because such components are controlled by International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). This means that the component arrives packed in a padlocked stainless steel case with vibration sensors both outside and in. If the component doesn't work, Orbital must obtain a license to export it back to the maker—and can't discuss what is wrong with the supplier. To put that in perspective, there are roughly 7,000 parts in Cygnus alone.

Engineering for Space

Setting aside a gaggle of largely unproven new companies, Orbital is the only space-focused startup to have succeeded since 1970 (SpaceX may be joining this very short list). Over its lifetime, Orbital has launched 200 satellites and 165 of its own launch vehicles with a 95% success rate; the challenges are such that failing only one time in twenty is remarkable. And mistakes are very visible: one of Orbital's smaller rockets, the Taurus XL, had two consecutive failures, each destroying a payload of NASA science satellites with a combined value estimated in excess of $600 million.

Failure can come in many ways. Beyond the physics of lifting a large object out of the atmosphere, there are details like electromagnetic radiation in space, which can cause electronics to fry or reset in unpredictable ways. And tiny bits of debris litter space; they can hit a spacecraft with about the force of a 50 caliber bullet—which is why the craft is tested to see how it stands up to fired projectiles.

"Space is a very harsh environment. These machines are exceedingly complex. That's what makes them expensive," says Hertzfeld. "And we've learned a lot over the years, but there's always something new. The FAA certifies a type of plane, the 777, for example, and every flight is almost identical. I don't think there was ever a shuttle flight that was identical to the one preceding it. NASA certifies flights, not the vehicle. We practically rebuilt the thing each time."

That is why the work on the ground is so painstaking with any space project. "The entire point of this business is that there should be no surprises while you are in operation," says Claybaugh.

One bay in Orbital's manufacturing building is devoted to testing equipment—a $100 million capital investment. In one part of the facility, a commercial satellite is sealed in the Thermal-Vacuum Chamber, which, over several days, in a near-vacuum, reproduces the temperature extremes experienced by the sun-facing and dark-facing side of a craft.

In a separate part of the bay, there is a vibration test underway on another satellite. A cluster of engineers watch a small monitor set outside the massive blast door. The entire building rattles and roars. A Cygnus craft already being built in anticipation of a successful demonstration flight sits waiting for a turn in machines that do electromagnetic and UV radiation tests.

A New Rocket and a New Launch Pad

SpaceX took four and a half years and $300 million to develop the Falcon 9 rocket, which will be launching its cargo missions to the Space Station (a NASA study found it would have cost $1.4 billion to build the same rocket within NASA). Because the up-front costs are so high, aerospace companies typically develop a new rocket only if they have a contract to do so. But Orbital is paying for Antares itself. This new, larger rocket will open up opportunities for the cargo missions and a wider range of satellite launches. Asked when Orbital expected a financial payoff from the Antares, Claybaugh says, "Sometimes investments are strategic rather than purely economic. Orbital's investment in Antares can be best understood as a Real Option: Antares allows multiple future business opportunities that do not exist in the absence of that transportation capability."

Rather than starting from scratch, Orbital decided to assemble a rocket from components built largely by other companies. For example, the company bought mothballed engines that had been manufactured for the Soviet moon program. While such recycling isn't unusual, it comes with its own risks: during an engine test last summer, a piece of corroded metal failed, leading to a burnout. To lower the risk of such an event in flight, Orbital developed a non-invasive test to detect corrosion. The company will also perform a full launch test of Antares before sending Cygnus aloft.

For all the technical challenges of the rocket and the spacecraft, the new liquid fuel launch pad at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops Island has been the hardest project to keep on budget and on schedule. The initial plan for the launch pad called for the state of Virginia to be the owner, enabling it to provide launch services to other organizations. Additional costs have required investment by Orbital and a more complicated business arrangement.

Beyond the financing and ownership challenges, the pad is creating the need for new infrastructure for liquid-fueled rockets. "For the last 50 years there has been a liquid fuel competency developed in Florida around Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center," says Les Kovacs, the Wallops site project manager. The area has gathered multiple layers of contractors, subcontractors, and sub-subcontractors with increasingly niche skills. "In Florida, if you need to get a hose cleaned to liquid oxygen capability, you get it back in half a day," Kovacs says. "Here, because there is no in situ capability, we have to send it to New Jersey and it may be a four or five day turnaround. The schedule implications are much more severe."

Launching a rocket is a controlled explosion of extraordinary power. The sound alone is so powerful that it could bounce off the ground and knock the rocket off its path or destroy it all together; during a launch, nozzles on the launch mount shoot water into the thrust plume of the rocket to dampen the sound. More water is dumped over the entire mount to keep it from being damaged. (Some 200,000 gallons will be used in each Antares launch, roughly the volume of 10 swimming pools.)

Even tucked into the nosecone of the rocket, Cygnus will experience much of the violence of liftoff. Back at the Orbital manufacturing building, the craft undergoes a special test to make sure it will stand up to these conditions: sound technicians who usually rig stadiums for rock concerts surround the spacecraft with a wall of speakers and bombard it with white noise that reproduces the shock and shuddering of liftoff.

Cygnus's test mission is expected to take place during 2012 (in addition to coordinating the completion of spacecraft, rocket, and launch pad, Orbital must find a launch date that fits into the space station's surprisingly crowded schedule). If things go well, Claybaugh says, "You are going to see at least one company in the business of transporting cargo to the space station. That's literally a new line of business that has not existed previously."[/size]

[Salo]

http://www.spacenews.com/civil/120117-hold-down-test-orbitals-antares.html

Tue, 17 January, 2012
Hold-down Test of Orbital's Antares Rocket Slips to April as Pad Work Continues[/size]
By Dan Leone
   
 WASHINGTON -- A hold-down test of Orbital Sciences Corp.'s Antares rocket, a prerequisite for the launch vehicle's maiden flight, likely will not be completed before April because of ongoing tests and certification work on the vehicle's launch pad at Wallops Island, Va., a launch official said.

 "It's really an integrated form of testing that's going on now, as we speak, and we're looking at completing that, hopefully, by the first of April," Billie Reed, director of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, told Space News Jan. 16.

 Antares, formerly known as Taurus 2, is the rocket Orbital will use to launch the cargo-carrying Cygnus tug to the international space station under its $1.9 billion Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract with NASA. Orbital is supposed to begin flights under that contract this year, but it must first complete two Antares demonstration flights which themselves cannot proceed until the hold-down test is completed. Orbital's official launch schedule has the hold-down test slated to occur before the end of March.

 But Reed said that the Virginia Commercial Spaceflight Authority, the state entity that manages operations at the spaceport from which Orbital will launch, is still completing certification of individual systems. These include more than 130 pressurized vessels needed to support the launch of the liquid-fueled Antares. The authority is also working on what Reed called "integrated system performance and functional testing," the purpose of which is to ensure that the various launch support systems and software at Orbital's pad are working harmoniously.

 Orbital Sciences spokesman Barron Beneski said the company would update its launch schedule on Feb. 9, when the Dulles, Va.-based rocket and satellite manufacturer is due to report its 2011 earnings. Beneski confirmed that, per the terms of its Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) agreement with NASA, Orbital must perform a hold down test before launching Antares.

 "Orbital continues to work toward a more finalized launch date, and once the work with the pad is wrapped up, they will have a better idea of where they are headed in terms of launch dates," NASA spokesman Josh Byerly told Space News Jan. 17. "Orbital will provide NASA with an updated report in early February, which will give us a better idea of target dates."

 Orbital's latest publicly released schedule, last updated in late October, shows Antares' hold down test and maiden launch both occurring during the first three months of 2012. The first of Orbital's eight contracted CRS flights, according to this schedule, would occur before the end of September.

 A more recently updated internal NASA launch manifest, however, shows a February hold-down test followed by an April or May COTS demo flight and an early October cargo run to the international space station.

 Beneski said that most of the Antare components needed for the hold-down test are at Wallops awaiting integration.[/size]

[Salo]

http://pic.twitter.com/eoKK6CAf

A view in the @NASA_Wallops HIF. Two Antares first stage cores, AJ26 engine, upper stage. Photo from Dec. 2011.

[Salo]

http://www.orbital.com/NewsInfo/Publications/Antares_Brochure.pdf

[instml]

NASA Chief Technologist Mason Peck Visits Wallops

NASA Chief Technologist Mason Peck, left, and Robin Heard, Manager of Antares Upper Stage Ground Operations, Orbital Sciences Corp., view the Antares rocket at Wallops on Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012. The visit to Wallops was Peck's first visit to an agency center since becoming NASA's Chief Technologist.

http://www.nasa.gov/about/highlights/Peck_Visits_Wallops.html

[Salo]

Первое фото ХО в сборе.

[SpaceR]

В процессе сбора.
Там пока нет донного экрана.

[Космос-3794]

Четыре кубсата, три одинарных и один строенный. будут запущены в первом полете Антареса, предварительно запланированном на лето:

[Salo]

Свежие новости о состоянии программы:
http://www.orbital.com/Antares/files/Culbertson_FAA_Conference_2012.pdf

[Потусторонний]

Фонесат на баллоне и на столе

Креативное использование рулетки в качестве антенны  :lol:

[Александр Ч.]

,,Я его слепила из того  что было"  © :lol:
А сколько таких можно на Союзе попутно вывести... каждый студент мог бы для курсача личный спутник сделать...

[SpaceR]

Мне кажется, что не так уж и много. Нужно ведь не только вытащить, но и сделать каждому нормальную систему крепления-отделения, выдать команду на её срабатывание, проконтролировать её выполнение телеметрией, а заодно и безударное расхождение объектов. Иначе разные неприятности могут ударить и по этим "автостопщикам", и по репутации Союза.

[Seerndv]

Фонесат на баллоне и на столе

Креативное использование рулетки в качестве антенны  :lol:

- рулетка - чёрт с ней, помнится покупали швейцарскую часовую сталь чуть ли не для этих целей, а вот очень бескорпусное бытовое исполнение модулей РЭА :shock:

[Александр Ч.]

Мне кажется, что не так уж и много. Нужно ведь не только вытащить, но и сделать каждому нормальную систему крепления-отделения, выдать команду на её срабатывание, проконтролировать её выполнение телеметрией, а заодно и безударное расхождение объектов. Иначе разные неприятности могут ударить и по этим "автостопщикам", и по репутации Союза.

На форуме выкладывались ссылки на проработки толи Salo толи LG.

 

- рулетка - чёрт с ней, помнится покупали швейцарскую часовую сталь чуть ли не для этих целей, а вот очень бескорпусное бытовое исполнение модулей РЭА :shock:

ИМХО, время жизни такое, что смысла нет делать, как на "больших" спутниках.

[Salo]

http://www.orbital.com/Antares/

February 2012

Today, Orbital updated its 2012 COTS and CRS operational schedules.  Gone is our colorful Development and Flight Milestones chart, now that we're in the homestretch to our four major milestones for the year, which are as follows:

May - Antares First-Stage Static Fire Test at Wallops
June - Antares Test Flight for COTS
Third quarter - COTS Demonstration Mission*
Fourth quarter - CRS Mission

*Orbital's operational dates are subject to coordination with NASA's ISS cargo delivery schedule[/size]

[Salo]

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1202/21antares/

Launch pad rework pushes Antares launch to summer[/size]
BY STEPHEN CLARK
SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: February 21, 2012

The first flight of the Antares booster, one of two U.S. rockets selected to launch cargo to the International Space Station, will be delayed until at least late June as work to certify the launch pad continues on the Virginia coast, Orbital Sciences Corp. officials said Tuesday.


Artist's concept of an Antares rocket mounted on the launch pad at Wallops Island, Va. Credit: Orbital Sciences Corp.
 
Trouble certifying components of the rocket's launch pad has delayed the debut flight of Antares by eight or nine months, according to David Thompson, chairman and CEO of Orbital Sciences.

"Unfortunately, the first flight of our new Antares medium-capacity launch vehicle, the rocket we formerly referred to as Taurus 2, was delayed again in the quarter," Thompson said in a quarterly conference call with investment analysts. "This was caused by problems of completing construction work on the launch pad's propellant handling and pressurization systems."

Thompson said construction of the pad should be complete in early March, leading to certification of the facility's systems by the end of April, when Orbital will take control of the coastal complex to begin final flight preparations.

An on-the-pad hotfire of the Antares rocket's twin-engine first stage is now expected in late May, Orbital announced Tuesday.

A rocket with fresh Aerojet AJ26 engines will roll to the pad after the hotfire for the Antares demonstration flight, which will simulate a launch of Orbital's Cygnus cargo freighter to the International Space Station's orbit.

The second Antares mission is now scheduled for late summer with the first functioning Cygnus spacecraft, which will approach the International Space Station and berth with the orbiting outpost.

If all goes according to plan, another Cygnus spacecraft could blast off around the end of 2012 on an operational resupply flight to the space station.

"Despite the launch pad delays, the Antares rocket itself progressed well over the last three or four months," Thompson said. "At the end of December, we had reached the 98 percent complete point in the rocket's development cost with less than $10 million of expenditures remaining to finish the testing over the next several months."

Thompson said the first Antares rocket, designated for the ground hotfire test, will be ready to be transferred from the horizontal integration hangar to the launch pad by the end of February. But completion of the pad work is several weeks away.


Two AJ26 engines, provided by Aerojet, have been bolted to the Antares first stage for an on-the-pad hotfire test. The engines were originally manufactured in the 1960s and 1970s for the Soviet Union's N1 moon rocket. Credit: Orbital Sciences Corp.
 
"One of the things we may be able to do is to take the first vehicle out to the pad in about five weeks, right about the end of March or the early part of April, and even though the pad won't be fully certified, we will get ahead of the game by doing some fit checks in the first part of April," Thompson said.

The Antares launch complex, named pad 0A, is located at Wallops Island, Va., and owned by the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority, a state agency created in 1995. The launch pad lies on NASA property.

Virginia and Maryland state governments later partnered to form the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport to lure launch business to Wallops Island.

The Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority, along with its MARS subsidiary, were managing development of the new launch pad, which features storage tanks for liquid fuels and high-pressure gases. No other Wallops launch facility or Orbital Sciences rocket uses liquid propellants in such large quantities.

"Most of the Antares delays we encountered over the past year at the Virginia spaceport on Wallops Island relate to the launch pad itself and the adjacent propellant and pressurization equipment," Thompson said. "The net effect of these problems has been to push out our schedule for on pad stage testing and the first launch by some eight to nine months over the past year. To more effectively address these challenges, Orbital took over day-to-day management of work on the spaceport's launch pad and its related propellant equipment last fall, assigning a 20-person contingent to direct and oversee the remaining activities through the first Antares launch later this year."

According to Frank Culbertson, an Orbital senior vice president and deputy general manager, the launch pad turned out to be more difficult than originally thought.

"The pad itself is the most challenging, largely because of the liquid fueling system," Culbertson said in a previous interview. "Wallops has never had that before, at least not at this scale. And liquid fueling is somewhat new to Orbital, too."


Artist's concept of Orbital's Cygnus cargo freighter approaching the space station, as viewed from an astronaut's perspective aboard the outpost. Credit: Orbital Sciences Corp.
 
The launch pad includes systems for rocket-grade kerosene, liquid oxygen, liquid nitrogen, gaseous nitrogen and gaseous helium.

Some of the recent launch pad work included recertifying welds and cleaning propellant and pressurant tanks, according to Orbital.

Thompson said the launch pad delay led to some increased costs for Orbital, but the cost of direct work on the launch complex is the responsibility of its owner.

"Ultimately, the cost of the redesign, repair and rework on the complex itself will be the responsibility of the Virginia spaceport," Thompson said.

"Once the pad turnover happens in some eight or nine weeks from now, the following couple months we'll have only ourselves to blame if we miss the schedule," Thompson said, adding the space station traffic manifest will ultimately determine the timing of subsequent missions.

Orbital Sciences holds a $1.9 billion Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA to serve the International Space Station with eight flights of the Antares rocket and the robotic Cygnus cargo freighter. The contract requires Orbital to deliver 20 metric tons, or about 44,000 pounds, of equipment to the complex over the eight missions.

SpaceX signed a similar agreement for 12 flights worth $1.6 billion.

For the development phase of their programs, Orbital and SpaceX have Space Act Agreements with NASA, establishing public-private partnerships to jointly fund the rocket and spacecraft with private capital and government money.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket has launched twice from Cape Canaveral, Fla. The launcher's third mission, topped by a Dragon cargo capsule, is due for liftoff no sooner than late April on a flight to demonstrate the spacecraft's ability to reach the space station.[/size]

[Salo]

http://www.spacenews.com/civil/120221-orbital-blames-spaceport-delay.html

Wed, 22 February, 2012
Orbital Blames Spaceport for Another COTS Delay[/size]
By Peter B. de Selding

 PARIS — Rocket and satellite builder Orbital Sciences Corp. on Feb. 21 said its program to provide commercial cargo services to the international space station under a NASA contract has fallen a further four months behind schedule, with a test flight of the unmanned freighter now scheduled to occur no earlier than August or September.

 As was the case with the previous schedule slip, Dulles, Va.-based Orbital placed the blame for the delays squarely on the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority, which is responsible for preparing the launch pad for Orbital's Antares rocket — formerly named Taurus 2 — and its Cygnus space station cargo module.

 In a conference call with investors, Orbital Chief Executive David W. Thompson said even this revised schedule "is not a slam dunk" and requires that a series of key milestones go without a hitch.

 These milestones begin with the completion of construction of pad facilities including propellant handling and pressurization systems at the Wallops Island, Va., spaceport, which should happen by early March, Thompson said. The entire facility will then need to be NASA-certified as operational, a process that could be completed by late April.

 The Antares first stage then could be placed on the pad and test fired in May. Assuming no anomalies in this activity, a test flight of Antares without the Cygnus cargo carrier could occur in June or July. A smooth flight would pave the way for a test flight of Antares and its Cygnus module by September, a mission during which Cygnus would approach the space station and then be grappled by the station's robotic arm and attached to the orbital outpost.

 This test flight activity is being conducted under Orbital's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) contract with NASA, a cost-sharing arrangement signed in February 2008 under which NASA agreed to pay $170 million, to be parceled out upon completion of specified milestones. Orbital's contribution was estimated at $150 million including the Antares rocket development.

 In late 2008, Orbital signed a follow-on Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract with NASA valued at $1.9 billion. It called for eight Antares/Cygnus flights to the station to deliver 20,000 kilograms of supplies between 2011 and 2015.

 Thompson said the first of these CRS flights could occur at the end of this year — again assuming the previous Antares milestones are met — and that the occasionally complicated traffic management at the space station would permit a late-year berthing by Cygnus.

 Under the COTS contract, the first Antares/Cygnus flight was originally scheduled to occur in late 2010.

 Thompson said the Antares/Cygnus schedule has slipped by eight or nine months in the past year alone, mainly due to propellant and pressurization equipment glitches at the launch site. He said Orbital, "to more effectively address these challenges," assumed control of these activities in late 2011 with a 20-member contingent assigned "to direct and oversee the remaining activities through the first Antares launch."

 To prepare for Antares, the launch pad must assure the safe handling and storage of gaseous helium and nitrogen in addition to liquid nitrogen, liquid oxygen and rocket-grade kerosene.

 In the past 12 months, Thompson said, the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority has confronted four different issues related to the facility that required "redesign, repair and rework of the complex."

 Thompson said Orbital booked just under $250 million in revenue for the CRS program in 2011. If the latest Antares/Cygnus schedule holds firm, the company expects CRS revenue in 2012 to be around $375 million. He said Orbital has generated a 5 percent profit margin on CRS so far but that this should increase to 6 percent in late 2012 if the revised schedule is met.

 Orbital has incurred costs because of the program's delay, but the costs related to the Wallops Island spaceport will be borne by the spaceport's owner and operator, he said.

 Orbital Chief Financial Officer Garrett E. Pierce said during the call that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in December questioned the way Orbital recognizes CRS revenue. Orbital responded to the SEC's inquiry by letter in January. Discussions are ongoing, Pierce said.

 "[W]ith many of our government contracts, certain contract payment milestones are not billable until the mission has been successfully completed," Pierce said. "With respect to the CRS contract, as previously disclosed, certain milestones were billable upon the launch and delivery of cargo to the international space station."

 Pierce said Orbital has managed many programs similar to CRS in the past and has no reason to question the way it handles CRS revenue, but that it cannot forecast the outcome of the SEC discussions.

 Meanwhile, Orbital fell short of its goal of booking three commercial telecommunications satellite orders in 2011, ending with two contracts out of what the company tallies as a year with 18 commercial geostationary satellites ordered worldwide. Five of those spacecraft were in the smaller size class for which Orbital competes.

 For 2012, Thompson said the company is also targeting three telecommunications satellite orders in a global market likely to feature 18-20 satellites globally, of which five or six are in Orbital's class[/size].

[Ярослав]

ребята явно берут пример с плесецка ))

[Lamort]

Эх, продать бы им ещё вторую ступень с РД-0124, заодно для себя делать будет выгоднее.