Could a Delta II even be ready to fly by "mid-2014"?
Are there any other spacecraft in line to go into the A-train orbit? That's would be an excellent opportunity for a dual manifest - and probably the only one likely.
Minotaur-IV could be an alternative, if no other acceptable launch vehicles are available (e.g. LADEE on Minotaur V). The Minotaur I mentioned above is likely not powerful enough.
What do you mean by too big? In terms of lift capacity or cost?
The reason I asked on that, is I thought in all the Delta II discussions the only remaining GEM's where the large GEM-46's.
Does this mean the end of Taurus?
They should have pulled the Glory contract and dual-manifested Glory and OCO-2 on a Delta II after the original OCO failure.
They should have pulled the Glory contract and dual-manifested Glory and OCO-2 on a Delta II after the original OCO failure.Especially when it became clear that Orbital had no intent to actually address all of the issues that came out of the OCO MIB report (no change was made to the flawed design of the frangible joints on the payload fairing).
Quote from: marsman2020 on 02/12/2012 11:45 pmThey should have pulled the Glory contract and dual-manifested Glory and OCO-2 on a Delta II after the original OCO failure.Especially when it became clear that Orbital had no intent to actually address all of the issues that came out of the OCO MIB report (no change was made to the flawed design of the frangible joints on the payload fairing).All 4 NASA MIB recommendations were mitigated, and hundreds of people participated in RTF reviews and decisions.Your statements are somewhere between FUD and lies.
Why doesn't NASA charge launch providers (or their insurers) for the value of the payloads it loses to launch failures? I would think charging for failure would be a simpler and more effective way to ensure reliability than mountains of paperwork.
#OCO-2 is next Earth Science spacecraft for @NASA to come out of #Gilbert plant following successful #Landsat8 deployment for @NASA_Landsat
More information on #OCO-2 spacecraft that we are designing, building and testing in #Gilbert, AZ for @NASAJPL http://www.orbital.com/SatellitesSpace/ScienceTechnology/OCO/ …
And although the US government can afford the losses, it's not clear NASA can. So it might make sense for the military to self-insure, but NASA to buy insurance.