Commercial and US Government Launch Vehicles > NGIS (Formerly Orbital ATK) - Antares/Cygnus Section
Proposed Orbital ATK Solid Rocket
rayleighscatter:
So Orbital ATK has hinted in the past few years of a larger solid rocket in the 2020 timeframe. With the recent USAF contract providing seed money for a rocket with a Common Booster Segment first stage, GEM strap on boosters, and a BE3 upper-stage there seems to be more meat to the proposals.
Visiting Wallops Flight Facility earlier this summer I got pictures of these and was a little confused why they might be there. They are too small for Minotaur/Antares and too large for any of the sounding rockets. I now wonder if they may have been brought up for possible use at one point now with this now proposed unnammed rocket.
DaveS:
Based on the stencil in the second photo, I'm thinking these are just retired Delta II GEM transportation hardware. Also based on this photo of one of the GEM-46s for the SMAP Delta II, I'm definitively convinced that this is just old discarded Delta II GSE.
rayleighscatter:
--- Quote from: DaveS on 01/14/2016 09:30 pm ---Based on the stencil in the second photo, I'm thinking these are just retired Delta II GEM transportation hardware. Also based on this photo of one of the GEM-46s for the SMAP Delta II, I'm definitively convinced that this is just old discarded Delta II GSE.
--- End quote ---
It is old Delta II GSE but I'm not sure about discarded. If it was set for disposal they could have saved a lot of money and done that down in Florida. And if they were just destined for storage they would have gone to an Orbital ATK facility (they have a lot of nice empty desert to spare). For it all to come to Virginia it must have (at least at one point) been considered for actual use.
DaveS:
--- Quote from: rayleighscatter on 01/14/2016 09:34 pm ---
--- Quote from: DaveS on 01/14/2016 09:30 pm ---Based on the stencil in the second photo, I'm thinking these are just retired Delta II GEM transportation hardware. Also based on this photo of one of the GEM-46s for the SMAP Delta II, I'm definitively convinced that this is just old discarded Delta II GSE.
--- End quote ---
It is old Delta II GSE but I'm not sure about discarded. If it was set for disposal they could have saved a lot of money and done that down in Florida. And if they were just destined for storage they would have gone to an Orbital ATK facility (they have a lot of nice empty desert to spare). For it all to come to Virginia it must have (at least at one point) been considered for actual use.
--- End quote ---
The problem of reusing it the GSE is that it was manufactured for a specific size flight hardware, in this case the Delta II GEM-46. It won't fit anything else unless it is also 46" in diameter.
rayleighscatter:
Which is what I was getting at in the original post. I wonder if they were originally thinking of using GEM-46 boosters in this future rocket. They've obviously gone with a larger booster now but there had been hints of a smaller solid rocket (like the all solid Antares) that could have used them. I wonder if the proposal has just evolved larger in the last year or two.
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