Orbital ATK OmegA (NGL) Rocket UPDATES/DISCUSSION - Thread 2

[russianhalo117]

So OmegA dead or are there other lifelines? I was looking forward to having a neighbor in HB-2.
...

Very likely dead. They lost award to ULA and SpaceX... extremely unlikely life will get better for them unless ULA fumbles badly. If that happens, they would still likely face Blue. If Blue comes anywhere close to meeting their objectives, OmegA is toast (never mind ULA or SpaceX).

In short, don't think NG has what it takes. They have suckled at the government teat far too long and have no idea what it takes to compete. Let OmegA die a silent death without NG's BS.

Well they were still assembling the LUT today. If they don't push onwards it will sit like the Ares-I ML until someone repurpose it. I would imagine that they would complete the flight test they already have motors for at minimum as it provides data for BOLE.

[ChrisWilson68]

So OmegA dead or are there other lifelines? I was looking forward to having a neighbor in HB-2.
...

Very likely dead. They lost award to ULA and SpaceX... extremely unlikely life will get better for them unless ULA fumbles badly. If that happens, they would still likely face Blue. If Blue comes anywhere close to meeting their objectives, OmegA is toast (never mind ULA or SpaceX).

In short, don't think NG has what it takes. They have suckled at the government teat far too long and have no idea what it takes to compete. Let OmegA die a silent death without NG's BS.

Well they were still assembling the LUT today. If they don't push onwards it will sit like the Ares-I ML until someone repurpose it. I would imagine that they would complete the flight test they already have motors for at minimum as it provides data for BOLE.

They got a development contract from the Air Force for phase 1.  If there's work on that contract left to do, they'll continue doing that work to the extent it brings in more money than it costs them.  They might also wait a couple of weeks until they get the debrief where the Space Force explains why they lost the contract.  Then they'll likely pretty quickly conclude they have no basis for a protest and stop any work they're doing on their own dime.

[sdsds]

The acronym russianhalo117 uses refers to the Booster Obsolescence and Life Extension program.

"The [NG] contract now includes the delivery of six Boosters for Artemis I, Artemis II, and Artemis III; the delivery of one flight test Booster; and funding for the Booster Obsolescence Life Extension to identify any issues with the design and manufacturing of upgraded and more capable boosters for future missions."

That's from the March 10, 2020 report by the NASA Office of Inspector General, "NASA’s Management of Space Launch System Program Costs and Contracts."

The total contract value is reported there as $2,422,194,489.

[ChrisWilson68]

The acronym russianhalo117 uses refers to the Booster Obsolescence and Life Extension program.

"The [NG] contract now includes the delivery of six Boosters for Artemis I, Artemis II, and Artemis III; the delivery of one flight test Booster; and funding for the Booster Obsolescence Life Extension to identify any issues with the design and manufacturing of upgraded and more capable boosters for future missions."

That's from the March 10, 2020 report by the NASA Office of Inspector General, "NASA’s Management of Space Launch System Program Costs and Contracts."

The total contract value is reported there as $2,422,194,489.

Sure, but that's SLS, not OmegA.  There's an awful lot more expense to an OmegA launch than an SLS booster, and there's not a lot of data you'd get from flying an OmegA that's applicable to SLS that you wouldn't already have from ground testing the SLS boosters and the legacy flight data from the shuttle days.  Not enough that you'd want to go to the expense of flying OmegA just to get booster data for SLS.  Otherwise, it would be part of the SLS program, which it's not.

[Steven Pietrobon]

Don't forget that BOLE uses five short segments and Omega Heavy uses four long segments, requiring different tooling for each booster. I guess someone figured that using the same segments for BOLE and Omega would make too much sense!

[Ronsmytheiii]

They got a development contract from the Air Force for phase 1.  If there's work on that contract left to do, they'll continue doing that work to the extent it brings in more money than it costs them.  They might also wait a couple of weeks until they get the debrief where the Space Force explains why they lost the contract.  Then they'll likely pretty quickly conclude they have no basis for a protest and stop any work they're doing on their own dime.

One of the biggest gripes that Blue origin kept bringing up was the fact that the Air Force stated that they would terminate development awards to any company that didnt get a Phase 2 Contract. So they could have already, in theory, turned off all funding to New Glenn and OmegA.

Per the rules set by the Air Force, all three winners of LSA awards are required to compete in Phase 2, and the losers will have what remains of their LSA funding terminated.

https://spacenews.com/crunch-time-rocket-companies-in-all-out-battle-for-air-force-award/

[JEF_300]

I keep seeing people (mostly in other threads for some reason), saying that if Northrop Grumman could just get X contract, they will enough flights to justify continuing work on OmegA.

To quote this spaceflightnow article from back in 2018, " "Right now, we’re planning on about three to four missions per year to close our business case," " https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/04/12/orbital-atk-confident-new-rocket-will-win-air-force-support/

I don't know of any information since then that has provided a specific number of launches they think they need, so I will assume OmegA needs 3 launches a year to be viable. Now let's see if we can come up with a way to do that.


If we assume that the National Team lander transfer element can be launched to the gateway orbit by the OmegA Heavy and that NASA doesn't down select away from the National Team. That's another flight every other year, but it could be 1 flight a year if we assume that congress forces NASA to downselect to one lander.

And if we also assume that OmegA Heavy existing is reason enough for NASA to reopen GLS bidding and that OmegA Heavy with Cygnus would win that bid, then we get another flight every other year, for 1.5 flights a year in total so far. (and we'll just conveniently ignore that these flights wouldn't even start until mid-2023 / assume that NGSS doesn't need 3 flights in 2022 and 2023 to close the business case.)

But we still need more launches. To get them, we'll move all Cygnus flights to OmegA. We'll ignore all the time's personnel from NGSS (or what is now NGSS) have said that they have no intention of canceling Antares, and all the optimizations for Cygnus missions the Antares has that OmegA doesn't (ex. Late Load Capability), and just assume that everyone is ok with that. Also, we'll ignore that Dreamchaser is being on-ramped into commercial resupply and just assume that NASA will ask for just as many Cygnus flights a year until the ISS is decommissioned, and then we'll assume that after the ISS is decommissioned, commercial stations will pick up the slack by deciding to use Cygnus for resupply. That's 2 more flights per year.

Our total is now 3.5 flights per year. We did it, and all it took was 7-ish major assumptions!


Is it possible that OmegA still flys? Sure. But from a business perspective, continuing it now is at best a bad gamble.

[sdsds]

1000% agree with JEF_300 that if the business case for OmegA needed to "stand on its own" it would be a non-starter. For clarity some suggestions being made (mostly elsewhere) are that the OmegA business case need not stand on its own; NG has other businesses with synergistic connections to OmegA.

[JEF_300]

1000% agree with JEF_300 that if the business case for OmegA needed to "stand on its own" it would be a non-starter. For clarity some suggestions being made (mostly elsewhere) are that the OmegA business case need not stand on its own; NG has other businesses with synergistic connections to OmegA.

To address this in case someone wants to make that argument, I've always assumed that the helpful synergies OmegA has with other NG programs were considered when coming to the '3-4 launches per year' number in the first place. I don't see why that wouldn't be something they would consider when trying to figure out what was needed to, to quote that article again, "close our business case,".

[FutureSpaceTourist]

https://twitter.com/sciguyspace/status/1295826841853403139

Hearing that Northrop Grumman will cancel the Omega rocket after it failed to win the recent Air Force contest.

[whitelancer64]

https://twitter.com/sciguyspace/status/1295826841853403139

Hearing that Northrop Grumman will cancel the Omega rocket after it failed to win the recent Air Force contest.

Does anyone have an idea how much they had invested into VAB High Bay and MLP modifications prior to this point??

[FutureSpaceTourist]

Bit more context to Eric’s tweet a couple of days ago:

https://twitter.com/sciguyspace/status/1296462155559186436

Two days ago @northropgrumman informed its employees it was not moving forward with the Omega rocket, but there has still been no public announcement.

[su27k]

Bit more context to Eric’s tweet a couple of days ago:

https://twitter.com/sciguyspace/status/1296462155559186436

Two days ago @northropgrumman informed its employees it was not moving forward with the Omega rocket, but there has still been no public announcement.

I wonder if they're keeping the cancellation under warps because they don't want SpaceX to use this as evidence in their lawsuit...

[JEF_300]

Thinking back on it, all in hindsight, perhaps OSC/ATK/NG's misstep was made in 2007, when it made its Taurus 2 (Antares) decision.  A forward-looking plan would have designed a core booster set up from the outset to be bid later for EELV-2, maybe leaving only a higher energy upper stage to develop when the time came.   OSC did not, or could not, spend the bucks to develop the propulsion it really would have needed, choosing instead AJ-26/NK33, then when that failed having to revert to RD-181 which could not be bid, and finally having to start over altogether with Common Booster Segment. 

 - Ed Kyle     

I'd say it's hard to call that a misstep when, near as I can tell, they barely managed to get the money to put Antares on a pad in the first place, essentially relying on NASA to bankroll them.

Then of course there's always the question of whether or not Orbital Sciences would have even considered an all liquid rocket at all. Their specialty was very much in dealing with solids, and that only became more true when they merged with ATK.

[Coastal Ron]

Thinking back on it, all in hindsight, perhaps OSC/ATK/NG's misstep was made in 2007...

In which case it wasn't Northrop Grumman's fault. They bought Orbital ATK for many reasons, and OmegA was just one of many products that came along with the purchase. I would suspect that they didn't see a lot of potential in it, but they let the management on it take it as far as they could.

...OSC did not, or could not, spend the bucks to develop the propulsion it really would have needed, choosing instead AJ-26/NK33, then when that failed having to revert to RD-181 which could not be bid, and finally having to start over altogether with Common Booster Segment.   

OmegA was a solid propellant, disposable rocket in a liquid propellant, reusable rocket world.

The market changed, and OmegA was the wrong product for the new market. Pretty simple.

[meberbs]

OmegA was a solid propellant, disposable rocket in a liquid propellant, reusable rocket world.

The market changed, and OmegA was the wrong product for the new market. Pretty simple.

Only one company on the planet right now is partially reusing its rockets.  All of the other launch companies around the world are using expendable rockets and some are even developing new expendables.  One of those just won NSSL Phase 2 with a brand new expendable design.  Vulcan was no more the "wrong product" than Omega, it was just a better overall program proposal. 

 - Ed Kyle

Vulcan at least has a potential upgrade path for certain amounts of reusability (engines and upper stage in-space use.)

Every company that is paying attention and reasonably forward looking is starting on reuse. Those that aren't have been trapped by bad timing, slow reactions, or past decisions. OmegA uses solid rocket stages which are one technology that through past experience excludes economic reuse. With that architecture decision, it was a technological dead end.

This might not be directly a factor in the recent contract, but it has a lot to do with the rocket's overall viability, and ability to get any real launches outside of NSSL.

[Kansan52]

RD-180 could not be bid but why not RD-181?

[JEF_300]

Then of course there's always the question of whether or not Orbital Sciences would have even considered an all liquid rocket at all. Their specialty was very much in dealing with solids, and that only became more true when they merged with ATK.

Yes, an all-liquid Taurus-2/Antares was studied.  RL10 was in the trade space.  So was a PWR methane engine and a Russian kerosene engine.  Castor 30 was picked to keep program costs low for the low-launch-rate COTS/Commercial Cargo program.  An "Enhanced" second stage upgrade was initially promoted as a future upgrade from that choice.

 - Ed Kyle

I didn't know that. Cool!

If they had developed an enhanced upper stage, then re-engine-ing the first stage and adding some strap-ons would've allowed them to compete for the intermediate NSSL launches. If they'd gone with the PWR methane engine (was it the RS-18?), then Raptor (which happens to have about the same thrust as an RD-181) would have been a very natural choice.

Still doesn't explain how they'd cover the heavy missions, but an interesting thought none the less. A thread about a theoretical Antares bid for NSSL would be fun, though I'm not sure whether that should go here or on AlternateHisotry.com.

[gongora]

RD-180 could not be bid but why not RD-181?

It's also a Russian engine

[Kansan52]

RD-180 could not be bid but why not RD-181?

It's also a Russian engine

True, but not banned. So worry was the reason for not bidding?