ATK/EADS: Liberty Launch Vehicle Update Thread

[Prober]

That's twice as much as SpaceX. Gerst said that the budget for ferrying crew to the ISS would be about $480 million (8 x $60M) per year for 2 flights per year. Hopefully, price will be a discriminator in choosing commercial crew participants.   

The Liberty team suggested that the excess capacity could be used to simultaneously haul cargo to ISS, which might argue in favor of their approach.

Where would the cargo be carried? There would be little excess room in the cabin, and no provisions for unpressurized cargo, unless the SM were made much larger and more capable than "minimization" makes it sound.

If its only a crew of 3 in a design for 7 you have some room for lite cargo.

[USFdon]

On another note... One of the reasons that the shuttle went with solids in the first place (at least according to my perusing) was that at a high flight rate, the huge yearly sunk cost in maintaining the solid production lines open in Utah were to be more cost effective than liquid boosters. If this is true (or just more atk lobbyist jive I have no idea), would a combined commercial liberty and solid boosted sls get that yearly production over whatever the magic threshold is to make it "worth it"... Thoughts?

[baldusi]

On another note... One of the reasons that the shuttle went with solids in the first place (at least according to my perusing) was that at a high flight rate, the huge yearly sunk cost in maintaining the solid production lines open in Utah were to be more cost effective than liquid boosters. If this is true (or just more atk lobbyist jive I have no idea), would a combined commercial liberty and solid boosted sls get that yearly production over whatever the magic threshold is to make it "worth it"... Thoughts?

Four STS launches means 8 Liberty flights. STS was supposed to be cheaper at 24 launches. Problem for Liberty is that without GTO nor Polar, they whole market they are competing for is about 10 launches per year.

[Downix]

On another note... One of the reasons that the shuttle went with solids in the first place (at least according to my perusing) was that at a high flight rate, the huge yearly sunk cost in maintaining the solid production lines open in Utah were to be more cost effective than liquid boosters. If this is true (or just more atk lobbyist jive I have no idea), would a combined commercial liberty and solid boosted sls get that yearly production over whatever the magic threshold is to make it "worth it"... Thoughts?

No, that was never the case in any paper I'd seen.  Solids were to share the technologies and tooling with solids made for other programs, so the support costs would be shared, making them cheaper in the long term.  With the shutdown of the Titan program and we don't make ICBM's anymore, this advantage was lost.  One paper I read even said (paraphrasing here) "If the Shuttle program does bring the launch support promised, the Titan would be eliminated resulting in support cost issues.  If ICBM production similarly ended, then the Shuttle would be left supporting the entire industry on its back."

[Jim]

On another note... One of the reasons that the shuttle went with solids in the first place (at least according to my perusing) was that at a high flight rate, the huge yearly sunk cost in maintaining the solid production lines open in Utah were to be more cost effective than liquid boosters. If this is true (or just more atk lobbyist jive I have no idea), would a combined commercial liberty and solid boosted sls get that yearly production over whatever the magic threshold is to make it "worth it"... Thoughts?

No, it was the cost of a  potential lost booster set was the issue.

[edkyle99]

On another note... One of the reasons that the shuttle went with solids in the first place (at least according to my perusing) was that at a high flight rate, the huge yearly sunk cost in maintaining the solid production lines open in Utah were to be more cost effective than liquid boosters. If this is true (or just more atk lobbyist jive I have no idea), would a combined commercial liberty and solid boosted sls get that yearly production over whatever the magic threshold is to make it "worth it"... Thoughts?

No, it was the cost of a  potential lost booster set was the issue.

That was a big factor.  Booster development cost was also decisive.  Solids cost less to develop than the pump or pressure fed liquid liquid alternatives, and NASA was being squeezed for money in 1971-72.  On the other hand, solids cost more to use than the liquids - but remember that these were reusable liquids that staged at low velocity, which makes comparison with, say, Liberty or SLS expendable liquid booster alternatives problematic. 

Obviously, if a lost liquid booster could not be tolerated, it was because it cost a lot of money, which makes me think that solids might win the expendable operations cost battle too.

 - Ed Kyle

[yinzer]

Given how completely divorced from reality NASA's cost predictions ended up being it's hard for me to be confident about these comparisons.

But don't you have to add a lot more to a liquid booster to make it reusable than you have to add to a solid booster? So the cost of losing a reusable liquid booster may be less related to the cost of building an expendable liquid booster than one might expect...

[Robotbeat]

Given how completely divorced from reality NASA's cost predictions ended up being it's hard for me to be confident about these comparisons.

But don't you have to add a lot more to a liquid booster to make it reusable than you have to add to a solid booster? So the cost of losing a reusable liquid booster may be less related to the cost of building an expendable liquid booster than one might expect...

But of course, reusing a solid essentially means remanufacturing it almost entirely. Same metal for much of it, of course, but the cost of the metal isn't that much to begin with.

Liquids (if done right) can be gas-and-go. But of course it doesn't make sense to do that if you're only flying 4 times a year.

[simonbp]

I don't suppose ATK have, in their arsenal, a smaller SRM that you could mount on the side of the upper stage? Now that would save a lot of redesign work...

Hmm...

The EPC has a weight of 1.8 MN, and a thrust of 1.1 MN. An ATK GEM-60 weighs 0.3 MN and has a thrust of 0.8 MN. So, two GEM-60s would give a T/W of about 1.1 and three would bring it to 1.3 (and four, 1.4). Not sure about the performance, though...

[Robotbeat]

I don't suppose ATK have, in their arsenal, a smaller SRM that you could mount on the side of the upper stage? Now that would save a lot of redesign work...

Hmm...

The EPC has a weight of 1.8 MN, and a thrust of 1.1 MN. An ATK GEM-60 weighs 0.3 MN and has a thrust of 0.8 MN. So, two GEM-60s would give a T/W of about 1.1 and three would bring it to 1.3 (and four, 1.4). Not sure about the performance, though...

Upper stages don't require a T/W ratio greater than 1.

[simonbp]

I wasn't talking about using it as an upper stage...

[edkyle99]

I don't suppose ATK have, in their arsenal, a smaller SRM that you could mount on the side of the upper stage? Now that would save a lot of redesign work...

Hmm...

The EPC has a weight of 1.8 MN, and a thrust of 1.1 MN. An ATK GEM-60 weighs 0.3 MN and has a thrust of 0.8 MN. So, two GEM-60s would give a T/W of about 1.1 and three would bring it to 1.3 (and four, 1.4). Not sure about the performance, though...

I thought I would start with another ATK-boosted possibility first.  Consider four Castor 120 motors used as strap on boosters, with the Vulcain 2 starting on the pad and burning through to the end.  With no upper stage, this configuration looks capable of lifting about 15.5 tonnes to LEOx51.6 deg.  The g-forces are reasonable, and the core T/W ratio is about the same at booster jettison as it would be on Liberty.  The latter is true because the Castor 120 thrust and the parallel burn configuration allows full fueling of the EPC (it can't be loaded full on Liberty). 

Of course Castor 120s would have to be attached differently, and transfer loads differently, than the existing Ariane 5 solids.

Six GEM-60s would get about 13.5 tonnes to LEOx51.6 deg, with similar g-forces, etc.  The GEM-60s would burn about 10 seconds longer than the Castor 120s. 

Eight GEM-60s would approximate the propellant mass of one Ariane 5 booster, allowing perhaps 17 tonnes to be boosted to an ISS LEO. 

But even a three-segment RSRM boosting an EPC stage in serial burn fashion would out-lift any of these GEM or Castor boosted alternatives.

 - Ed Kyle

[Adam K]

Interview with Kent Rominger about Liberty

http://sobserver.hipcast.com/deluge/63506e51-9d30-469c-ae7e-4e82abf77d0e.mp3

[Danderman]

Is the capsule also called "Liberty"?

 

[Lars_J]

Yep. Don't give them any ideas, because they could rename it 'Patriot'.

[zerm]

Interview with Kent Rominger about Liberty

http://sobserver.hipcast.com/deluge/63506e51-9d30-469c-ae7e-4e82abf77d0e.mp3

There's some interesting stuff in this interview.

[Lars_J]

Yep, a good interview.

One interesting note is that Rominger & ATK thinks Liberty (the LV, not the capsule) will be the cheapest LV measured by $/lb to LEO - with the possible exception of the SpaceX FH, where he was not aware of the exact pricing.

It is a pretty bold statement with Shuttle legacy hardware + infrastructure. I remain a bit skeptical, but it would be an impressive achievement if pulled off.

[zerm]

The part that caught my ear was that ATK will absolutely press ahead, on their own funds, to operational status even if they are not picked by NASA for CCDEV. He sounded very clear on that point. I get the impression that this vehicle IS coming no matter what. The only snag is that it will take a bit longer (I think he said a couple of years) without NASA funding. These guys are going to bank-roll it themselves, build their own LUT, test it and start flying. Critics may scoff at ATK and say that this is all just boasting, or PR to try and woo NASA, but these ATK people are not playing a game here. They are leveraging STS hardware, they have invested a lot of cash, partnered with overseas folks and they fully intend to make this happen.

I found it also interesting that he specifically mentioned being able to loft Bigelow Space's payloads.

IMO, anyone in the spaceflight community who poo-poos these guys, does so at their own mistake. While we get all hung up on the "popular kid" in the schoolyard, the outcast is making huge steps toward big things under the radar.

It will be interesting to watch.

[Ben the Space Brit]

Purely IMHO, ATK's determination to proceed with Liberty no matter what suggests to me an ambivilence about either:

a) the likelihood of them winning the SLS advanced booster competition or

b) the likelihood of SLS representing a major customer for segmented solids (low flight rate).

Simply put, ATK need to leverage the RSRM technology onto a new product that they need to sell  - Hence Liberty and the Full-Court Press to sell it to the American public.  It is quite possigble that, should Liberty fails, ATK would need to significantly downsize to save costs.

[phantomdj]

Purely IMHO, ATK's determination to proceed with Liberty no matter what suggests to me an ambivilence about either:

a) the likelihood of them winning the SLS advanced booster competition or

b) the likelihood of SLS representing a major customer for segmented solids (low flight rate).

Simply put, ATK need to leverage the RSRM technology onto a new product that they need to sell  - Hence Liberty and the Full-Court Press to sell it to the American public.  It is quite possigble that, should Liberty fails, ATK would need to significantly downsize to save costs.

ATK must see the handwriting on the wall and knows that NASA prefers replacing the SRB’s for SLS with liquid boosters in the long term.  That being said, the only way for them to stay in the game with solids is to build their own LV.