ATK push for US space flight independence via Liberty

[Prober]

Anyway, would like to discuss how they might "challenge" something like that.

Their only hope would be to find proof that the following rumor was true.
http://www.transterrestrial.com/?p=43799
I don't see truth in the rumor, which suggests that the White House forced NASA to change its original decision that would have funded Liberty.  Outright political contract steering during an election year?  No way.

 - Ed Kyle

sits on hands before further comment.

[js117]

NASA Dropped ATK's Private Space Taxi Proposal over Technical Concerns

http://www.space.com/17489-nasa-space-taxis-atk-liberty-system.html

[jongoff]

It's interesting to note that NASA had some of the same technical concerns as were voiced by some of the blogospheric critics and commenters here on NSF who were loudly dismissed as not having a clue...

That said, it looks like if ATK had done a proposal of this quality for the earlier CCDEV round a year ago, they probably would've had a much better shot at being in the competition still.

~Jon

[yg1968]

It's interesting to note that NASA had some of the same technical concerns as were voiced by some of the blogospheric critics and commenters here on NSF who were loudly dismissed as not having a clue...

That said, it looks like if ATK had done a proposal of this quality for the earlier CCDEV round a year ago, they probably would've had a much better shot at being in the competition still.

~Jon

Critics were saying the LV was a kludge whereas NASA considered the spacecraft to be a kludge.

[jongoff]

It's interesting to note that NASA had some of the same technical concerns as were voiced by some of the blogospheric critics and commenters here on NSF who were loudly dismissed as not having a clue...

That said, it looks like if ATK had done a proposal of this quality for the earlier CCDEV round a year ago, they probably would've had a much better shot at being in the competition still.

~Jon

Critics were saying the LV was a kludge whereas NASA considered the spacecraft to be a kludge.

I think a lot of the critics were also talking about how the spacecraft was nothing more than a composite shell, and that it was much less far along than was being suggested.

~Jon

[baldusi]

I think a lot of the critics were also talking about how the spacecraft was nothing more than a composite shell, and that it was much less far along than was being suggested.

And an experiment that failed to pay any weight advantages and had some serious problems. Need to develop new inspection technologies and a higher propensity to damage during integration accidents isn't exactly a risk reducing measure when you are trying to get to IOC as soon as possible.
And the criticism was more like: the LV is just a project, so it's very difficult to show that it's the fastest and cheapest way, and even if you take that path, won't have the necessary history by IOC. Nobody know exactly what did they had on the capsule, but the general expectation was "a failed experiment pressure vessel and a promise of LM to fill the rest from their Orion experience, but weighting half as much".
I stated that the project had its merits, as a long term competitor for crew and cargo to LEO, and assuming they could leverage the infrastructure cost of SLS. But it was not the optimum path forward for Commercial Crew. Risky and green in comparison to the other projects.

[woods170]

Looks like Ed read the writing on the wall correctly:

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1209/07liberty/

Mark DeYoung, ATK's president and CEO, told investors in August the firm was "moving on" after it lost out on NASA funding. DeYoung said he was disappointed the Liberty concept did not win any NASA funding, but the company will not suffer any financial harm from the decision.

"Liberty was a little bit of a longer shot for us, so we hadn't planned on it," DeYoung said. "So from that view, it should not have any significant financial impact to the company. Going forward, we're going to focus on SLS. We're going to focus on the advanced booster."

[Robotbeat]

Looks like Ed read the writing on the wall correctly:

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1209/07liberty/

Mark DeYoung, ATK's president and CEO, told investors in August the firm was "moving on" after it lost out on NASA funding. DeYoung said he was disappointed the Liberty concept did not win any NASA funding, but the company will not suffer any financial harm from the decision.

"Liberty was a little bit of a longer shot for us, so we hadn't planned on it," DeYoung said. "So from that view, it should not have any significant financial impact to the company. Going forward, we're going to focus on SLS. We're going to focus on the advanced booster."

Didn't they say they were going to go forward either way?

[Patchouli]

Critics were saying the LV was a kludge whereas NASA considered the spacecraft to be a kludge.

I think the biggest issue was the other three vehicles are much farther along.
Entering that late in the game with both a new LV and spacecraft was a real long shot.

[QuantumG]

I think the biggest issue was the other three vehicles are much farther along.
Entering that late in the game with both a new LV and spacecraft was a real long shot.

So.. you're saying ATK has proven that the "this isn't a downselect" talk was just talk.

[Confusador]

I think the biggest issue was the other three vehicles are much farther along.
Entering that late in the game with both a new LV and spacecraft was a real long shot.

So.. you're saying ATK has proven that the "this isn't a downselect" talk was just talk.

I don't know why I'm even getting into this conversation, but read what he wrote.  He's saying that ATK was too ambitious, that if they had proposed just a capsule flying on an existing vehicle, or if they had sunk more money into it earlier so that it was farther into development, they might have had a shot.  That's pretty much the opposite of saying they proved it's a downselect.  They didn't prove it isn't either.  Let it go.

[kkattula]

One of the main goals of CCDEV 1 & 2 was to retire technical risk. In order to compete effectively for CCiCaP, a new player would have to demonstrate they'd already done a similar level of risk retirement, on their own dime.

Liberty probably could do a lot of that for the LV, based on Ares I, but not the capsule.

[Ben the Space Brit]

Looks like Ed read the writing on the wall correctly:

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1209/07liberty/

Mark DeYoung, ATK's president and CEO, told investors in August the firm was "moving on" after it lost out on NASA funding. DeYoung said he was disappointed the Liberty concept did not win any NASA funding, but the company will not suffer any financial harm from the decision.

"Liberty was a little bit of a longer shot for us, so we hadn't planned on it," DeYoung said. "So from that view, it should not have any significant financial impact to the company. Going forward, we're going to focus on SLS. We're going to focus on the advanced booster."

Didn't they say they were going to go forward either way?

I might be misinterpreting, but it's looking that, at least from Mr DeYoung's point of view, they didn't mean it.

Barring a miracle or a massive and swift change of direction post the upcoming presidentiaol election, I think that we can safely call Liberty dead in the water.  ATK is focussing on something on which they have a sort of head start - the SLS Advanced Booster.

[Robotbeat]

Looks like Ed read the writing on the wall correctly:

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1209/07liberty/

Mark DeYoung, ATK's president and CEO, told investors in August the firm was "moving on" after it lost out on NASA funding. DeYoung said he was disappointed the Liberty concept did not win any NASA funding, but the company will not suffer any financial harm from the decision.

"Liberty was a little bit of a longer shot for us, so we hadn't planned on it," DeYoung said. "So from that view, it should not have any significant financial impact to the company. Going forward, we're going to focus on SLS. We're going to focus on the advanced booster."

Didn't they say they were going to go forward either way?

I might be misinterpreting, but it's looking that, at least from Mr DeYoung's point of view, they didn't mean it.
...

So they said something that they knew to be false? I'm just trying to get the story straight.

[Ben the Space Brit]

Didn't they say they were going to go forward either way?

I might be misinterpreting, but it's looking that, at least from Mr DeYoung's point of view, they didn't mean it.
...

So they said something that they knew to be false? I'm just trying to get the story straight.

I think that the "we'll do it either way" was primarily marketing talk to create a clear sense of the company's confidence in the viability of the product.  I won't say they were saying something that they knew to be false.  I would say that, maybe, they were overstating their financial ability to go ahead without NASA funding.

The practical upshot of this is... well, they didn't really give any firm, binding guarantees that they would continue Liberty and Liberty-CV development on their own dime.  So, they aren't really breaking any promises.  They're just ignoring and/or dropping previous non-binding marketing statements about their intent to continue development without support from NASA.


[edit]
Fixed quote tags

[AnalogMan]

Kent Rominger (VP & Manager, Liberty) made the following comments regarding the future for Liberty depending upon the outcome of the CCiCap awards. These were made during a Q&A session following a short presentation on Liberty Commercial Space Services at the NewSpace 2012 conference on July 27:

Q "You made it sound like Liberty's a stand-alone company almost, at least in what I heard when you started off, so is Liberty going to be a separate profit center from ATK, is it a spin-off, will it be separate, etc. - could you talk about that?"

A "Yes, starting out right now its ATK - that's one where we've been kinda all over the map - right now with iCap competition going on if we receive a full award, if you will, on iCap it will probably remain ATK because we, ATK, see this - hey, its been interesting as its evolved - but ATK sees this as a very strong business case and we, ATK, will put significant amounts of cash into it of our own.  If the award is less than that, now we're going to look very hard at turning it into a Liberty Corporation in which case we'd approach equity investors or debt investors and now as a Corporation it would wind up with some investment.  So the real answer is 'don't know, depends', we'll have to see what funding comes."

[My transcript - questioner not identified]

This comes at ~26m 50s into the video of his presentation, which can be found here:
http://www.spacevidcast.com/2012/07/27/newspace2012-liberty-commercial-space-services/

It could be that the second part of his answer was addressing the "partial award" case, rather than "no award" - you'll have to read the tea-leaves on that yourselves!

[spectre9]

ATK stick rockets are now 0-2.

3rd time lucky? 

[docmordrid]

ATK stick rockets are now 0-2.

3rd time lucky? 

3rd time totally ignored?

[Comga]

Cue the Monty Python dead parrot sketch. 
IMO
 

[Thunderbird5]

Cue the Monty Python dead parrot sketch. 
IMO
 

Oh no, we're back to electric spacecraft again