How would YOU evolve the Antares?

[russianhalo117]

If they keep the Castor upper stage, and keep costs down, they could compete in that Delta II market like Ed said.  However, what does the Delta II cost compared to the Falcon 9?  F9 has more capacity, but if it’s about the same price, then F9 would already be competing in the Delta II market. 

Falcon 9v1.1 is well beyond the Antares/Delta II class.  V1.1 is bigger, with a bigger ground footprint, etc., and will, I believe, cost more (no matter the current list price). 

Delta II itself will go away after its final four (or five) launches.   They've already locked the gates at Cape Canaveral SLC 17, since only Vandenberg launches are now planned.

 - Ed Kyle

I did read that Orbital is still looking at using SLC-17 and SLC-2 Delta facilities, but i have not heard anything additional since beginning of 2012. I also read that Lockheed Martin wants those facilities, but launcher was not identified.

[Falcon H]

How would I evolve antares? I would stretch the first stage and add a third NK-33 engine, then develope a liquid fueled second stage, if I wanted to further improve preformance, I could then add boosters (small solid fueled boosters like on the delta II or cores like on the falcon heavy).

[Jim]

I did read that Orbital is still looking at using SLC-17 and SLC-2 Delta facilities, but i have not heard anything additional since beginning of 2012. I also read that Lockheed Martin wants those facilities, but launcher was not identified.

SLC-17 is being raze.

[Galactic Penguin SST]

I did read that Orbital is still looking at using SLC-17 and SLC-2 Delta facilities, but i have not heard anything additional since beginning of 2012. I also read that Lockheed Martin wants those facilities, but launcher was not identified.

SLC-17 is being razed.

If they are building a pad at the Cape, SLC-36 might be the best bet for OSC.

As for VAFB...... SLC-2 won't be available for construction until NET late 2016. Wonder if the very old and disused SLC-1 site can be used instead? (don't see OSC going for Kodiak - too far away for such a big rocket)

[Lobo]

Single NK33 it should be then! Does it need a nozzle extension for upper stage duties?

Not necessarily. NK-33 vacuum Isp 331s (Astronautix.com) is better than both LR-91/RD-0212. NK-43 is 345s.

Has there been information floating around about how many NK-43s Aerojet bought, or were they all NK-33s? And is the 43 nozzle extension a "simple" bolt-on to 33, or entirely different regen nozzle?

This is getting into my point.  Aerojet must have purchased some NK-43’s because they have the “AJ26-59” which is their version of the NK-43. 
Or maybe the engine is identical, just with two nozzles?  Either way, when their stock runs out, they will need to make more themselves.  Hence the plans to make AJ26-500 and AJ-1E6 themselves.  I’m sure AJ26-500 is an upgrade they realized after studying and testing the NK-33 and realizing it was probably made in the typical Soviet fashion, with a lot of margin and conservatively.  With the current tech that’s available, I’m guessing they determined that it would be relatively easily to tweak the design to get 500klbs out of a chamber, by using some of margins built into it.  Now, by itself, there’s probably not an immediate customer for AJ26-500.  Antares would need two of them, and probably a core stretch to hold more fuel.  So, since you need two of them, they borrowed a page from Energomash and figured they’d put two thrust chambers together with a common turbo pump and get 1 Mlbs thrust with an AJ-1E6.  (Or AJ-1,000,000…I’m guessing that’s where the “1E6” comes from?)  That’d simplify the MPS for Antares a bit I think as it would have just one 2-thrust chamber engine with one gimbal.  Much like Atlas V and RD-180. 

As many of us have said, NK-43 at full throttle would be too much thrust for current Antares, or “Antares v1.1” with a core stretch and AJ-1E6.  It would be about 390klbs according to Astruantix.
But less over powered for Antares v1.1.  OSC has a deal with ATK to develop Castor 30XL so I don’t think we’ll see a different upper stage on Antares v1.  They’ll fly that for awhile and establish the brand.  And wait to see if there’s a market share they want to go after with more performance than Antares v1 and v1.1 with Castor 30XL upper stages could do.  If so, they can consider a kerolox upper stage using the Antares tooling (basically, a short Atanres core as the upper stage, like Falcon 9’s upper stage.), with a single chamber NK-43/AJ26-59.  They don’t need the more powerful AJ26-500 version, because even the AJ26-59 version is too powerful.  So they might just make them without the extra performance, and in fact, detune it to get the thrust down to around 125-150klbs for the 1M lb Antares v1.1.  Falcon 9v 1.1 will have about an 8.2:1 ratio of booster thrust to upper stage thrust., so 125-150klbs should be about right.  I’m no rocket scientist, but I don’t think that would be a hard thing to do.  (Usually you are trying to go the other way and squeeze more out!)

Even though the thrust chamber is over sized for what’s needed for Antares, commonality and synergy are kept.  That seems to have worked well for SpaceX, although a single M1-vac is more optimally sized for an upper stage on F9 than an NK-43 on Antares v1.1.  But the concept is the same.

They could buy a different, and more optimally sized engine for it…but unless there’s some major technological reason you can’t detune an NK-43, why would OSC and Aerojet want too?  The detuned NK-43 means more engines sold to OSC for Aerojet, and the Antares v1.1 upper stage being the same basic engine as the booster means their people don’t have to learn about and work with a different engine.    The tech base is the same. 

Unless Aerojet has access to a better engine option? (Which they might, I don’t know much about their current engine options).
Besides, who else would Aerojet have to sell the NK-43/AJ26-59 to?  It’ll be an engine without a customer indefinitely, unless there’s some other customer out there that might want it?
ULA?  I don’t see they going away from their hydrolox upper stages for kerolox.
SpaceX?  No, they have their M1D-Vac in-house.
NASA?  No, the Block 1B hydrolox upper stage is probably the only one they will be building (visa vi Boeing).
Liberty II?  Actaully, for LEO payloads it might be a good upper stage engine for them.  But I think they want to use the Ariane 5 production core as their upper stage with Vulcan modified for air start.
Any international customers?  Certainly not the Russians, they already have their own.  Ariane 5 is going to a new hydrolox upper stage.  I doubt the Chinese, and the Japanese already have a good hydrolox upper stage with an engine made by Mitsubishi.

On the flip side we have OSC and Antares.  It already uses an AJ26 engine.  It’s already kerolox.  It’s initial 2nd stage will be a cheap but low performance solid.  (Castor 30XL has about 301s vac ISP per Ed Kyle’s Space Launch Report).  An AJ26-59/NK-43 would be a big performance boost to that while having synergy with the booster.  Some tweaking of an Aerojet made AJ26-59 might get that ISP higher, closer to 359s for RD-0124 maybe?  Which I think has the most ISP of any non-hydrolox upper stage engine?
Both engines are staged combustion, so I think if the 1960’s NK-43 could get 346s, a modern production engine could get a little better than that.
It would seem that unless OSC wants to go hydrolox (and they don’t need to if they are targeting the payload class range between Delta II and EELV) for a different Antares upper stage, a detuned AJ26-59/NK-43 actually seems like the –most- logical choice.  To me anyway.  And probably the –only- potential customer for the AJ26-59.

[Lobo]

Single NK33 it should be then! Does it need a nozzle extension for upper stage duties? Does it need to be throttled down for this use?

You would absolutely need to throttle down an NK-33, but even then, I believe they only throttle down to around ~55% of their maximum.  An RD-191 will throttle all the way down to 30% of maximum, but that's got way too much power for US work on the Antares, as does the NK-33.  In general, I stick to using the Saturn V as a guideline. 

The Saturn V design would suggest if we're trying to max this thing out while minimizing design issues, something with 1/7th-1/9th the thrust of the booster engines at sea level is a good choice.  Now I know people are objecting to putting a hydrogen supply at the pad and dealing with its issues, but it'd let you use the best-proportioned engine I can think of for this rocket, a Blue Origin BE-3 hydrolox engine.  The Antares is taking off with around 740,000 lbs of thrust at liftoff (due to pushing its engines over 100% rating).  A BE-3's 100,000 lbs of thrust would be ideally proportioned and deliver a big boost to the Antares' capabilities.  My only concern is I don't know if Blue Origin would sell such a great engine to a possible competitor. 

If there's a setup that would be engineering-feasible but not politically feasible, I'd say it's using a quartet of RD-0146 engines.  You should be able to fit them into a 3.9 m core and get a big boost in performance from their 463 seconds of Isp.  Their biggest fault is they're not restartable to my knowledge, and that to me makes them little better than what the Antares has now.  I think a restart capability on the 2nd stage is a must for any possible US upgrade.  If the Antares' engines are upgraded to AJ-500 engines, that'd open up a new range of possible US engines.  You might even be able to chance using the Zenit's RD-120 2nd stage engine.  I'd still detune and modify that engine to make it more ideal however. 

Like I said in my previous post, I think the NK-43 is probably the most logical option, unless OSC wants to go hydrolox.  They might want to build pads at the Cape and VAFB.  And if so, they maybe design those pads with hydrolox capability, vertical integration (for USAF payloads if they want to go after that), and just launch the Delta II class “cheap” launches from Wallops with Castor 30XL.

If they want something better than Castor 30XL, but don’t want/need hydrolox, then I think the NK-43 would be the logical choice for the reasons I mentioned.  Now, the RD-180 and RD-191 can be throttled down to 30%, I think an Aerojet-made AJ26 could probably be made to throttle down to that too.  The old 1960’s era engines maybe only go down to 55%, but the RD family isn’t too far away from the NK’s I don’t think.  So I think it’s probably possible.  So you take an AJ26-59/NK-43 that is about 390klbs of thrust at vacuum (according to Atronautix), then you throttle that back to 30% and you have 117klbs.  Which would be just about right for an Antares v1.1 with an AJ-1E6 engine.  That might be the easiest way to do it.  But they could also just make a version that’s permenantly throttled to that level, and turned for it to maximize ISP.  (Throttled engines loose ISP I heard?)  Put a smaller turbopump on it and tweak it to optimize for running at that thrust level.

But either way, I doubt we’ll see any upper stage on Antares other than Castor 30XL until the existing stock of NK-33’s are flown out and Antares v1.1 starts flying with Aerojet-made AJ-1E6.

EDIT:  Reading Ed Kyle's Space Launch Report a little more carefully, I found this:

"Orbital's Taurus II fact sheet was updated in May 2009 to show a follow-on "enhanced" second stage option.  The stage would be powered by a new Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne PWR35M engine that would burn LOX and Methane to produce 35,000 lb (15.88 tonne) class thrust.  With this stage, Taurus II could move beyond Delta II payload capability, hauling up to 7.6 tonnes to low earth orbit or 1.8 tonnes to Earth escape velocity when topped with a Star 48 third stage. 

In early 2010, the "enhanced" stage design shifted toward kerosene/LOX, potentially to be powered by the Russian RD-0120 staged combustion engine used by Soyuz 2.1b.

In January 2009, Applied Aerospace Structures Corporation of Stockton, California announced that it would build composite structures for Taurus II, including the payload fairing, fairing adapter, interstage, Stage 2 motor adapter, payload fairing adapter, and avionics cylinder.  Deliveries were expected to begin in late 2009. 

A maneuvering bipropellant hypergolic third stage could eventually see use with Taurus II, though it would not be used for COTS demo missions.   The stage, equipped with a bipropellant hypergolic pressure-fed propulsion system similar to equipment used by Orbital's Star2bus satellites, has been called an Orbit Raising Kit (ORK).  The ORK could provide orbit raising maneuvers for higher-altitude missions.       

For higher energy missions, Taurus II could use a Star 48V solid propellant kick motor.  A Star 48V on top of a Taurus II would be able to boost more than 1.1 tonnes to Earth escape velocity.    "

http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/taurus2.html


So, it would appear they are looking at a kerolox upper stage as I was thinking.  Although using a different engine purchased from Russia rather than an AJ26-59/NK-43.  But I think Ed mistyped, it's probably an RD-0124 kerolox engine he meant, as the RD-0120 is a hydrolox core engine for Energia. 

[Prober]

I did read that Orbital is still looking at using SLC-17 and SLC-2 Delta facilities, but i have not heard anything additional since beginning of 2012. I also read that Lockheed Martin wants those facilities, but launcher was not identified.

SLC-17 is being raze.

they put a date on that?
 

[john smith 19]

How would I evolve Antares?

I'd start by looking to set up an AJ26 production line.

Without one when they run out of those in store then that's it.

The hazard of building your design around an out of production super performance engine.

Orbital won't abandon solids anytime soon so forget changing that and look at some kind of re-startable 3rd stage to do precision insertion, GTO, perhaps escape missions.