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#260 by meiza on 13 Sep, 2007 23:46
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Four models?
-Merlin 1/variants (Falcon 1 1st)
-RD-107/108/modernizations (Soyuz 1st/2nd)
-RD-171 (Zenit 1st)
-RD-180 (Atlas V 1st)
But there are also upper stage engines:
-RD-0124 (Soyuz 3rd)
-RD-120 (Zenit 2nd)
-RD-58M (Zenit 3rd)
-Kestrel (Falcon 1 2nd) although pressure fed...
+RS-27/variants (Delta II 1st) is not in production anymore. -
#261 by antonioe on 14 Sep, 2007 00:25
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O.K., gang, here we go:
Ron Grabe, who heads our Launch Systems Group (LSG) was conned into participating in an panel at the AIAA Space 2007 meeting next week in Long Beach (LSG currently produces Pegasus, Taurus and the various Minotaurs, and will produce and fly Taurus II after the first five or six flights which will be built and flown by our development organization, the APG, which is where I work).
Ron's panel is on "existing launch vehicles" (is that what you guys call "old.space"? I still remember the 1990 WSJ article that called DWT, Scott and Bruce "three space nuts" for thinking they could develop a space rocket with... gasp... private funding! - see enclosed Washinton Post article about the incident - Chris, am I violating the Washington Post copyright for posting this image? If so, go ahead and delete it, but note that the article itself is truncated, and it's from 1990!!!).
He was warned by the moderator to expect a deluge of questions on Taurus II, so he asked me for support. With DWT's approval, I decided to give him a viewgraph with the first ever sketch of Taurus II to be release by Orbital. Also, I promised Brian Berger of SN the first pix, so I will give him until Monday the 24th to publish it in SN before reproducing it here - remember, it's a very rought sketch, don;t expect sexy 3-D CAD art. I gave Ron a couple of VUGraphs and he's thinking about it. I told him I'll be in the audience in case he gets questions he doesn't want to answer ("ask that guy there in the corner, yes, the one with the trenchcoat, fedora and dark glasses.. hey, Antonio, yes, I'm talking to you...")
The picture shows T II next to the lineup of Orbital's space and large subspace rockets, approximately at the same relative scale. T II has a 3.9 m constant-diameter airframe with no strap-ons (yet... remember Thor?). The sketch shows about 8 calibers length, but the length has not been pinned down yet due to:
- The configuration of the upper stage stack is being traded still, and
- The length of the 3.9m diameter fairing is also being traded; we want to be able to fit the largest of our StaBus spacecraft, but then we would have too much volume for our main current customers (read: NASA Science).
Yes, it shows two AJ-26/NK-33's. You guys were right all along. And, yes, you need two. We are negotiating with Aerojet the precise details on how much and how long (and where!) to get the AJ-26 production line started, but in the meanwhile we'll use the 60 or so units that exists between Sacramento and Samara.
Program director is Dave Steffy, who was the vehicle engineer on Pegasus F1, then became the ORBCOMM chief designer and PM, then the architect of the modern StarBus line, and one of the most versatile rocket/satellite line straddlers I've ever met (also, we went to the same small technical school in the Northeast).
Assisting him are Kurt Eberly, who built more Pegasus at Vandenberg than anybody else at Orbital, and Mike Dorsch, who was Pegasus Chief Engineer for a long while (after I was kicked upstairs) and a sizeable bunch of Belerophones (Pegasus tamers) and Matadores (Taurus experts) too numerous to acknowledge individually today (later, I will). Brian Winters, who was the propulsion lead on the LOX/Kerosene powered X-34 is responsible for Stage 1 development and initial production. MACH-3 avionics (what a corny acronim... oh, well) courtesy of the GDP program, fairing courtesy of Taurus/Minotaur (except for the increased diameter).
Bob Richards, who was Launch Panel Operator on the second Pegasus flight (yours truly was the first) is the LSG Executive that "owns" the product line (read: sell it to NASA).
We had our SRR on July 17th and 18th and the CDR is tentatively scheduled for December 5,6 and 7th. Wish us luck!
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#262 by Seer on 14 Sep, 2007 00:45
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Wow, I didn't know about a cancelled stock sale. There are a lot of similarities between Orbital and Spacex, though I bet Elon has noted the fact that Orbital tried to IPO before first launch.
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#263 by antonioe on 14 Sep, 2007 00:50
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vt_hokie - 13/9/2007 5:33 PM I hope this isn't too far off topic, but I've been trying to dig up some information on the X-34 program. From what I can gather, there were to be three vehicles, with the first being used only for the captive carry tests with Orbital's L-1011. Were the next two vehicles already being constructed when the program was terminated?
Well... the fog of war, or at least, of history, is starting to make the past fuzzy, even if it was only 7 or 8 years ago... yes, we were going to build two airframes initially, of which only the second would receive the "Fastrack" engine... then we were told to start building parts for a third airframe... only the first two were completed... they are now languishing inside the old SR71 wooden hangar at North Base, waiting for the right fire to burn up the old hangar and its contents, accumulating several cms of rich natural guano in the meanwhile... pardon me while I dry a tear in my eye...
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#264 by Chris Bergin on 14 Sep, 2007 00:56
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Will certainly have to speak to you about T II as it deserves an article rather than just a forum post (note to other media not to go stealing those comments off here!)
X-34!! Sigh. I followed that closely as it was around the same time as the X-33 (double sigh). -
#265 by antonioe on 14 Sep, 2007 00:59
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Chris Bergin - 13/9/2007 7:56 PM X-34!! Sigh. I followed that closely as it was around the same time as the X-33 (double sigh).
Small world. Cleon Lacefield was my "competitor" in the X-33/X-34 days, now he's my customer on the Orion LAS. Proves the old adage than enjoins us to thread lightly, 'cause the foot we step on today may be wearing the boot we have to lick tomorrow.
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#266 by antonioe on 14 Sep, 2007 01:07
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Seer - 13/9/2007 7:45 PM Wow, I didn't know about a cancelled stock sale. There are a lot of similarities between Orbital and Spacex, though I bet Elon has noted the fact that Orbital tried to IPO before first launch.
We had to; DWT, Scott Webster and Bruce Ferguson did not have a dime to their name when they started Orbital on April 2, 1982 (their first office was Dave and Catherine's garage in Thousand Oaks). Elon had a slightly healthier financial head start.
I'm a few installments away from the "Big WSJ Disaster" episode in my contiiiiinuing saga of the development of Pegasus (those of you old enough to remember the Muppets Show's will get the quote), but when I get a round tooit I'll give you all the sordid details; meanwhile, try to read the snippets of the Wash Post article in the figure.
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#267 by sammie on 14 Sep, 2007 01:20
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Antonio, you already mentioned building TII mainly because other US mid-range launch vehicles (Atlas II and Delta II) are being retired, and you needed a launch vehicle to place your mid-range satellites in orbit. This has kept me wondering though, why aren't foreign options in the same range not viable options (Land Launch, Soyuz/Fregat, Ariane-5 2nd place position)? Is this because of ITAR or costumer demands? Have you considered cooperation with other companies developing similar vehicles, such as the Japanese GX?
Thanks a lot for your responses so far, highly interesting! -
#268 by vt_hokie on 14 Sep, 2007 01:28
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Wow, thanks for that photograph! Surely they deserve a better home than that! Of course, if I had my way, they'd be getting prepared for flight!
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#269 by antonioe on 14 Sep, 2007 02:31
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sammie - 13/9/2007 8:20 PM why aren't foreign options in the same range not viable options
Yes, we are talking NASA/DoD missions that we want to build satellites for, in our "sweet spot" size.
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#270 by Pete at Edwards on 14 Sep, 2007 02:35
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antonioe - 13/9/2007 7:50 PM
Quotevt_hokie - 13/9/2007 5:33 PM I hope this isn't too far off topic, but I've been trying to dig up some information on the X-34 program. From what I can gather, there were to be three vehicles, with the first being used only for the captive carry tests with Orbital's L-1011. Were the next two vehicles already being constructed when the program was terminated?
Well... the fog of war, or at least, of history, is starting to make the past fuzzy, even if it was only 7 or 8 years ago... yes, we were going to build two airframes initially, of which only the second would receive the "Fastrack" engine... then we were told to start building parts for a third airframe... only the first two were completed... they are now languishing inside the old SR71 wooden hangar at North Base, waiting for the right fire to burn up the old hangar and its contents, accumulating several cms of rich natural guano in the meanwhile... pardon me while I dry a tear in my eye...
At least they aren't under even more crap like the X-33 at Edwards. So much so I couldn't even get to take a decent photo. -
#271 by tnphysics on 14 Sep, 2007 03:44
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Was the X-33 ever finished? If so, we MUST get it out of its shed and fly it!
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#272 by Jim on 14 Sep, 2007 03:46
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no
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#273 by antonioe on 14 Sep, 2007 14:45
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Anybody has a decent picture of X-33 in its most advance state of integration?
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#274 by Crispy on 14 Sep, 2007 14:51
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The pictures I've seen just look like a big blob of scaffolding - not very illuminating.
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#275 by Chris Bergin on 14 Sep, 2007 14:59
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antonioe - 14/9/2007 3:45 PM
Anybody has a decent picture of X-33 in its most advance state of integration?
Yep, that was my baby, rushing to an internet cafe after Uni to see if they had updated the webcams...sigh.
Article: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/content/?cid=4180
Associated threads with images, videos and people that worked on it etc: http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=1184&start=1
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=347&start=1
The image below was one of the last webcam shots, but it did get further down the line with integration.
Now excuse me while I go for a weep
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#276 by Tim S on 14 Sep, 2007 18:16
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I shed a tear going past the display model of the XRS-2200 Linear Aerospike.
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#277 by Norm Hartnett on 14 Sep, 2007 18:40
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That is a great article Chris.
Do we know what, if any, roll Richard J. Gilbrech played in the questionable management decisions of this project? Since he was the Project Manager for X-33 I am wondering just how much impact he could have on Constellation.
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#278 by Andy L on 15 Sep, 2007 15:00
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Well we know why the X-33 was cancelled, but why was the X-34 cancelled? That story doesn't seem clear at all.
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#279 by Flometrics on 15 Sep, 2007 16:34
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The Fastrac engine was over budget and never finished. It ran, but the performance was not up to specifications. As a suborbital unmanned program, X-34 was never very sexy, so there was not a lot of political will to keep it going. Canceling it before flight test was a good way to avoid a potentially embarrassing failure. (If failure is not an option, then do nothing)
Apparently Orbital recommended a Russian engine as a backup plan, but that would have been embarrassing as well.
However the money was not completely wasted, the SpaceX Merlin engine Turbopump was based on the Fastrac design. It still took SpaceX 2.5 years to get it to work properly.
Steve
