NASA's Ares 1 to Be Reborn as the Liberty Commercial Launcher
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20110208/...rcial_launcher
When President Barack Obama canceled the Constellation space exploration program, it was thought the Ares 1, the much-maligned planned rocket that would have launched the Orion into low Earth orbit, was dead and gone.
However, it looks like ATK, the aerospace firm that manufactures solid rocket boosters for NASA, has entered into a joint venture with Astrium, the European firm that builds the Ariane V to build a commercial version of the Ares 1.
"The new rocket, named Liberty, would be much cheaper than the Ares I, because the unfinished NASA-designed upper stage of the Ares I would be replaced with the first stage of the Ariane 5, which has been launched successfully 41 consecutive times. The lower stage of the Liberty, a longer version of the shuttle booster built by ATK, would be almost unchanged from the Ares I."
ATK would now like its own cut of the commercial space subsidies that NASA is distributing as part of President Obama's initiative to outsource transportation of crew and cargo to and from the International Space Station. The hope is to get a launch vehicle ready for testing by 2013 with an operational vehicle capable of taking up astronauts and cargo two years after that.
ATK claims it can boost 44,500 pounds into low Earth orbit at a cost of just less than $180 million, lower than the Atlas V. It would launch from the Kennedy Space Center. Besides servicing the ISS, the Liberty could be used to launch satellites.
Longer term, because the production of the Liberty would keep ATK's solid rocket booster business alive, the company would be in position to provide SRBs for the planned shuttle derived heavy lift launcher.
The idea of a commercial Ares 1, albeit rebranded as Liberty, is ironic verging on the delicious. Many critics attacked the Ares 1 as being too expensive to build or to operate. The same critics cheered when the original Ares 1 was consigned to that long list of might have been hardware that was planned, worked on for a season, but then abandoned as the vagaries of political whim shifted against it.
Whether the Liberty actually takes off or remains a view-graph launcher also depends on the vagaries of politics, as well as business, and no little luck. Will there be enough business to sustain all of the new rockets that are being designed by various companies. However much there is, there will likely be an inevitable shakeout in which there will only be a few lift standing at the launch pad.
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