Antares rocket maiden flight

Capt'n Midnight

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57580649/antares-rocket-climbs-into-space-on-maiden-flight/

A new rocket built as a commercial venture by Orbital Sciences Corp. blasted off from the Virginia coast and streaked into space Sunday, chalking up a picture-perfect maiden flight that sets the stage for space station cargo delivery missions starting later this year.

"It's certainly was an amazing achievement for Orbital today, a great day for NASA, and another historic day for commercial spaceflight in America,"

...
Orbital Sciences won a contract valued at $1.9 billion for eight resupply flights to the station to deliver 20 tons of cargo. Another $288 million ultimately was budgeted for development, the Antares test flight and the demonstration mission planned for this summer.

Over $2 billion to reinvent the wheel :rolleyes:



http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/taurusii.htm#more

American orbital launch vehicle. Pad-launched launch vehicle using Pegasus upper stages and a first stage combining a Ukrainian Zenit lower stage fitted with 30-year old surplus Russian N1 moon program rocket engines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antares_%28rocket%29

The first stage uses RP-1 (kerosene) and liquid oxygen (LOX) as propellants, powering two Russian-built NK-33-derived engines (sold by Aerojet as AJ-26 engines). They produce 3,265 kilonewtons (734,000 lbf) of thrust at sea level and 3,630 kN (816,100 lbf) in vacuum. As Orbital has little experience with large liquid stages and LOX propellant, some of the Antares first stage work was contracted to the Ukrainian Yuzhnoye SDO, designers of the Zenit series. One source says that the contract includes the "main-stage fuel tanks and associated plumbing".The core provided by Yuzhnoye includes propellant tanks, pressurization tanks, valves, sensors, feed lines, tubing, wiring and other associated hardware. Like Zenit, the Antares vehicle will have a 3.9 m (150 in) diameter.

The second stage is a solid-fuel rocket, the Castor 30, developed by ATK as a derivative of the Castor 120 solid stage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castor_%28rocket_stage%29

the Castor 120 is a derivative of the first-stage motor of the MX ("Peacekeeper") missile.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenit_%28rocket_family%29

In a study of 16 launchers, the Zenit-2 was, as of March 18, 2001, the lowest cost vehicle for achieving LEO in terms of payload weight per launch ($1,167-1,667 per pound or 2,567-3,667 per kg), and one of the lowest in terms of total costs per launch ($35–$50 million)

Also if you are going to reinvent the wheel , make it better somehow

Zenit can put 13.74 tonne to LEO
Antares just 5 tonnes


Yes I know Zenit (sea launch) has reliability issues but there are plenty of existing rockets that don't.

http://spaceflightnow.com/antares/demo/130421launch/

In December 2008, NASA chose Orbital and SpaceX for operational resupply flights to the space station. NASA's $1.9 billion contract with Orbital covers eight missions to carry at least 20 metric tons to the orbiting complex.

That's nearly $240 million a launch :eek:

And why do we need 5 different types ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_1

When berthed, it will become the 5th unmanned vehicle type to deliver supplies to the station. The other vehicles are the Progress, ATV, HTV and the Dragon. The Cygnus is expected to deliver 550 kg (1,200 lb) of cargo to ISS and dispose of about 1,000 kg (2,200 lb) through destructive reentry

12april1981

WOW That sure is a whole lot of unfo in that Posting.Thanks for going to all the trouble.