Liberty Second Stage a Step Closer to Production

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Doug Messier
on June 29, 2012, at 6:22 am
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ARLINGTON, Va., June 28, 2012 (Astrium PR) – Astrium, the number one company in Europe for space technologies and systems, has successfully completed a set of tests on tank structures proving that key design and manufacturing processes used for Ariane launchers are ready for production of the Liberty commercial launch vehicle second stage with ATK.

The tests covering load-carrying cryogenic tanks demonstrate that existing Astrium processes can be leveraged to confirm the overall Liberty schedule and enable a speedy entry into service – and into orbit. Astrium is also working on leaner production processes for the second stage to bring best value to the Liberty launch vehicle.

Liberty is a complete commercial crew transportation service, including the spacecraft, abort system, launch vehicle, and both ground and mission operations, designed from inception to meet NASA’s human-rating requirements with a planned first test flight in 2014 and Liberty crewed flight in 2015. Astrium, as a major subcontractor, will provide the second stage of the Liberty launch vehicle – based on the liquid-fuelled cryogenic core of the Ariane 5 vehicle powered by the Safran-built Vulcain 2 engine.

The Ariane 5 launcher, for which Astrium is the Prime Contractor, was developed under the aegis of the European Space Agency and is operated by Arianespace. With 48 consecutive successful missions over nearly nine years, it is the world’s most reliable launcher. This includes the launch of three Autonomous Transfer Vehicles to resupply the International Space Station in the last four years. During this time, the Ariane 5 has launched more commercial satellites into orbit than any other launch vehicle in the world.

A film from the Astrium site in les Mureaux, near Paris (France), shows the work done to complete the stage testing.  It shows the machining, forming, computerized automatic welding and inspection of cryogenic tank elements to provide the increased thickness and stiffened profiles necessary for the Liberty second stage. An additional tank panel of increased thickness is welded and tested in a cryogenic environment at the Euro Cryospace facilities (an Astrium and Air Liquide joint-venture). These successful tests demonstrate that Astrium’s manufacturing technology has the capability to process panels that are several times thicker than those of Ariane 5. These panels meet the needs for the strengthened cryogenic tanks of Liberty’s second stage.

Alain Charmeau, CEO of Astrium Space Transportation, said: “These tests take the Liberty second stage one step closer to production. They demonstrate conclusively that our proven processes can manufacture thicker and stiffer cryogenic tanks for the Liberty second stage.

“Welding, machining, and forming space hardware is a highly sophisticated industrial process. Our extensive experience in manufacturing all Ariane launchers has given us comprehensive and unmatched capability that we can now utilize for a new commercial space transportation system – Liberty. We are proud to be a valued partner alongside ATK and Lockheed Martin and look forward to the success of Liberty,” he continued.

“Astrium’s world-class commercial launch team provides unique vehicle and systems capabilities to Liberty,” said Kent Rominger, ATK program manager for Liberty. “These tests by our Astrium teammates demonstrate how our flight-proven Liberty team is hard at work and keeping Liberty on schedule for first launch in 2014.”

For additional information on the Liberty Transportation Service please visit the Liberty website at: http://www.libertyspace.us/

About Astrium

Astrium is the number one company in Europe for space technologies and the third in the world. In 2011, Astrium had a turnover close to euro 5 billion and 18,000 employees worldwide, mainly in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain and the Netherlands.

Astrium is the sole European company that covers the whole range of civil and defence space systems and services.

Its three business units are: Astrium Space Transportation for launchers and orbital infrastructure; Astrium Satellites for spacecraft and ground segment; Astrium Services for comprehensive fixed and mobile end-to-end solutions covering secure and commercial satcoms and networks, high security and broadcast satellite communications equipment and systems, and bespoke geo-information services, worldwide.

Astrium is a wholly owned subsidiary of EADS, a global leader in aerospace, defence and related services. In 2011, the Group – comprising Airbus, Astrium, Cassidian and Eurocopter – generated revenues of euro 49.1 billion and employed a workforce of over 133,000. http://www.astrium.eads.net

About ATK

ATK is an aerospace, defense, and commercial products company with operations in 22 states, Puerto Rico, and internationally. Newsand information can be found on the Internet at www.atk.com.

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  • http://exoscientist.blogspot.com Robert Clark

    Apparently, not:

    ATK ’moving on’ after Liberty commercial proposal loss.
    http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n1209/07liberty/

    Seems to imply they won’t be developing it.
    The ESA if they wanted their own manned space flight system could get it quickly by using the Ariane 5 core stage alone with the addition of a second Vulcain engine, capable of carrying a Dragon-sized capsule to orbit.
    Even the Dragon is larger than it needs to be just to LEO. If you made a capsule half its size to carry just three passengers, then by cutting the size of the Ariane 5 core to half-size you could loft the half-size capsule to orbit on just a single Vulcain engine.

    Bob Clark

  • http://www.parabolicarc.com Doug Messier

    I don’t know who would fund Liberty development from here in. NASA has neither the money nor the interest in it, and the DOD’s priorities are elsewhere. DOD’s current needs are met with Atlas V, Delta IV, Taurus, Minotaur and Pegasus. There are new rockets coming online (Antares, Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Stratolaunch, LauncherOne) that will bring much needed competition across every payload class. ULA is looking to meet that competition with a new upper stage that will be much cheaper.

    The military’s biggest problem is high launch costs, but those will probably be relieved within the next five years with things already in the pipeline. It’s hard to see where investing in Liberty would make much sense for the military. The rocket doesn’t address that problem.

    The military’s current long-term research projects include fully reusable flyback boosters (operational circa 2025) to replace the EELVs and various hypersonic scramjet projects (operational circa God only knows). Liberty doesn’t fit into any long-term research efforts.

    Ariane 5 was designed for human rating. The plans were to fly the Hermes shuttle. But, that got canceled about 20 years ago due to cost and technical challenges. And ESA has never committed to an independent human spaceflight program, which has enormous costs and implications for other parts of the budget.

    Boeing would love to be able to export the CST-100 for launch on other rockets. Ariane 5 and the Ariane 5 ME (if ESA goes that route) would be more than capable of flying those spacecraft. If commercial crew succeeds, then space agencies could face an interesting choice: do we buy commercial, or do spend a decade re-inventing designs that were first flown 50 years ago.

    The other possibility is flying Orion vehicles. If ESA decides to build the service module, then why not fly Orion from Kourou?

  • Paul451

    Doug,
    “I don’t know who would fund Liberty development from here in.”

    Why not ATK.

    They claimed Liberty would have launch costs lower than Falcon. Thus it would have the lowest cost-per-kg in the world, beating the Russians, Chinese, and SpaceX. Plus a higher payload capacity. Plus “flight proven” safety and reliability.

    They would own the entire commercial satellite launch market. Plus all US military launches. Enough to self-fund man-rating, which would allow them to better compete for Commercial Crew when NASA moves to actual contracting astronaut delivery to the ISS. (As well as being the cheapest, safest, most magical of all private manned launchers for the space tourism market.)

    Unless they were lying.

  • http://www.parabolicarc.com Doug Messier

    I don’t think they were lying. If Falcon 9 was such a great idea, why didn’t SpaceX fund the program itself? Why did it need NASA?

  • warshawski

    SpaceX did fund the initial development of Falcon 1 and 9, they started before COTS program. SpaceX continue to fund development and upgrade of Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Grasshopper etc. As shown by the no cost to NASA flight review of the upgraded Merlin 1D motor on the Falcon 9 v1.1. SpaceX just applied for NASA funding with COTS and Comercial Crew to help the funding and accelerate the development and get a foundation customer.
    As stated by NASA SpaceX have the highest level of self funding but it takes a LOT of money to design, build and test a rocket so why not get all sources of additional funding possible.
    SpaceX did the initial development with self funding and flew the Falcon 1 as proof of concept so if ATK is serious they should self fund and launch at least on test flight.

  • Paul451

    What Warshawski said…

    Musk and his initial investors funded development, from nothing through to actual flying hardware. If they hadn’t gotten government funding, they would have developed more slowly, but they would have continued as long as they could afford. COTS and CCDev just allowed them to jump ahead. (And in response to extra funding, they opened even more paths of development: A newer engine, Grasshopper, DragonLab. Things unrelated to COTS/CC.)

    ATK pretended they were doing the same thing, developing the hardware independently regardless. But the moment they didn’t get government money for their powerpoint rocket, they just dropped it. Even though they are supposed to be developing the booster for SLS, at NASA’s expense, they still won’t develop Liberty, not even as a commercial satellite launcher.

    Likewise, if they had been funded, I’ve no doubt they would not have gone 1mm past the absolute minimum requirements for the contract. Because Liberty is not cheap, is not safe, would not compete fairly against other systems.

    Because they lied.