Alliant Techsystems (ATK) will assemble, as well as produce, the first stage for NASA’s Crew Launch Vehicle (CLV) under a NASA contract to be awarded in May 2006. This differs from ATK’s existing Space Shuttle contract, which covers only the supply of the four motor segments of the solid rocket booster (SRB), now to form the first stage of the CLV.
Assembly of the SRBs and their mating with the Shuttle stack is performed by launch operations provider United Space Alliance. The CLV contract will see ATK assemble the first stage at Kennedy Space Center and make it ready for integration with the second stage. “In future we will perform racking and stacking operations,” says ATK. “We have 40 staff at Kennedy; that will have to increase to 200.”
The CLV first stage, like the Shuttle SRB, will be reusable. ATK concluded it would still be cheaper to recover and recondition motors rather than build new ones. The recovery parachutes, which are housed in the Shuttle SRB’s nose cone and enable reuse of the motor segments, will probably be part of the adaptor connecting the CLV first stage with the second stage.
NASA announced in November that it planned to place a sole-source contract for the CLV first stage to SRB provider ATK. Now the agency says it will award the contract in May following release of a solicitation in early January.
Pratt & Whitney’s Rocketdyne division is also expected to receive a contact without competition to provide a version of its Space Shuttle main engine (SSME), designated the RS-25M, for use in the CLV’s second stage.
Source: Flight International