Liberty
A proposal put forth by ATK and Astrium is to use a five-segment version of the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster as a first stage and a liquid-core first stage of an Ariane 5 as the second stage of a proposed rocket named Liberty. Such a design would cut costs and development time by using already-proven technologies. Liberty will be 90 meters in length with a projected capability of carrying 20 metric tonnes to low earth orbit. It is projected that this rocket would be flight-capable by 2013 and human-certified by 2015. Some of the potential crew vehicles are being developed with funds from the Commercial Crew Development program.
Read more about this topic: Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicle
Famous quotes containing the word liberty:
“This spending of the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet. He should have gone up garret at once.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“To me it seems that liberty and virtue were made for each other. If any man wish to enslave his country, nothing is a fitter preparative than vice; and nothing leads to vice so surely as irreligion.”
—George Berkeley (1685–1753)
“As liberty of thought is absolute, so is liberty of speech, which is “inseparable” from the liberty of thought. Liberty of speech, moreover, is essential not only for its own sake but for the sake of truth, which requires absolute liberty for the utterance of unpopular and even demonstrably false opinions.”
—Gertrude Himmelfarb (b. 1922)