Heavy lifter rocket ready for debut

New Scientist ^ | 18:29 27 November 02 | Will Knight

[vannrox]

Heavy lifter rocket ready for debut

18:29 27 November 02

NewScientist.com news service

The first European rocket capable of lifting 10 tonnes into space will make its inaugural launch from the Kourou space port in French Guiana on Thursday evening.

The increased capacity Ariane 5, also known as "Ariane 10 tonnes", will carry a double payload - a television satellite and a telecommunications satellite - when it blasts off. A 43-minute launch window is available from 2221 GMT.

Stefan Barensky, editor of Space-launcher.com, says the new lifter will let its operator, Arianespace, launch a broader ranger of satellite pairings. Standardisation of the launcher's upper stage, where satellites are installed for launch, means different satellites can be mixed and matched, he says.

"The idea is that, in the future, each time there are two satellites ready, whatever they are, they will go," Barensky told New Scientist.

The launcher's first stage has been fitted with a more powerful engine called Vulcain 2 and a taller upper stage has been built to accommodate larger satellite payloads. Modifications have also been made to the launch tower and construction buildings at the Kourou spaceport.

Reliability the key

The Ariane 10 tonnes will have almost twice the lifting capacity of its current US competitors, Boeing's Delta IV and Lockheed Martin's Atlas 5. But a more powerful Delta IV, capable of carrying 13 tonnes, will be tested in 2003 and could debut by 2004.

However Barensky says this will be more suited to carrying heavy loads to low Earth orbits, rather than the higher geostationary orbits targeted by the new Ariane rocket.

John Locker, an independent space and satellite analyst in the UK, says: "The most important comparison will be decided by how reliable these launchers are over time and that is yet to be determined."

The space launch business is a competitive one and Barensky notes that Arianespace has worked hard to drive down the cost of launches. He says various cost-cutting measures have reduced the cost of each Ariane 5 launch by 35 per cent.

Development of the Ariane 5 was set back when the first rocket exploded in 1996. Then in July 2001, a launcher placed an experimental communications satellite and a Japanese television satellite in the wrong orbit,interrupting the commercial launch schedule.

[vannrox]

Too bad the Clinton Administration killed all the Heavy Lifter programs back in 1993-1997. I Believe it was a Gore idea. The money was funnelled into such programs as Nuclear Technology to North Korea; Grants to Russian Generals; Art involving Urine, and Union payoffs. If it wasn't for the Congressional established budget in 1999, we wouldn't be able to play catch up in two or three years.

[SMEDLEYBUTLER]

Too bad NASA didn't keep a real heavy lifter, ~145 tons to orbit.

[Royal Guardsman]

Too bad the Clinton Administration killed all the Heavy Lifter programs back in 1993-1997.

Too bad you don't know your history. In the late 80's Reagan proposed that the US reestablish its heavy lift capability by proposing what was then called the National Launch System (NLS). This would have been a monster booster with a lift capacity of about 1.5 times that of the Saturn 5, and thus would have been by far the most powerful rocket in the world today, able to lift and entire space station to orbit with a single launch. NLS went through some redesigns a few years later and emerged as the Advanced Launch System (ALS), essentially the same concept but with some major improvements. Boeing even went so far as to build mock-ups of a recoverable avionics unit that they tested in Puget Sound in 1991. Unfortunatly the first Bush administration decided that this was not a worthwhile expense and terminated the program. In fact, Clinton REVIVED the heavy lift program at the behest of the Air Force. I suppose you didn't watch the news last week of the first flight of the Delta IV heavy lifter...or the launch earlier this year of the equally powerful Atlas 5? Both of these rockets are the American answer to the Ariane 5 and both were conceived in by Clinton/Gore 1997. I despise Clinton as much as anyone, but you need to get your fact straight.