Northrop Grumman Becomes First Commercial Partner to Use Vehicle Assembly Building
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. (NASA PR) — After spending more than 50 years supporting NASA’s human spaceflight programs, the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), a landmark at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is getting its first commercial tenant.
Northrop Grumman will assemble and test its new OmegA rocket inside the massive facility’s High Bay 2, one of four high bays in the building. Officials with NASA, Northrop Grumman and the U.S. Air Force gathered in High Bay 2 on Aug. 16 to celebrate the partnership with a ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by legislative representatives and spaceport employees.
The company also is modifying mobile launcher platform-3 (MLP-3) to serve as the launch vehicle’s assembly and launch platform. Both the VAB and MLP-3 were originally built for the Apollo Program and went on to enable the three-decade Space Shuttle Program. The VAB also will be the assembly site for NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, which will carry the Orion spacecraft on Artemis missions to the Moon.
“With OmegA, we truly are standing on the shoulders of the giants of space history,” said Kent Rominger, Northrop Grumman’s vice president and capture lead for the OmegA launch system, as well as a veteran of five space shuttle flights. “This event marks that partnership with [Kennedy] at this phenomenal spaceport.”
Northrop Grumman signed a Reimbursable Space Act Agreement with NASA for use of the facilities. The company is developing the OmegA rocket, an intermediate/heavy-class launch vehicle, as a part of a launch services agreement with the U.S. Air Force.
Kennedy has transformed from a government-only space launch complex to the nation’s premier multi-user spaceport. Today, the space center has more than 90 active agreements with private-sector partners, sharing its array of unique facilities and resources through partnerships with government and commercial organizations.
This latest agreement brings Northrop Grumman into the fold.
“We have a great partnership with Northrop Grumman; we have a great partnership with all our partners,” said Kennedy Space Center Director Bob Cabana. “It’s a great pleasure to be able to be here today and cut the ribbon after signing this historic agreement to utilize this awesome facility to support our nation’s space program.”
The addition of Northrop Grumman’s OmegA rocket to the stable of vehicles processed and launched from the spaceport continues a long legacy that defines the local community.
“This whole area has been home to innovation and the drive to be bolder,” said Col. Thomas Ste. Marie, vice commander of the U.S. Air Force’s 45th Space Wing. “These efforts, government and contractor, have fueled the economies and the imagination and, really, the spirit of this community that we like to call the Space Coast.”
8 responses to “Northrop Grumman Becomes First Commercial Partner to Use Vehicle Assembly Building”
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Looking good. Nice to see a MLP being used. I read that they were not good enough for NASA SLS, so they are building 2 new ones. Better than scraping them and the VAB also. Nice. The only thing that may go wrong with OmegA is if they are using strap ons, if they have leak from a joint the blow torch may hit one of them. Or cut a strut like happened to Shuttle. But they have the joint leaks fixed of course. Let us hope for SLS sake they do.
It is becoming more and more unlikely that even SLS is ever going to use the VAB. As for OmegA, its own notional VAB tenancy will most likely go up in a puff of smoke when NGIS is not selected as an LSA Phase 2 NatSec launch supplier and the rest of its previously awarded development money for OmegA evaporates – and OmegA with it.
The rest of your comment is, as usual, muddled and confused.
Omega, as currently proposed, would use strap-on solids in some configurations. These would be the same strap-on solids ULA will be using soon on Atlas V and which it will continue to use on Vulcan. They are one-piece motors with no joints. The SLS’s Shuttle-derived strap-on solids are the ones with joints – the same post-Challenger joints used for the Shuttle SRB’s, given that the same steel casings are being employed.
The first two stages of Omega are to be the same diameter as Shuttle/SLS SRB’s, but the motors are supposed to have filament-wound carbon composite cases. Whether or not these are one-piece or segmented motors has not been made clear in any press coverage I have read anent their development and nothing publicly said by NGIS seems to have clarified this matter either. As OmegA seems, at this point, unlikely ever to be built or flown, its booster stage design is equally unlikely to be a matter of any future concern anyway.
From memory, I believe that the composite wound segments eliminate a factory joint, but the field joints are in the same places (Wikipedia seems to confirm this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi… ). Since the same transportation constraints on the steel cased SRB segments still apply to OmegA’s composite cased segments, they’ll still have to be stacked in the VAB and will therefore have field joints to do so.
Sounds reasonable to me. Also sounds like one more good reason to put the whole thing out of our misery via simply passing it by in the LSA Phase 2 selections.
The Omega, AKA Ares I, AKA “the Stick”, will return under a new name as long as ATK keeps it’s lobby budget going…
I think Der Griffenschaft was a better name than stick, more accurate anyway
potato-masher
It’s NGIS now. And if OmegA and SLS both die soon – as I expect to happen – I think that’ll be all she wrote for 12 ft. dia. solids. They have no military applications and trying to gin up something like OmegA under a different name will take too long.
“The Corndog” was an invention of a time when Shuttle still flew and provided a market that the then-Orbital ATK was simply trying to extend. In the absence of any cash coming in or the prospect of any ever again, the 12-foot solids infrastructure becomes a financial boat anchor overnight.