The Cold War era missiles that once threatened global annihilation could be converted to a much more productive use if Orbital ATK gets its way. The Dulles, Va.-based aerospace firm is attempting to buy nearly 1,000 Minuteman and Peacekeeper Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles that are sitting dormant in bunkers and turn them into rockets for sending commercial satellites into orbit.
"We're interesting in buying the assets and using them for our commercial launches," said Mark Pieczynski, vice president of business development for Orbital ATK’s flight systems group in an interview with DC Inno. "There's a launch vehicle called the Minotaur that's very reliable but unfortunately not used by the commercial market. It's exclusive to the Department of Defense by policy."
Changing that policy and letting commercial interests compete to buy some of the missiles for launch vehicles is not as outlandish as it might seem. Russia has been selling its own ICBMs (suitably disarmed) to the commercial market, and Orbital ATK doesn't think there's any reason the Department of Defense shouldn't do the same."The U.S. just doesn't have the capacity in this class,""What we've been seeing the last decade is a tremendous migration of launches to foreign countries like Russia and India."
There's not universal agreement in the commercial space industry about the idea. Ahead of a Congressional hearing on the subject this week, Richard Branson's company, Virgin Galactic, warned that the influx of new rocket motors might hurt the investment in new, advanced launch systems going on right now. But Orbital ATK has pushed back, saying that it's not at all competitive with the work those companies are doing."They're two completely different markets. The missions we want them for are not compatible with their launch systems," Pieczynski said. "And we don't want exclusivity, ought to be available to anyone, a compromise of interested parties."
And changing the current rules wouldn't suddenly flood the market with new rockets, according to Pieczynski. An extensive amount of refitting and alteration of the motors would be required, but he argued that would be a good thing.
"It would drive jobs in the country because of all the new work they would need," Pieczynski said. "We're not just grabbing them and launching them. It would be, at the earliest, two years after the law changed before we could launch them."
↧