I rather agree with those who think that the day of the solid rocket as a main booster are about over. They will always have their place, such as smaller secondary boosters, but the lack of throttleability, shut-down on demand, restricted vectoring, and other considerations kind of limits them. Too, it has been said that the Challenger still leaves a bad taste in the mouth of many of those at NASA. Also, I don't think that ATK had any crew-carrying vehicles proposed. Aren't all the other companies offering complete systems, essentially turnkey solutions... crew vehicle as well as boosters, or at least planning to use existing liquid fuel designs? Very sorry for the home team, however. Swing and a miss. It happens. The good news is that, whichever companies get the contracts, the talent will mostly flow there, so our American citizens will still get work in the field, regardless of which state it's in. On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 6:08 PM, Patrick Wiggins <paw@wirelessbeehive.com>wrote:
Nah, if that were the case they'd just get a call the day before the check is due saying the check's arrival had been delayed a month...