Now it's official: Alliant Techsystems, the former Hercules Inc., will build fuel tanks for America's first true space plane, the VentureStar.
The contract could be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $160 million.Alliant officials were eager to announce the contract in late April, when they invited reporters to their Clearfield plant to unveil machinery that will make fuel tanks for the X-33, which is a half-scale prototype vehicle. The X-33 will test concepts that will be used in the VentureStar, built by Lockheed Martin and its sub-con-tractors.
But official word did not come through in time that the hydrogen tanks for the larger vehicle also will be built by Alliant. Since then, Alliant officials in Minneapolis said they will work with Lockheed Martin to build the fiber-placed liquid hydrogen tanks for the reusable launch vehicle.
Both X-33 and the VentureStar will launch directly into space, without boosters that fall off. The VentureStar is envisioned as the next-generation space launch vehicle, replacing the space shuttle sometime early in the next century. At 127 feet long and 128 across at the widest, the wedge-shaped spacecraft will be able to deliver a payload of 45,000 pounds to low Earth orbit.
Alliant's contract for the X-33 hydrogen tanks is worth $39 million. Asked to estimate the value of the VentureStar contract, Mark Messick, the company program manager for X-33, was reluctant to guess.
"It's significantly more than X-33 because that (VentureStar) will be two vehicles instead of one, and they're double the size," he said Wednesday. It's possible the contract could be about four times the X-33 agreement, or somewhere around $160 million.
Initial work on the VentureStar tanks may begin about 1999, Messick said. He is not certain how long the contract will continue, but it may be similar to the X-33 project, which should continue for 11/2 to two years.
Paul A. Ross, Alliant vice president for space and strategic systems, said the agreement is an important expansion. "We are pleased that Lockheed Martin has selected us to participate in both the prototype stage and the eventual full-scale manufacture of the first major U.S. space launch vehicle built in 25 years," he said in a prepared statement released in Minneapolis.
The unmanned X-33 is scheduled to begin test flights in 1999, with at least two landings at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah's western desert.