Thread: Antares Launch
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Old 04-17-2019, 09:55 PM
ManofSteele ManofSteele is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Sandy, UT
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The profile of Antares is largely based on Orbital's legacy scheme for orbital vehicles, that is correct.

Because you can't throttle down the solids at MaxQ for real-time load relief, the tendency is loft the birds higher, then "turn right and go fast" to get to orbital velocity.

The RD181s are powerful, so you will hear at the end of the burn that they gradually throttle them down to minimize loads on the vehicle prior to staging (which is the tricky part).

The flight computer records the the vehicle flight state at burnout, then calculates in real time the optimal time for second stage ignition to place the payload in the proper orbit. Not as necessary with the Antares first stage, that can be shut off by command, but a very nice way of accounting for all the variables for a multi stage solid rocket motor launch vehicle.

Congratulations to the NGIS Antares team and all the support folks at MARS that made the launch a very smooth success. I liked that they named this Cygnus for Roger Chaffee.

Matt
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