More On The Atkastrium Liberty Project

Clark Lindsey has posted more info about ATK/Astrium's Liberty project, including a link to a post on NASASpaceFlight.com and the new Liberty website (the source of the attached figure). He points out that the website is light on details and heavy on claims about safety and reliability.

Perhaps ATK hired away one of those math whizzes from NASA Huntsville who could stand before the Augustine panel and claim to calculate the reliability of a never flown vehicle to four decimal places. It's no surprise that anything with an extended Shuttle SRB will stir controversy.

Earlier, Alan Boyle posted a caveat regarding funding and quoted operational date of 2015:

Will @LibertyLaunch go forward if no NASA funding? Rominger of @atk says "yes" but "no way" to do crewed flight by 2015 w/o NASA aid.-- Alan Boyle (@b0yle) May 10, 2012