ATK moving forward with Liberty rocket, Salt Lake Tribune

"Regardless of whether the government agrees to help fund Alliant Techsystems' rocket that would take astronauts to the International Space Station, the Utah company intends to move forward with its project because it believes there will be no shortage of commercial customers. ATK and a partner on Tuesday unveiled the two-stage Liberty rocket that they want NASA to use as the next launch vehicle for the U.S. space program. And they are hoping the space agency will see fit to award it at least a portion of a $200 million pool of money set aside for promising projects."

Keith's 10 Feb note: Of course U.S. taxpayers have already made a huge down payment on Ares-1 development. I wonder how ATK gets to use the Ares 1 modified transporter, launch pad, VAB, etc - also modified with lots of tax dollars. That won't cost ATK money? Isn't the use of these designs and facilities using NASA money?

Keith's 11 Feb 12:42 pm update: According to ATK's George Torres, who called and left me a voicemail statement: "The ATK spokesperson spoke out of line. What we're really about is to meet goal of CCDev to acclerate commerical program and to try and mature the program and working on the integrate these two systems as part of the deveopment. CCDev funding would acclerate this by 2 years." He said that he'd sent me a statement by email at some point.

Keith's 11 Feb 2:14 pm update: Here is ATK's statement: "These comments were inaccurate and from someone who didn't have full insight into the business model as presented for the CCDev2 acquisition. Specifically, our proposal is focused on the goals of CCDev-2, which are to "further advance commercial Crew Transportation System (CTS) concepts and mature the design and development of elements of the system such as launch vehicles and spacecraft." Overall, it really responds to the main goal of the procurement, which is to "accelerate the development of commercial crew systems." If we do win a CCDev-2 contract we can accelerate our first flight two years from 2015 to 2013. With the payload capabilities of Liberty and its low price, we believe it will be a strong competitor for CCDev-2. As for use of KSC facilities, we are responding to NASA's request on how we would utilize KSC facilities (just like other potential contractors) on a leased basis."