Aerospace Merger: ATK Joins With Orbital Sciences Corp

FullBandwidth writes: "Two Virginia aerospace players, Arlington-based Alliant Techsystems (ATK) and Dulles-based Orbital Sciences, are merging to create a $5 billion venture. The companies announced the merger in a joint announcement Tuesday. ATK is also spinning off its lucrative hunting gear segment into a separate company. 'The move is mutually beneficial, company executives said, as ATK looks to bolster its aerospace business and Orbital Sciences hopes to boost the scale of its existing operations as well as gain a foothold in the defense sector. ... Another beneficiary of the merger is NASA, a client of both companies. Last year, Orbital successfully completed a supply run to the international space station using its Antares rocket and Cygnus spacecraft. Orbital’s expansion after the merger will make it a bigger player in the commercial space sector as it competes with the likes of SpaceX, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s company, said Howard Rubel, an equity research analyst at Jefferies.'"

Re:ATK

[Anonymous Coward]

ATK needs to stick to missiles and stop fucking up human spaceflight with its dangerous and uncontrollable firecrackers.

I worked in engineering at Kennedy Space Center when the Challenger disaster occurred. I was
on site that day.

Thikol engineers actually cautioned against the launch of the shuttle due to the unusually cold ambient temperature
at the launch site.

It was NASA which made the final decision to launch, and the decision was made against the recommendations of
some NASA staff as well as engineers from Thikol. So the fault for the events which followed the launch
really lies with the NASA decision-makers who chose to take a risk using equipment in temperatures for
which that equipment was not designed. So it is unfair to malign Thiokol when the disaster would not have
happened if NASA had listened to Thiokol.