Got to love YouTube videos. Here's the company hype video on Orbital Sciences Corporation, also known as Orbital.
here's another fun one from the employees POV--obviously a recruiting video, but it does sound like a fun place to work--and possibly a frustrating one if you aren't into getting tossed into the water and told to swim. (They give their employees a LOT of individual responsibility, it seems.) Of course, they are a small company, so they can pick the best and give them more freedom to run.
Something I didn't realize is that Orbital is subcontracting the manufacture of the Cygnus cargo module they are developing to supply the International Space Station. (Remember, they have an agreement to run 8 missions between 2012 and 2016. Thales Alenia Space does a lot of module work for the ISS--their banner says they created 50 percent of the habitable volume of the ISS. That's actually very in keeping with the Orbital philosophy, I think. They take existing technologies and adapt them to new purposes. Check out Thales Alenia Space here.
Unless anyone has questions, that's it for the profile of Orbital. They have a very different approach from SpaceX, but I think they will be as successful. I certainly think it's advantageous for the US to have more than one means to access space.
