Russia Doubles Price For Launching US Astronauts 370
Third Position writes "NASA on Tuesday signed a contract to pay $55.8 million per astronaut for six Americans to fly into space on Russian Soyuz capsules in 2013 and 2014. NASA needs to get rides on Russian rockets to the International Space Station because it plans to retire the space shuttle fleet later this year. NASA now pays half as much, about $26.3 million per astronaut, when it uses Russian ships."
Interesting question would be, (Score:4, Interesting)
What does it cost with Shuttle?
Obvious Question (Score:1, Interesting)
How much did they pay with the shuttle, per astonaut?
Slippery Slope (Score:3, Interesting)
Its just another round of outsourcing.
Soon the USA will be lacking cutting edge skills and capacity in hi-tech manufacturing, and won't be able to compete with India.
The UK dropped all that sort of stuff in the mid-60s and look at us now. We welcome the US to the third-rate Nations club!
Re:Obvious Question (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a "ride" at the Cape where you get into a pressurized module in the cargo bay of a mockup shuttle and they rattle you around a bit. It's not fun, but I'm sure its educational or something. Anyway, it's actual size, 15 ft by 60 ft (4.6 m by 18.3 m), they cram about 80 people into it. Even the fattest Americans, who can fit in the seats, wouldn't overmass the shuttle. There's no reason they couldn't actually make this module and take that many people into space.. but of course, NASA would never do that.
Could've been swapping moon seats (Score:3, Interesting)
Disgraceful! (Score:2, Interesting)
We lead the space race, put men on the moon, landers on Mars, explored the furthest reaches of our system, made huge technological breakthroughs via the space race and now we're reduced to begging for rides from the commies?
What the hell is going on with our country?!
Re:Could've been swapping moon seats (Score:3, Interesting)
If the "moon program" had been designed as an international partnership from the beginning, with each nation focusing on the capabilities they actually have instead of stuff that they might have after pouring $9billion down the drain, Russia could have been flying the crew to orbit for free with the US supplying the heavy lift to take them beyond LEO. But no, Griffin had to go with his shockingly bad plan to put an overweight capsule on a solid rocket booster with an air-startable SSME (that doesn't exist btw) as an upper stage, followed by two redesigns in mid-stream, including the creation of a new solid rocket booster, completely defeating the purpose of using a solid in the first place. And after spending enough money to fund nearly 50 COTS programs they flew a big bottle rocket into the ocean. Is it any wonder why they canceled it?
Re:What does it cost to fill the seat? (Score:3, Interesting)
The Russians tried that once. They ended up paying NASA about $2 million per astronaut. It turns out NASA hired Hollywood accountants.
Re:Could've been swapping moon seats (Score:3, Interesting)
if the russians want to go to the moon, they dont need the US to do so. I realize that the proton with only 20 tons to LEO isnt exactly a saturn V, but in multiple launches, combined with a R7 soyuz launch for the crew, they could easily put a moon-capable craft in LEO. The russians are also planning to replace the Proton with the Angara A5, which will do 25 tons to LEO. Also the Angara A7 is being developed, which will lift 40 tons
Wikipedia also claims that russian moonshot plans in the 60's involved putting ~70 tons in LEO (compared to ~130 for Apollo). Assume some weight savings (just two or three tons) optimization, and three proton launches and one soyuz launch would put russians on the moon.
This way the russians wouldn't need any new launchers (or could leverage the new angara launchers for fewer launches), just a modular LEO-to-moon craft which incorporates soyuz, and a lander. If they wanted they could even do a custom soyuz replacing the forward module with extra fuel, although the reduced space would make the journey a bit hasher on the cosmonauts, although that could be resolved by cutting the crew to two, the third probably isnt needed in these high-automation days.
bleh, i got lost a bit, i love dreaming up these kind of projects, i would love it if the russians would just macGyver up some whack job plan and get to the moon
Re:Capitalism (Score:3, Interesting)
That is the point everyone forgets. China has only one advantage over the USA. Cheap labor. China doesn't have any other resources that the usa also has. Tapping thoseresources isjust too expensive due to labor. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of tons of resources sitting in our landfills.
The USA may collapse financially however inside of 20years we have the tools,tech, and resources to rebuild. All it will take is deflation to lower labor costs, or a total war on the scales of WW II.
Re:Capitalism (Score:3, Interesting)
First in space, first satellite, first man in space, first orbit, first woman in space, first probes on Venus and Mars, first space station--not bad for a bunch of thugs, eh comrade?
That was communism, not the new thugarchy. I don't see the Russian space industry innovating quite as much lately. The US neither, by the way.
Re:beating the commies to the moon (Score:3, Interesting)
The X-15 design doesn't scale up too well. Getting one person to Mach 8 and 30 km altitude took a B-52 launching craft. Add enough fuel to reach orbit and your space plane is too large to be launched by aircraft, and you're back to a rocket design, ie exactly what Nasa ended up developing. X-15 was interesting, but let's not get too sentimental about it.
Re:Obvious Question (Score:1, Interesting)
Originally there was a labratory insert for the shuttle cargo bay, but I believe it was lost with the Challanger.
Re:Interesting question would be, (Score:3, Interesting)
A figured I'd better google some numbers. Wikipedia says $60 million or $1.3 billion per launch, depending on how you calculate it [wikipedia.org]. Nasa says $450 million per launch [nasa.gov]. NASA's figure is more expensive than Soyuz for 6 astronauts. Wikipedia's low end figure is obviously a lot cheaper (and kind of hard to believe).
That $450MM is paid to American companies and individuals, which then pay taxes on some of the money and then spend most of the rest of it in America. When they spend it, there is more tax, and again most of the untaxed amount goes to another American company or individual.
Some leaks out, but a very large chunk of the $450MM the government spends per launch comes right back in the form of taxes.
Re:Yuan (Score:3, Interesting)
First things first, bond != shares. You can own 100% of the bonds issued by a company and it won't buy you any controlling interest as long as the company is solvent.
Now, on to the real discussion. The problem we have is that free trade (without a common market) artificially imports the lower regulatory standards from the exporting country. Even in the EU, you have issues like where Danish pork producers are utilising rearing technique which are discouraged or banned in other EU countries (and getting away with it).
Of course, a part of the price differential is because of the discrepancy in the cost of production, but a big component of that is how the legal and regulatory framework is established (or not) in the exporting country. How much of the social cost of production (ie. environmental damage) is internalized through taxes and fines? How much protection is offered to workforce producing the goods?
To make free trade work, there must be a common standard of not only the products themselves, but also how they are produced.
Re:Capitalism (Score:3, Interesting)
Several unrelated points here..
---
First...
It's funny that you think all other countries only care about making money.
Money only serves the goal.
---
China's manufacturing capacity is now about the same size as the US-- it's economy is about the size of california's.
The USA as of a couple years ago was still the largest manufacturer in the world. That can't be sustaintable- things do have to even out.
---
China is going to lose a ton of money on this play to keep the Yuan up. At some point, inflation is going to kick in and make their investments pretty worthless. Trying to sell the bonds early only means they destroy the value of their investment earlier. China is willing to lose a ton of money.
---
The chinese people have a very strong racial superiority / inferiority complex going. They are a bit like the americans with manifest destiny ( "everyone who looks like a chinese person really is chinese...and we want "one china".. and the chinese people are better than the rest of the world... and we are still damn pissed about foriegn intervention last century "). The only thing that will fix that is interbreeding. So we need lots of non-chinese immigrant females to head on over there and suck up that extra 80 million bachelors (who are there because the chinese are terminating female pregnancies and in at least some documented cases, killing female children at birth ).
---
Inflation in china and india is high- 20% a year to 100% a year for wages. Things will even out-- maybe 6 more years a lot of the professional salaries will even out.
---
They are in the middle of an unbelievable housing bubble. In America, we couldn't even comprehend it. Essentially with wages of $5000-$10000, housing is going for 40 years to 20 years salary. That's like a normal house (non-mcmansion) in the US going for 1.6 million dollars.
---
I always think none of this really matters because we are overdue for a major war and most of the world systems are too fragile to handle it when it comes. So it's going to be extremely ugly when it does.
Re:Capitalism (Score:3, Interesting)
China already #1 market for new cars worldwide (Score:3, Interesting)
The US is no longer the largest market for a lot of things, from cell phones (China has more cell phone users than the entire American population) to cars (China is #1 in new car sales worldwide).
They can now pick and choose the markets the enter. It's why they refused to buy the Hummer, and why China/Walmart Refuses To Bid On NASA Contract [slushdot.com]. They're simply not that desperate for business any more, not with their economy still growing at almost 10% per year.
Re:Interesting question would be, (Score:3, Interesting)
the USSR built a ground based laser and played it over the shuttle's window
I have never heard about this, and it would be fascinating if true, but I can't find any official cite of this incident. I see a one liner on Wikipedia about it copied from another non-official source, but the NASA mission report for STS-41G does not mention anything about it: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19920075377_1992075377.pdf [nasa.gov]
Re:Capitalism (Score:1, Interesting)
China has a monopoly on rare earth metals - required for producing wind turbines and hybrid cars. So they are not completely resourceless.