NASA Buys 12 Seats On Soyuz 236
jamax noted that NASA has announced the purchase of 12 seats on Soyuz for 2014 to 2016. The price tag was $753 million — just a stitch over $62M per chair to the ISS.
Hotels are tired of getting ripped off. I checked into a hotel and they had towels from my house. -- Mark Guido
Value? (Score:3)
Seriously, isn't this cheaper than we can do ourselves? Granted, we need our own program for national security and all that, but this still sounds cheaper than what we have been doing, with the Shuttle program.
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In what way do manned space missions contribute to "national security?"
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Its harder to launch secret spy satellites from other people's rockets.
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In what way do secret spy satellites contribute to national security?
Re:Value? (Score:5, Funny)
In what way do secret spy satellites contribute to national security?
If I told you that I'd have to shoot you.
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With space lasers?
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No, with clichés and stale jokes!
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Oh, nothing at all, we are all living in a world of ice cream and unicorns.
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Ok, well what lives have been saved in the past by intel from the CIA's super secret satellites? Please be specific.
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That's pretty convenient, isn't it? To say we need NASA for national security, then not be able to justify it with specific examples?
They could save far more soldiers lives by not involving them in pointless armed conflicts and military occupations around the globe...
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They could save far more soldiers lives by not involving them in pointless armed conflicts and military occupations around the globe...
The only way to stop that shit is to get the citizenry turned around to the point where they don't think that it's a triumph for freedom when their kids join the military and get exported to some other nation to bomb brown people.
Familial military tradition is one of the worst blights on peace the world has ever known.
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The only way to stop that shit is to get the citizenry turned around to the point where they don't think that it's a triumph for freedom when their kids join the military and get exported to some other nation to bomb brown people.
That's true enough; getting people to believe your lies is usually the first step in controlling them.
Familial military tradition is one of the worst blights on peace the world has ever known.
Yeah. Conscription works SO much better.
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You just said yourself that there are no specific examples of NASA (or, specifically, NASA's launch of secret satellites) bringing home soldiers alive.
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All I asked for was some concrete examples. Call me crazy, but I don't think a little verification for unfounded claims is too much to ask for.
Instead, all you did was attack me with abject lies and stupidity. Obviously you don't have any examples, so please kindly get the fuck out.
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I simply would like to know how I am being forced to spend for a handful of live soldiers, that shouldn't even be threatened in the first place. I think a little accountability would go a long way.
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Ok, so I guess you just expect me to take your word for it. Alrighty then, problem solved!
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Intelligence makes operations and missions safer. Safer missions means less dead soldiers. Therefore, spy sats result in less dead soldiers.
Not doing the mission at all is even safer; saves more lives, and doesn't require buying a spy satellite.
Not that I'm saying intelligence gathering is a bad thing. We definitely need good intelligence, but its a double edged sword. It does lead to operations being justified that we wouldn't/couldn't do otherwise, and I'm not convinced that most of what gets done really
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Oh, that's right, they're just brown foreigners, they don't matter. Only true 'merican lives actually have value.
NASA DOES NOT LAUNCH MILITARY SPACECRAFT (Score:5, Informative)
NASA does not launch military spacecraft. That job, today, falls to the United Launch Alliance (primarily, smaller payloads can go on other US commercial providers), a wholly separate organization from NASA. (ULA does occasionally launch NASA spacecraft, but at that point, NASA is simply a customer who is buying a ride to orbit.) The last time NASA itself launched a military payload was STS-53 [wikipedia.org] in 1992. Since then, all payloads have gone up on unmanned Air-force or commercial launch vehicles. (Why is this? Challenger. The military did not want to be grounded for another two years if another shuttle had an accident.)
So no, we do not need NASA for national security, and have not since 1992.
Back to the point of the main article, I find it interesting that congress appears to be perfectly happy to send hundreds of millions of dollars to Russia for rides to orbit, but have to be dragged kicking a screaming to let NASA pay some American companies to develop the same capability, possibly for even cheaper (i.e. SpaceX's goal of 20-30 million per seat to the ISS)
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The Air Force has a parallel launch facility in California designed for launching polar orbit satellites. You can't launch polar orbit rockets from Johnson Space center due to large population centers immediately north and south of the launch site. They launched some sort of spy satellite into polar orbit earlier this year in mid January. In theory they could retool the CA launch center for manned spaceflight inside of a year, since that's what it was originally designed for (up until 1994?).
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n theory they could retool the CA launch center for manned spaceflight inside of a year, since that's what it was originally designed for (up until 1994?
1986. The first shuttle launch from Vandenberg was supposed to be in October 1986, but then Challenger happened, and they scrapped the idea.
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Good place to set up lasers and kinetic bombardment platforms?
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Not letting prying eyes see the big-ass CIA satellites that won't fit on anything but a shuttle?
The shuttle does not launch CIA satellites. If they are "big-ass" satellites, the Delta 4 Heavy launches them.
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I recall (and I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong) that it runs somewhere around $450-$550 million per shuttle mission.
On the high end with a smallish crew (6 on the last mission), thats about $91 million per seat (assuming zero-cost for cargo).
On the low-end with a larger crew (8 is on the high side), that's about $56 million per seat.
Add cargo on that and this doesn't sound so cheap -- even on the high-end (assuming my numbers are correct).
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Re:Value? (Score:4, Funny)
No, there's a fee per checked bag. Only carry-on satellites that can fit underneath the seat in front of you are allowed for safety reasons.
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No, there's a fee per checked bag. Only carry-on satellites that can fit underneath the seat in front of you are allowed for safety reasons.
Don't you just hate it when your flight is full of Russians and they stick their satellites under the seat in front of YOU?
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From the article..
"Under the contract modification, the Soyuz flights will carry limited cargo associated with crew transportation to and from the station, and assist with the disposal of trash. The cargo provided per Soyuz seat is approximately 110 pounds (50 kilograms) launched to the station, approximately 37 pounds (17 kilograms) returned to Earth and trash disposal of approximately 66 pounds (30 kilograms). "
$1.3 billion per mission (Score:2)
Simple math - even back in 2004, the shuttle program had already cost $145 billion. So even if all the subsequent flights had been free, it would still have beenover $1 billion per mission.
Part of this is due to the shuttle never achieving any of its design goals. It was supposed to have a rapid turn-around time (2 weeks), and a usable service life of between 100 and 125 flights per shuttle. The turn-around time obviously was never met, and obviously, the shuttles (
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I think that counts R&D -- as well as the cost of the Enterprise (which only flew 1 test mission but still ran about 1.2 billion to build) I was just calculating the "per mission" costs -- which I've since found can range from $400 million to $800 million (depending on cargo off setting the actual cost).
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Re:Value? (Score:4, Interesting)
The thing to bear in mind with this sort of calculation is the fact that when you pay overseas for such a thing then that's money straight out your economy, whilst if you in house then even if it costs a little more much of that will come back as income and corporate tax, as well as maintaining highly skilled engineers and perhaps in some sections of such a programme even fostering an export market for certain items which in itself leads to greater tax income.
It's a similar point with military contracts- many in the UK criticise the expense of the Eurofighter programme for example, but ultimately when you factor in tax returns from workers, and factor in the export market it's not a terribly unreasonably priced project overall with added benefits of maintaining skillsets and avoiding independence on too many outside factors. Certainly we'd be far worse off economically and politically here in the UK had we chosen to simply buy in say the French Rafale, or a US or Russian alternative even if the initial price per plane was lower.
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Seriously, isn't this cheaper than we can do ourselves?
Well it would be if America would have won the space race. But they declared victory half-way through and decided not to compete anymore. Soon the US will not even have a manned space program at all. Reminds me of a certain fairy tale involving turtles and hares...
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We don't need a manned program. Let others squander the money on space tourists while we grow remote-manned systems and actually explore space.
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it may be time-consuming, but is it really that expensive to fill out a form?
Time is money. And each form filled out by an actual engineer needs to be handled and checked and processed by a whole crew of clerical people. More money.
<rant>Speaking from the commercial aviation side of the fence, most of these clerical people are the idiot nephews or son-in-laws of someone higher up in management. So they aren't going anywhere.</rant>
Math problems (Score:2)
More like just a stitch under $63M, yes?
Here's hoping Dragon rolls out smoothly...
rewind 40 years (Score:5, Interesting)
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I was thinking something similar. I see it as quite a nice thing, it shows a real improvement in international relations, though I can imagine a lot of Americans (especially in "the South") being outraged or embarrassed.
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It's only temporary, sounds like NASA still have plans for their own platform in the future. And even if that didn't happen, why do you care in the end whether it happens in your own country or not? Especially in the context of something like space exploration, we should be focusing on humanity as a whole and not just individual countries. I can understand slightly being proud of your own country, but in the end it makes about as much sense as supporting sports teams.
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It's only temporary, sounds like NASA still have plans for their own platform in the future. And even if that didn't happen, why do you care in the end whether it happens in your own country or not? Especially in the context of something like space exploration, we should be focusing on humanity as a whole and not just individual countries. I can understand slightly being proud of your own country, but in the end it makes about as much sense as supporting sports teams.
I don't want to start telling my son "You can be anything, as long as you move to a less backward country [wikipedia.org], like Russia, China, India, Ecuador, Japan, Iran or Malaysia."
(But FWIW, I can agree with most of your point)
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It's only temporary, sounds like NASA still have plans for their own platform in the future
Given the current state of the US economy, "temporary" seems like an overly-optimistic way to describe the situation. Good luck launching anything when the US dollar reaches parity with the Peso.
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Progress costs downtime. Apollo ended in 1975 and the STS started in 1981. That's 6 years of downtime. Thats how you pay for these projects. You don't have funding to launch and build a new system.
The "precious snowflake" generation should be able to handle some downtime in US launches just like the baby boomer generation before them. Making this out to be some huge discrepancy and unique event in US spaceflight is wrong and being overly dramatic.
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Word. The space shuttle program has basically been bleeding the rest of NASA's budgets dry, due to international contracts to deliver stuff to the ISS.
And the ISS was basically created to give the space shuttle something to do.
Now that the ISS is finally more or less complete, the shuttle's job is finished so it can now retire. And NASA is going to finally have a substantial budget to reallocate towards other cool stuff (assuming it doesn't get completely eviscerated for other things).
And while it pains m
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It was more a cheap swipe at the entirety of the US, but the south does seem to be worse when it comes to bigotry. Ironic statement perhaps, but accurate.
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Could anyone in 1971 predicted the expensive and dangerous boondoggle that the STS turned out to be and how we held onto it for at least 10 more years than one can sanely justify? Or how the whole 'reusable' spacecraft didn't pan out economically? Or how a modular capsule design was, in the end, superior to a monolithic shuttle design?
Or that private enterprise is building capsules and rockets for human spaceflight? Or how NASA's budget is a paltry 30 billion while our defense and war budgets along with our
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Not to mention that the first shuttle launch was in 1981 and previous to that the last time the US was in space was in 1975. So that's 6 years of downtime. If those people can handle it then then we can certainly handle it now.
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$752B is a pretty damn good deal. The shuttle program cost about $5B a year to run, and that was nearly all operational and maintenance costs -- the R&D work was done back in the 1970s and most of the engineers who developed the STS are retired or nearing retirement. It's a stellar (har) achievement from our parents' generation.
Keeping shuttles flying is the equivalent of keeping the conglomerate's old COBOL accounting system limping along for a few more years. It works, but it's less than optimal and
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We don't NEED to put humans in space with any urgency. The 1960s space program was Cold War genital display, that is all.
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Well, technically, we probably could. But safety and environmental concerns probably would not allow it.
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We couldn't build another Saturn V even if we wanted to, right?
Using our own 60s tech isn't even an option. And the Ares 1 was going to cost $40B to build, not counting the launch costs.
I'm glad we won the space race.
The only reason why not is political (as in NASA politics). Contrary to rumours, all the plans are intact, and many of the engineers are still around - they went on to work on the shuttle program.
Of course, having a launch vehicle that cost $100 million per launch and with more than 5x the payload makes the shuttle program look ... stupid. Looking at payload to orbit, the shuttle program's total cost of 170 billion for 135 missions could have been replaced with 25 Saturn V launches. Even if the Saturn
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The only reason why not is political (as in NASA politics). Contrary to rumours, all the plans are intact, and many of the engineers are still around - they went on to work on the shuttle program.
They're all working at Boeing now.
Seriously, they transfered decades ago, at the beginning of the Shuttle program. If you took every one of them (even re-animating the dead ones) and put them together today, it couldn't be done. You have to keep your skills honed and processes up to date.
Soyuz has had the advantage of adopting current methods, tooling and parts to its program throughout an ongoing program. The Saturn program needs 4 bit microprocessors. Good luck with that.
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Hey, the Russian went to space first anyway, it's not like americans were at the bleeding edge.
So true. The americans needed to take initiative so they developed a plan to land on the moon, and then JFK told everybody that this was the most important step in the universe so far and the first one to accomplish it would rule the world. And it became true. But not because america landed on the moon first, but because russia was bleeding money faster than the us and had to give up the race first.
The next time s
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Also landing and operating a rover on mars is not even close to the same thing to landing one on the moon.
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Strangely enough I saw a Science Channel (yes there was actual Science-related stuff on there) about the Russian mission to put a rover/tank on the moon. They built it and succeeded only a short time after the US moon landing with people. It took the US until 1996 Mars mission to have a similar capability. Perhaps the Soviet space program was ahead of its time in other ways, too?
You're joking, right?
Sure, Edmund Hillary might have climbed Everest in the 50's, but my grandpa was climbing on top of his house at about the same time. Perhaps gramps was ahead of Sir. Hilary in other ways, too?
American pride aside (Score:2)
I actually think this sort of cooperation is a good thing. The space race and Cold War have been over for a long time. It's about time we started acting like it.
Re:American pride aside (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed. Wouldn't it be much better & cheaper to create a global space agency. Use the best technology from all the member countries.
We are one people and its about time we started acting like it.
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That's been my thought for a while. But in reality, I suspect we won't see an "Earth Space Agency" until we encounter some sort of global space-based event (alien first contact or a large asteroid on a confirmed collision path). I'd hope for the former not because it's more probable, but because if we wait for the latter it might be to late.
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And more importantly ESA is already taken ^.^
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Agreed. Wouldn't it be much better & cheaper to create a global space agency. Use the best technology from all the member countries. We are one people and its about time we started acting like it.
That's a cute notion, but it'll never happen. An international space agency would be so full of politics that it'd be more likely to use the worst technology from each country than the best. We can't even get a long well enough inside the US to properly fund and direct NASA, and you want to throw international politics into the mix?
Still, I'll give credit where credit is due, its a good dream. Though I think for the significant future it will remain a dream.
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We have one in europe, you are welcome to join I'm sure. You just can't walk in and demand to be in charge from square one.
Shamefull (Score:2)
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This is already happening with COTS and programs like SpaceX. It's just it's going to be another 5 years or so before it's ready.
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What exactly is so shameful about international cooperation in regard to the *international* space station? The Cold War has been over for a long time now, you know. And I'm more than a little sick of the residual pride of some of my fellow Americans. To be honest, it was bad enough to put up with all the cocky nationalism DURING the Cold War, much less 20 years later.
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The cold war is over, yet the US and Russia are still the two primary arms suppliers of the world, and IIRC, we raised a big stink over France selling bleeding edge naval technology to Russia. The "Cold War" might be over, but that's only because we haven't come up for a new name for it yet. 20 years is a blink of the eye when it comes to imperialist global war.
Depending on Putin (Score:3)
More disconcerting is the fact that ANY serious dispute with Russia will need to be taken into account as they could refuse to launch to the ISS (or let our astronauts down) in a diplomatic crisis.
Depending on another country that you are not the best friends with to provide you with the ONLY transportation to your space station does not sound like a good idea.
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While I agree 100 percent that this is not a clever idea, I have to nitpick that this thing up there is named the ISS and not the USSS for a reason. It's our all, not your space station. :)
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Erh... let's be sensible and can the anti-Russian sentiments for a moment?
Let's see... diplomatic struggles between Russia and the US. And they refuse to let the astronaut return. First of all, how? The "escape pod" that's by default docked can be used under any circumstances whatsoever, by anyone able to use it (which, I'd assume, every astronaut gets training in by default. Everything else is just plain dumb). So telling him "no" will probably result in an "up yours, undocking NOW!".
And second, why? What'
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There is no such thing as "best friends" between countries. There may be countries controlled by a common force but that is not the same thing at all.
Re:so what ? (Score:4, Interesting)
...no commercial value, minimal scientific value .... basically worthless for long term space exploration
There were plans to do all of that. Cut to save money of course.
now build a tanking platform with robotic spacecraft construction/assembly/food production/power generation/roid mining gear at lagrange points l1/l2 for staging earth/moon/mars/europa missions
Hmm. Lets see how that would play out. Well, we had to bail out a banker whom was a major campaign donor, so there goes the cash for the storage tanks. Add an expensive unwinnable permanent land war in Asia, so we had to cut the robot arm and food production bay to buy ammo. Social security is running out of cash so we'll cut the asteroid mining mission too.
Leaving us, yet again, with:
... they can sit there and stare out at the earth from the ... portholes for six months at a shot ...
Mix and repeat...
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Actually, no the ISS can't stay in orbit without intervention. It's called "Orbital Decay." The ISS experiences atmospheric friction, even at the altitude that it's at. The Space Shuttle regularly uses its thrusters to boost the ISS's orbit at least once a year. I believe that the russian capsule can do the same thing. If we abandoned the station, it would come down in just a couple of years all on its own. Maybe it was a waste of money to build it in the first place, but letting it come down would be
spacex (Score:3)
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Or to put it another way, if NASA bought flights from SpaceX at the Russian rates, they're essentially saying they can afford to pay $400m for a 7 seat flight, or $190m for a 3 seater.
And there are fucktards in Congress specifically trying to prevent NASA buying commercial crew flights. Why? (I'm from a different country and that offends me. You guys should be setting things on fire.)
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Pork.
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Since Falcon 9 + Dragon (booster + capsule, which is what you actually meant, as otherwise there are no seats) is some years from being operational (which is why NASA is buying seats on Soyuz in the first place) - you haven't 'saved' anything. Nor do two Falcon/Dragon flights replace the 6 (at a minimum) to 12 (at a maximum)* Soyuz flights, as the flights are intended to rotate small numbers of crew at a time over a period of two years.
* The number of flights depends on how many seats (1 or 2) the US occup
i'd rather they spend the money on a new spaceship (Score:4, Interesting)
NASA needs to get their shit together, and develop their own damned spacecraft so we don't have to borrow Russia's ships. If Congress can bail out the evil, lying, fraudsters called BANKS, they can fund science and technology research.
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Science does not hold your country hostage. It can't say "Nice mortgage you have there, shame if someone had to foreclose it to cover his own losses".
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With less than 1/2 of one percent of the annual federal budget, this isn't going to happen any time soon. Maybe if we can stand down the war machine for a while....
Anyway, Constellation was looking like a viable option. Unfortunately, it was way over budget. With the scrapping of Constellation, I think we're going to see some commercial partnerships forming where the launch vehicles will be owned and possibly operated by the contractor.
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NASA needs to get their shit together, and develop their own damned spacecraft so we don't have to borrow Russia's ships.
You try getting your shit together when your mission, mandate, creed, materials list, allowed technology, and half of your design are handed down to you from on high by a bunch of technologically clueless dipshits that spent their high school years playing the popularity game rather than learning calculus.
You want NASA to build it's own damned spacecraft that isn't a bloated, over budget, expensive piece of shit? Get their funding out of the hands of the petty, squabbling, corrupt retards that are on th
In Soviet Russia, Soyez Launches YOU! (Score:2)
Quite a raise in prices (Score:2)
Who negotiated that, Madoff?. Tito paid only 20 megabucks, and that included the stay on the ISS, not only the transport up and down. Taking a little volume discount into the equation, everything over 15 M$ is plain ripoff.
btw, someone got a spare hundred M$ for me? I wanna go to the moon!
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Who negotiated that, Madoff?. Tito paid only 20 megabucks, and that included the stay on the ISS, not only the transport up and down. Taking a little volume discount into the equation, everything over 15 M$ is plain ripoff.
...
On the other hand there is the hotel room pricing model. Some people stay in a room real cheap (online auction sites, special promotions etc.), at a price below what the hotel could sustain as its across the board rate. Why? The room would have been unfilled, and they carry overhead to take care of the room anyway - it adds to their balance sheet to fill it even at deep discount rates.
Tito was piggy-backing on a planned ISS mission. He was quite literally just paying for an unused seat. The subsidy to Tito
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Then make it 20 M$, not 15. Should be enough for first class with that. :)
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Here I thought my airfare was bad... (Score:2)
Should Have Used 'Name Your Own Price' (Score:2)
Priceline - William Shatner Busts A Move [youtube.com]
NASCAR Solution (Score:3)
On a positive note... (Score:2)
By centralizing this service to Russia, and by providing additional funds (assuming they go towards program), you perhaps allow for more development and technology being put forward for this sort of thing, rather than having two super nations running parallel programs essentially wasting money.
Sort of sucks for the USA, I'll admit. However as a human race thing, it might turn out for the best.
This will also undoubtedly be a major source of Russian pride, and may well be better funded as a result.
Anyway just
Russian charge extra for fuel and oxygen (Score:2)
Tortoise and Hare (Score:2)
It was a philosophical difference and we lost. While the Russians refined their skills building (and improving) the same old technology, our Congress was distracted by lobbyists for the STS contractors to build the Next Big Thing. Just a case of, "Ohhhh! Shiny!"
Perhaps we need someone like Stalin, who can go through the ranks of politicians and upper management from time to time and thin the herd. If the mahogany row crowd had to worry about the occasional visit from a death squad, maybe they'd keep their
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You should sue your pusher for selling you some really bad dope, man!
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Why not outsource to India?
Because the countdown would sound funny.
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Plus one dead in 1967 [wikipedia.org].