NASA Rejoins Space Race With Manned Deep Space Craft 179
Laura K. Cowan writes "NASA is back in the future-tech space race with a new manned deep space craft called the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, which aims to take astronauts on longer missions to deep space, eventually to planets such as Mars where only unmanned crafts have previously traveled. The MPCV holds 4 astronauts, is currently capable of 3-week missions, and not only could take mankind to new frontiers but is billed as being '10 times safer... than the current space shuttle.' Maybe there is hope for space travel outside the X Prize."
Re:Dissapointing (Score:4, Interesting)
Why do they insist on capsules? Why not take the advice of someone from FPA; build it at the space station and design it to refuel/load from there, eliminating the need to return to earth? We still have to get things up to the ISS, but that'll be left to the Russians and their superior rockets. We can take over 'space exploration' by just skipping that part. "Oh but what if they don't want to help us shuttle our crew/items up to the ISS one day?" No worries, Virgin and Japan/other countries are working on that! So we'll find one way or another to get to the ISS.
We'd first have to actually build a large scale Space Port, not to mention more advanced large assembly equipment and space suit assembly equipment for the staff before we can pull a Star Trek.
Re:capable for 3 week missions (Score:4, Interesting)
Next, some one should come up with a rocket that has at least the lift capacity of the old Saturn V. None of the proposed launch vehicles even come close.
Can someone in the know tell me what was wrong with Ares V (other than it was proposed by the previous Administration)? Ares 1 was a clusterfuck, but Ares V looked like a decent heavy lifter.
Re:Dissapointing (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't worry, there will be military bases up there. It'll happen shortly after private organizations make their own spacecraft for deep space travel.
Consider what would happen if a private company found asteroids made of precious metals. Like, bringing home a metric-fuck-ton of gold would devalue the gold commodities market so much, it would be worth just about as much as fine grain silicon dioxide. You think these wars for oil are rough? They'd look like a little border skirmish compared to what they'd do to the people saturating the precious metals market.
Re:Dissapointing (Score:5, Interesting)
There's an outfit called SpaceX. They build a booster called the Falcon 9. They build a BMF version of it, called the Falcon 9 Heavy.
NASA recently took all the data on the Falcon 9, and shoveled it into their cost model system. Done as a NASA project, Falcon 9 estimates out at something like 7 billion dollars. Done as a Commercial project, with NASA supervision, it still costs out at 1.5 billion. The problem with those estimates is that SpaceX did the whole shebang for about 300 million.
When your cost model system says it will cost five times as much as it actually did, either your cost model system is utter bullstuff, or you've shoveled in a HUGE amount of gold-plating and featherbedding. Probably both.