As NASA Seeks Next Mission, Russia Holds the Trump Card 250
Geoffrey.landis (926948) writes "After the space shuttle retired in 2011, Russia has hiked the price of a trip to the International Space Station, to $71 million per seat. Less well recognized is the disparity in station crews. Before the shuttle stopped flying, an equal number of American and Russian crew members lived on board. But afterwards the bear began squeezing. For every two NASA astronauts that have flown to the station, three Russians have gone. Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this?"
Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Dragon is already reusable, and Falcon 9R first stage looks like it's gonna be reusable soon. (reusable 2nd stage seems more doubtful considering the enormous reentry speeds involved)
If or when they start doing regular launches with the reusable Dragon and F9R, how low do you think they can get the price per seat down to? Russians are charging $71m per seat, can SpaceX get it down to $1m per seat?
Re:So many mistakes. (Score:5, Interesting)
The point of the ISS wasn't really to do science in space, but rather to learn the problems and solutions of long term habitation.
Re:So many mistakes. (Score:5, Interesting)
The point of the ISS wasn't really to do science in space, but rather to learn the problems and solutions of long term habitation.
Right. And that is science!
I'm not disagreeing with you. The ISS is the only place to do that kind of science, which the parent you were responding to seems to think there is some cheaper way of doing.
Re:Eric Burger asks, how did it come to this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Because for the second time in my life the US has retired a working manned system long before the replacement was ready.
Can you imagine the Have retiring all the nuclear subs in service before the next generation was in service? We did it with Apollo and we did it with STS.
It just shows that manned space flight and space flight in general are not priorities which IMHO SUCKS!!!!!!!