Sierra Nevada Corp. Files Legal Challenge Against NASA Commercial Contracts 127
New submitter Raymondware sends an update to last week's news that NASA had awarded contracts to Boeing and SpaceX to provide rockets for future manned spaceflight. Now, one of their competitors, Sierra Nevada Corp, has announced it will launch a legal challenge to the contracts. The company claims the government is spending $900 million more than it needs to for equivalent fulfillment, and they're demanding a review. They add,
Importantly, the official NASA solicitation for the CCtCap contract prioritized price as the primary evaluation criteria for the proposals, setting it equal to the combined value of the other two primary evaluation criteria: mission suitability and past performance. SNC’s Dream Chaser proposal was the second lowest priced proposal in the CCtCap competition. SNC’s proposal also achieved mission suitability scores comparable to the other two proposals. In fact, out of a possible 1,000 total points, the highest ranked and lowest ranked offerors were separated by a minor amount of total points and other factors were equally comparable.
Boeing bought more politicians. (Score:4, Insightful)
Leaving out Boeing would be budget suicide for NASA.
Re:Boeing bought more politicians. (Score:4, Interesting)
Leaving out Boeing would be budget suicide for NASA.
No one should be left out because there should be no contract. Instead, NASA should be fostering a spot market for launches. They should have a separate bid for each launch: "We want X satellite in Y orbit, and insured for Z dollars." Then give the launch to the lowest bidder. That way each company can work continuously to cut costs and improve services, knowing that if they leapfrog the competition, they can win the next launch, instead of being locked out for years.
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No one should be left out because there should be no contract. Instead, NASA should be fostering a spot market for launches. They should have a separate bid for each launch: "We want X satellite in Y orbit, and insured for Z dollars." Then give the launch to the lowest bidder. That way each company can work continuously to cut costs and improve services, knowing that if they leapfrog the competition, they can win the next launch, instead of being locked out for years.
For values of 'satellite' that include human-carrying s/c, and exlcude what would colloquially be called 'satellites'. And even if the contract was for a single launch, there would still be a contract, unless you are advocating for handshake deals.
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And even if the contract was for a single launch, there would still be a contract, unless you are advocating for handshake deals.
When you read with context, you are wrong, and he's right. A spot contract would be done, but not a sole-source contract (the usual one) or other exclusive longer-term contracts.
Re:Boeing bought more politicians. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd love to see that too. The companies tend to argue that sans some sort of contract down the line it isn't cost effective to invest in a system when they might not ever see a return from it.
There is some validity in that especially if no company takes you offer which might be the case.
That said... I too would like it to work as you describe. On a launch by launch basis. As to cost being the primary critiera... I agree it should be a very important or even primary one. I only worry about safety etc. Yeah, the insurance costs could help manage things but the insurance industry can't predict failure rates without statistics and that requires a significant amount of data that would not exist. To that end, you would have to audit the safety and reliability of each design as best you could. Yes, they could be corrupt and say designs are bad when they're not. But the alternative is to just let everything be determined statistically which would require a significant number of failures to give you some baselines on each design.
Anyway, generally favorable... just think you'd have to be careful about it. People tend to be very intolerant to failures in this industry. Remember NASA crashed a few probes into Mars under its "better, faster, cheaper" model... and then retired that policy with the result that now they do everything very slowly and quite expensively to make sure everything is perfect. If you have too many crashes people are going to insist the damn things be better built and that will change the model back to what we have now. So... just keep that in mind.
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I suspect we're moving rapidly towards that state, but for now NASA and a few other government agencies abroad are the primary customers for orbital lanches. I suspect the various commercial interests are too poorly organized and risk-averse to book many flights with the new kids, and I certainly wouldn't want to be the entrepreneur in the position of building a hundreds-of-millions dollar throw-away bottle rocket on the *hope* that somebody would pay for a launch, not to mention enough additional launc
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but how could companies justify plowing in a whole bunch of cash if they don't have assurances in place that the cash will be recouped?
How could companies justify plowing money into oil wells, semiconductor plants, toy factories, apple orchards, etc. if they don't have assurances in place that the cash will be recouped? Yet people invest in those things everyday. What makes launch services any different?
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There are a number of other organisations who are interested in putting people up.
SpaceX has signed an agreement with Bigalow to launch their habitats and send people up to them.
I'm sure the Europeans would buy rides on US launches
So while NASA is the primary customer, there are others who will also use the facility once it exists.
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Since there is more than one customer for the things you mentioned, they can be reasonably assured of being able to sell their product and making a return.
Here, we are talking about manned space launches. There aren't enough customers in that market to enter without a contract.
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Because all of those things were able to start small, relatively speaking, where only a handful of people were necessary to get the initial ball rolling. Even semiconductors; We looked at a house for its detached garage and the previous
Re:Boeing bought more politicians. (Score:5, Insightful)
This contact is for carrying people in to LEO, not satellites or cargo. Your argument doesn't work for human rated launchers.
First, it is difficult and expensive to human rate a launch vehicle so not very many companies are going to do it without a reasonable chance of getting business.
It is also probably not a place you want a company cutting corners to low ball a contract bid. The first priority is keeping the cargo alive, not saving a few dollars by going with launch-by-night Rockets-R-US.
Re:Boeing bought more politicians. (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think low-bidding should ever be a consideration. That's how Thiokol got in to the STS and boardroom creep killed Challenger. The bottom line overrode safety considerations - the engineers said "You launch, the vehicle will explode", the board disagreed. They wanted to save however many thousands of Dollars on yet another launch hold and just fucking light that thing off. The ultimate price in human life was collected.
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I don't think low-bidding should ever be a consideration. That's how Thiokol got in to the STS
Baloney. That is the opposite of what happened. The boosters were made in Utah because a senator from Utah headed the appropriations committee that dealt with NASA. The explosion had nothing to do with low-ball capitalism, and everything to do with sleazy pork barrel politics.
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The engineers new ahead of time that the gasket was likely to fail. They informed management in a timely manner. At that point where the thing was built was no longer relevant, the question was simply do we delay the launch and replace/reengineer the gasket, or not?
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He was alluding to the fact that the booster was only segmented because it had to be shipped from a land-locked state. Originally it was to be built in one piece and sent by water.
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In order to evaluate this, we really need to know how many times the engineers advised against launch, and how serious they were. If there were engineers advising against most launches, this protest is much less significant.
BTW, the engineers were not advising replacing the O-rings. They were saying that the O-rings were not rated for launches at the temperature predicted for launch time. Delaying the launch for warmer weather would presumably have averted the disaster.
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Leaving out Boeing would be budget suicide for NASA.
No one should be left out because there should be no contract. Instead, NASA should be fostering a spot market for launches. They should have a separate bid for each launch: "We want X satellite in Y orbit, and insured for Z dollars." Then give the launch to the lowest bidder. That way each company can work continuously to cut costs and improve services, knowing that if they leapfrog the competition, they can win the next launch, instead of being lo
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You have to build not only the rocket, but a tower to carry the crew to the top of the rocket along with an arm to get the astronauts into the vehicle (which is not compatible/spacecraft). Escape systems need to be installed. It's very expensive, and it would never be built without assurance that the demand is there.
Then guarantee the demand. It still doesn't require contracts. Notice here that Boeing isn't actually getting a long term contract or guarantee of business in the first place. They're building all that expensive stuff just because NASA gave them four billion dollars (well, will give them, over the course of the next few years).
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Then give the launch to the lowest bidder.
No that's a totally dumbass idea because it's so easily gamed. I can always undercut the competition. Sure the launch will fail, and they might even try to get their money back. But by that stage, it's all been spent so the company will simply fold.
Going for the lowest bidder no matter what is a great way to get screwed over by someone unscrupulous and frankly very few companies operate such a policy either. I actually had some building work done a while back and en
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This won't happen either; it's very exp
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In this scenario only SpaceX would play. The total cost of developing just the spacecraft runs in the hundreds of millions of USD.
Only SpaceX is committed to building their spacecraft regardless of NASA due to their Mars ambitions.
Human transport into space is a very low volume, high cost market, it's not like the looser will pickup some business anyhow.
The system just doesn`t work like that.
That being said, technically I would prefer Boeing were eliminated. Too expensive a solution, riding on top of an exp
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Leaving out Boeing would be budget suicide for NASA.
No one should be left out because there should be no contract. Instead, NASA should be fostering a spot market for launches. They should have a separate bid for each launch: "We want X satellite in Y orbit, and insured for Z dollars." Then give the launch to the lowest bidder. That way each company can work continuously to cut costs and improve services, knowing that if they leapfrog the competition, they can win the next launch, instead of being locked out for years.
Except there is not an existing manned spaceflight market, just like prior to the commercial cargo contracts their was not a commercial cargo market. If you award a contract to the lowest bidder (or for that matter, any other criteria) before any hardware exists, then only one company will develop the hardware. This is how it used to work, and is exactly what these contracts are meant to avoid. If you only have a single winner, and that winner is developing the hardware based on the contract they won, th
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That would add inefficiencies to the process as well as limit investment in long term higher capability solutions in favor of playing it safe.
At this point a certain amount of customization is generally required to be made for the payloads going up. Some missions offer more flexibility than others, but generally you have to know the launch system ahead of time, not pick it after the fact.
From the launch company's perspective, they can only reach as far as they can be assured they can afford. From the inve
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right!! the country of India just proved how they can get the job done, with a satellite that cost less then some moronic movie, and it turned out to be a success.
I'm not yelling at you, but the entire NASA program is a waste of money and time. How one nation can do what NASA does with a cheap but effective solution.
NASA gives out contracts to companies that are infective and expensive, compared to companies that are cheaper but still get the job done. Boeing is a laughing joke to begin with cutting ties wi
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The difference being that they saved on everything. The main reason why it was so cheap was because payload was positively tiny. It's not actually very expensive to get a light payload into space.
The costs increase as the weight of payload and accuracy requirements go up. They increase further as durability requirements on hardware, reliability requirements (very stringent on manned flights for example) and other similar factors go up.
India did an excellent job with their project. But it was still quite exp
Manned space flight! (Score:1)
Sounds so exciting until you realize that low Earth orbit is closer to me than New York City is to Montreal, and I can go there by bus and explore something infinitely more fascinating than a sucking void.
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The Atlas V rocket that Boeing will use to launch the CST-100 has launched the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Mars Science Laboratory. It's not just about LEO and maintaining the ISS, although that is a short-term goal. SpaceX also has their sights set on more ambitious goals, but sadly they are restricted by NASA's budget and goals -- there simply are no commercially viable space missions beyond satellite launches right now.
NASA engineer says you can't (Score:2)
> One could orbit the (airless) moon at an altitude of 2000 feet
That's what I thought, but former NASA engineer Randall Munroe (of xkcd fame) says you can't. Something about orbital physics involving gravity that I don't understand. I wonder who is right. I'm guessing the guy who did orbital physics for a living, although I don't understand it.
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If you can't provide a cite, my guess would be the lunar mascons are the issue—not the orbital physics.
There are only certain orbits around the moon that are stable.
gravity equal and opposite to centripital force (Score:2)
I looked and found more about it. You could of course fly around the moon at an altitude of 500 meters. Orbit has a specific definition it seems - centripital force being equal and opposite to gravity, so they balance out. Anyone inside the craft therefore feels zero gravity. If gravity pushes your into your seat as the craft flies around, that's not orbit, that's flying around.
Centripital force is small when you're moving almost in a straight line. Traveling just above the ear
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You got it almost right.
Centripetal force IS gravity.
The centripetal force that is needed for any circular (or curved) movement is provided by the gravitational pull of the moon/earth, e.g. the gravitational force. They are not opposite to each other.
in space, you cannot turn? (Score:2)
> The centripetal force that is needed for any circular (or curved) movement is provided by the gravitational pull of the moon/earth, e.g. the gravitational force.
Think about what that would imply, it would mean that it's impossible to turn in space, away from the earth's gravity. In fact, it woild mean that here on earth you could only turn downward, toward the earth. Nascar drivers couldn't turn left, because all curved movement must curve downward.
G-force and gravity behave in indistinguishable
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No, they're right. In a stable orbit centripetal force = gravity, if it didn't you would need to supply another force to remain on that circular path The key phrase is "in a stable orbit" - if you add additional forces, like firing rockets, you disrupt that stability and change the size and/or shape of the orbit. Centripital force isn't some absolute wall on movement, it's simply the force that causes you to move in a curve instead of a straight line. Balance that force with another and you go back to
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feufeu said:
> centripetal force that is needed for any circular (or curved) movement is provided by the gravitational pull of the moon/earth, e.g. the gravitational force
raymorris said:
> centripetal force balances gravity. Centripetal force is not caused by EARTH'S gravity.
Immerman said:
> No, they're right.
Let me make sure I understand what you believe they are right about. You're saying that earth's gravity causes centripetal force?
So in deep space, away from earth's gravity, there is no such thi
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Not quite. Sounds like somebody fed you a confusing description at some point.
Centripetal force isn't a kind of force like gravity or magnetism is - it's a classification based on the behavior of that force in a particular scenario. Specifically it's an inward radial force that makes an object travel on a curved path, regardless of the source of that force. (centripetal: adjective. moving or tending to move toward a center.). For a bucket whirled over your head the centripetal force is supplied by the te
that word doesn't mean what I think it means (Score:2)
I said centripital when I meant centrifugal and started a long subthread / argument basically about nothing. Yeah, gravity is the centripital force in an orbit. The balancing, opposite force is what I was calling centripital.
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Ok, to be a little clearer:
The centripetal force to stay in orbit around the earth (and this is also needed for any circular (or curved) movement BTW) is provided by the gravitational pull of the moon/earth, e.g. the gravitational force.
Again, the force is directed towards the center of the (circular) orbit, hence the name centriPETAL.
yeah, I messed up the words (Score:2)
I said centripital when I meant centrifugal I guess and started a long subthread / argument basically about nothing. I understand gravity is the centripital force in an orbit. The balancing, opposite force is what I was calling centripital.
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*g* No, it's not balanced by the centrifugal force, since the centrifugal force doesn't exist. If it was balanced, the sum of both forces would be zero and the trajectory of the rocket/satellite/whatever would be straight. Turning means that you must have a force which in turn provides an acceleration which in turn changes the velocity vector. In the case of a circular orbit the velocity vector will only change it's *direction* due to the force, but not it's *value*, since both are at a right angle to eahc
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Can you provide a cite? I've read all the xkcd cartoons, What If? columns, and the recent book multiple times. I'm not remembering anything about not orbiting the moon.
Also, Munroe was a robotics engineer, and in a fairly recent cartoon claimed that the bulk of his knowledge of orbital mechanics was from Kerbal Space Program.
interesting, but I'm talking about \frac{Gm_1m_2}{ (Score:2)
I did read what you wrote. What I'm talking about is more general, it applies even to a perfectly homogeneous gravitational body.
I'm talking about the minimum gravitational altitude in terms of \frac{Gm_1m_2}{r^2}=\frac{m_2v_{T}^2}{r}.
Oh No! (Score:1)
Is this going to hurt the beer supply?
Sierra Nevada - - I love their beer! (Score:2)
I love their beer!
Really they want to challenge because the government favored Boeing by 1.5B over SpaceX which they favored by 900M over SV?
It's all fair in a corrupt faux government.
Cure the "bitcoin replaces fiat currency and that's what makes the yoke of governments work" music.
E
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This is how government contracts work.
Including the lawsuit phase, which is really the only chance the companies have to compete openly. Bids are usually keep secret from the competitors until a contract is awarded, so if they want to directly compete and argue their benefits over another's offer, the loser asks for a review.
This is business as usual.
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More likely SpaceX bid exactly, and Boeing overbid, but I guess we'll see in a few years.
For Sierra Nevada it costs little to challenge the contracts. For NASA, choosing Boeing and SpaceX made sense. Boeing has the favor of Congress, and a very long history in aerospace. SpaceX is the young upstart with a startling reach that continues to make good on promises yet has zero of the inefficiencies endemic to old fat cats like Boeing. To date, Sierra Nevada has proven precious little with expected costs wel
Another Factor? (Score:2)
It couldn't possibly be the fact that the two companies that got approved use a simple capsule like the Russians and Sierra Nevada uses a spaceplane. After the issues with the Space Shuttle I can see why NASA rejected that plan.
Re:Another Factor? (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe, probably not. All of the problems with the shuttle were not due to it being a spaceplane per se, but due to it being a sideways stack rather than a vertical one. Dream Chaser is designed instead to be on top of a rocket, either an Atlas V or Falcon 9.
Challenger failed because the failed o-ring between the segments of an SRB caused a jet of flame that impinged on the external tank. Falcon 9 doesn't use any SRBs. Atlas V doesn't use multi-segment shuttle style SRBs, and may not use SRBs at all for manned launches. Either way, that particular failure mode would be the fault of the booster and not the vehicle. In addition, by being on the top of the stack, if there is any sort of catastrophic failure of the booster, the vehicle is equipped with a launch escape system that was impossible on the shuttle.
The Columbia accident, as well as countless near-misses that could have resulted in a Columbia style accident, was due to debris detaching from the external tank and striking the orbiter. If the vehicle is on top of the stack, nothing that breaks off of the rocket can physically come into contact with the vehicle.
Therefore Dream Chaser isn't vulnerable to either of the causes of loss of a shuttle orbiter, and being a spaceplane has nothing to do with it.
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> Challenger failed because the failed o-ring between the segments of an SRB caused a jet of flame that impinged on the external tank.
Challenger and Columbia both failed for procedural reasons, not really the mechanical ones that in the end destroyed them.Richard Feynman exposed a lot of them in his biography where he discussed the investigation into the Challenger disaster. Management had one view about the reliability of the craft, and the engineers had another, which they were prevented from saying. T
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The GP argument was that Dream Chaser was rejected simply because it was a spaceplane like the shuttle, implying that the issues with the shuttle were due to it being a spaceplane. Yes, there were plenty of procedural issues that caused the mechanical issues to be a problem. If management had listened to the engineers about the limitations of the o-rings, it could have prevented the challenger disaster. Regardless, the point is that the shuttle had that particular point of failure, which Dream Chaser would
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I'm afraid that analyzing those disasters in terms of the _specific_ mechanical failures misses the point. It's possible to spend a project's entire budget, and go profoundly over budget to the point of complete failure, by trying to find and resolve each individual bug as it turns up. I'm afraid that the frequency of space shuttle failures was _amazingly_ low considering the flaws in the overall manufacturing and design process, and I do applaud the individual engineers and inspectors who did their best to
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The Columbia accident, as well as countless near-misses that could have resulted in a Columbia style accident, was due to debris detaching from the external tank and striking the orbiter. If the vehicle is on top of the stack, nothing that breaks off of the rocket can physically come into contact with the vehicle.
I always wondered after the fact if the first runs with the painted tank had the foam issue or if the paint kept it contained. I know we stopped painting it for cost and weight concerns, but sometimes, it makes more sense to spend the money. Again I dont know if it would have helped but its a question ive always wondered and never seen really discussed by people in the know
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Therefore Dream Chaser isn't vulnerable to either of the causes of loss of a shuttle orbiter,
Those were the dramatic failures. There were other issues with the Space Shuttle. There were other issues as well. One big one being that, due to the complex shape of a lifting body, the insulating tiles were very complex themselves. Even in an "uneventful" flight many tiles were damaged and needed to be manufactured and replaces. This caused extended turnaround and delayed flights. It also increased the cost of each flight significantly. It is much easier to replace panels on a simple form like a capsule t
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As is often the case... (Score:1)
it depends on your definition of "simplicity"
Nothing about a vehicle like the DreamChaser (FAR simpler than the shuttle) is all that complex. Nothing has to "deploy" for it to safely get from orbit to a runway and, unlike shuttle, it does not have APU's that need to be started before reentry in order to power the flight controls. The control surfaces of DreamChaser are all present and configured properly for reentry and landing while the vehicle is on the pad atop the launch vehicle. Aircraft control surfac
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Parachutes are emergency survival devices they are not supposed to be the way you normally fly - they are quite risky.
That's why sky divers use them only for emergencies. Pardon my sarcasm. And you're not "flying" with parachutes, but landing with them - a place where they have quite a bit of success and have turned out to be quite reliable.
Neither shuttle was lost in a situation where a capsule would have been superior; Had an Apollo capsule been ripped apart on ascent by an exploding booster as Challenger was the crew would have died just the same way (capsule crews generally have no personal escape gear like personal chutes because the capsule scheme cannot handle the extra mass, whereas post-Challenger shuttle crews DID get such equipment). Had an Apollo capsule suffered a basketball-sized hole in its heatshield its crew would have perished just as surely as Columbia's crew.
To the contrary, in the Challenger accident, two things would have been different. First, the capsule would have been on top of the vehicle. Second, it would have a launch abort system attached. That combination would have made the accident survivable.
The same goes for the Columbia a
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Also, you ignored the assertion I made that Apollo would have also killed the crew if its launch vehicle had exploded and ripped it apart in the process (as happened to Challenger). We all ASSUME the Apollo LAS would have worked, but this was never proven (tested on Little Joe II, but NEVER on Saturn).
Sounds like you should have ignored what you were thinking too.
DreamChaser has an integral launch abort system, so this shortcoming of the shuttle is not a generic "spaceplane" shortcoming
Indeed. Notice I never said anything to disagree. I didn't speak at all of DreamChaser's features which would mitigate or evade the Challenger and Columbia disasters.
Except of course that Apollo 13 very nearly put the nail in that coffin. Had the Apollo 13 explosion been a tad more energetic, it could well have cracked or holed the heat shield (and indeed nobody knew it had not at the time) whereas a shuttle-type arangement would have been safer in THAT incident (its TPS in a less-vulnerable position and the by-that-point-in-the-mission inert main engines being in the position to be hurt).
Not at all. Keep in mind that Apollo 13 accident happened just prior to a propellant burn to insert the capsule in lunar orbit. The Shuttle under the same situation would have propellant on board and some sort of active rocket engine for conducting the burn (though not necessarily t
Past performance? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Neither Boeing's CST-100 nor SpaceX's Dragon v2 (which is substantially different from Dragon v1) have any past performance for orbital flights either.
Re:Past performance? (Score:5, Insightful)
Boeing and SpaceX have BOTH demonstrated technological ability in space, SN have not.
Are you going to buy an untested car from an unknown manufacturer, load your kids in it and drive it cross country?
Or are you going to buy a Ford?
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Untested? SNC has been around for half a century, and has extensive experience building satellites. They're the ones who built all those Orbcomm satellites that SpaceX is launching.
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SNC wasn't going to launch DreamChaser, ULA was.
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The contract is not about launching the spacecraft, it is about building them and having the work in space.
Besides, SNC is going to be launched on the same vehicle that Boeing is using. The Atlas V. The only difference is that the Dream Chaser could also be launched on an Orbital Antares rocket or the Falcon 9 as well (at least it is being designed to fly on multiple launchers).
That isn't even a consideration for why SNC lost the bid.
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Uhh,
Your argument is the definition of weak, and your analogy is terrible. You should do more research before spouting off about stuff you clearly know nothing about. You'll get modded down, so most people won't see this, but I'll just leave this here for your benefit anyway.
Sierra Nevada is a *group* of companies [sncspace.com], not a single entity. And the people and companies involved absolutely have track records for "technological ability in spac
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"technological ability in space"
bears very little resmeblence to
"technological ability getting into space"
Once you've caught a ride into orbit on someone else's rocket it's just a matter of surviving radiation, thermal fluctions, and micrometeorite impacts, and making minor, low-G orbital adjustments. All important, but not really relevant to making a massive rocket to get you out of the atmosphere and up to 17,000 m/s
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.
I loved Saturn, but GM shot them in the head in the 'settlement'. But even they turned into 'just another GM brand' after a super first half dozen years, once the unions took over, and 'regular GM management' didn't run them at arm's length like they were
It was NASA's only option (Score:4, Interesting)
NASA didn't really have any other choice. They couldn't give the entire contract to Boeing without risking falling into the same defense contractor cost plus revolving door situation that has held back our space program for decades. They couldn't give the entire contract to SpaceX without causing an uproar in the "space belt" congressmen/women that could possibly scuttle the entire CCtCap/CCDev/CCDev2 program (which they've been trying to do anyway). So they took a middle of the road approach, with both SpaceX and Boeing providing launch services they keep enough political support to keep the program afloat but down the road having the two compared side by side either encourages Boeing to keep its prices reasonable to stay in the game or gives NASA the evidence to say "hey, we've got two proven launch systems and one is costing us a whole lot more than the other, why are we still using them" in a public congressional budget hearing. SNC just had the position of being the lesser of the two second chair choices, not saying its right but that's politics unfortunately.
Re:It was NASA's only option (Score:4, Informative)
And what exactly were these "milestones"? The only one that I can really confirm is the Critical Design Review, which Boeing only recently completed (no word on how close SpaceX is). Even if they aren't neck and neck with Boeing on their paperwork they should get some points owing to the fact that they're actually flying at least a version of their hardware (ISS Resupply) when Boeing is just testing out components.
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They couldn't give it to SpaceX because SpaceX didn't win according to the terms of the competition. From Bloomberg a few weeks ago, "Boeing was the only competitor to meet all of the required milestones". SpaceX was a giveaway to reduce political pressure, and hopefully SNC's protest is against the SpaceX award, which could be overturned, not Boeing's award, which is solid.
SpaceX did win based on terms of the competition and they did complete all of their milestones before the announcement. Furthermore, each company had different milestones based on their proposals and SpaceX's milestones where much more aggressive than Boeing's. For instance, SpaceX already has hardware off of their production line that will be used in a pad abort test in November and an in-flight abort test this coming January. Boeing isn't anywhere near that far along even though they "met all their mil
Beer (Score:2)
Who the hell is SNC? (Score:2)
To me, the fact that I don't know who they are tells me all I need to know about how successful they've been at launches...
SNC has an excellent aerospace history (Score:1)
SNC has a solid track record in satellites, but is probably better-known in aerospace for its aircraft work - they take production aircaft of ALL types (from small prop-jobs to big jets) and do modifications to their structures and systems to adapt them to very special (generally) government missions. As such they have excellent teams with solid experience in all aspects of all types of aerospace structures and systems as well as aerodynamics. You have not heard about them because you do nou buy satellites
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Neither satelites nor aircraft are directly relevant to surface-to-orbit scale rocketry. Show me that they can actually deliver a payload to orbit and *then* we can talk about awarding them a contract to do so.
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1) irrelevant - I'm not bidding to build a spacecraft
2) not really - aircraft don't have to deal with hard vacuum, radiation, micrometeorites, or flying through a several thousand degree plasma cloud at Mach 20 on reentry. Get rid of those and you're just dealing with a tin can and an air circulaion system.
3)Fair enough, assuming you are correct I missed that detail. Regardless though I doubt they've designed much that is supposed to be operational while being subjected those sorts of semi-chaotic G-force
dumb question (Score:2)
who the fuck are Sierra Nevada??
I know who Boeing are: they have a long history and a fantastic pedigree in aerospace engineering. Including STS components.
I know who SpaceX are as well, they're the guys who have already demonstrated the viability of a private concern running shuttle to the ISS.
Answers on a postcard, please.
Re: (Score:1)
It's unfortunate that most of the world's information [wikipedia.org] is not readily available at your fingertips [wikipedia.org]. This makes it very difficult to discover such information for yourself.
Re: (Score:2)
Okay, give me your mailing address, and I will print out the relevant Wikipedia articles and mail them to you on a postcard.
Re: (Score:2)
Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser (Score:4, Informative)
They also have a very extensive Wikipedia entry for the Dream Chaser [wikipedia.org] which goes into minute detail about every contract they have received and every milestone they have achieved. It is so detailed and gleaming that it was obviously crafted by someone in the pay of SNC.
However, it you read the whole thing you can find some very interesting information in he very last section listing their technology partners [wikipedia.org].
It turns out that Lockheed-Martin is responsible for "airframe construction and human rating of the spaceplane". SNC has designed a lifting body capsule, and hybrid rubber/NO rocket engine. Based on the partners list, it seems that they are acting as a systems integrator, and everything outside the design and rocket is not in house technology.
So if NASA is making the step to commercial human rated spaceflight, are they better off choosing companies who have already demonstrated orbital launch capabilities, or someone that does not even have the ability to build their own space capsule? When something goes wrong (and something will) imaging the finger pointing in the SNC scenario. This explains why NASA made the safe choice.
This suit, although filed by SNC, seems like an attempt by Lockheed-Martin to get a chunk of the billion dollar pie. What do they have to loose? Their name isn't on any of the legal paperwork, so they can pretend to be out of the loop. Meanwhile the congress-critters from Lockheed will be fighting it out with their counterparts from Boeing behind closed doors. This won't be decided in the courts, or in any public forum.
It's not about public policy or access to space, it's about corporate profit. If you want to know why NASA seems so screwed up, just follow the money.
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting comment... (Score:2)
"...the highest ranked and lowest ranked offerors were separated by a minor amount of total points and other factors were equally comparable."
AKA: "We were bottom, but dammit, not by that much!"
The other side of the coin (Score:2)
Enter the lawyers. It will end up costing more in the end, after they extract their many pounds of flesh. In the true tradition of the private market, money that might have gone into research or equipment goes to Marcus and Mack.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, they have done a great deal of work in the aerospace industry - what they have not done, and call me crazy for thinking this is relevant, is:
1) Build an entire surface-to-orbit launch vehicle
2) Launch said vehicle
3) Use such a vehicle to deliver a payload to orbit
Aerospace ngineering is an extremely broad field, and just becasue you can design a satelite or space-station toilet seat doesn't mean you're an expert large-scale rocket engineer.
Re: (Score:2)
Other than the contract wasn't for building a launcher in the first place, hence why the remarks about experience in building a launcher is irrelevant. The contract was for building a spacecraft that would sit on top of a launch vehicle. In the case of SNC, they were using the services of United Launch Alliance, a company who has experience in launching stuff into orbit. ULA has been putting stuff into orbit (at least their parent companies) since the 1950's. Is that enough experience?
It helps to read t