NASA Awards Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser an ISS Commercial Resupply Contract (examiner.com) 57
MarkWhittington writes: The Verge reported that NASA has awarded the second round of contracts for the commercial resupply program. Two companies, SpaceX, and Orbital Sciences, which have been hauling cargo to the International Space Station in the first phase of the program, will receive contracts to fly at least six flights each to the ISS through 2024, the anticipated end of operations year for the space station. But Sierra Nevada has also gotten a six flight commitment, using a cargo version of its Dream Chaser spacecraft.
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Lots of grim faces when they didn't get the commercial crew contract.
They've never flown a vehicle, except for in-atmosphere aerodynamic tests, and they've only announced a second round of tests last October. I'd be surprised if they make delivery deadline.
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They've never flown a vehicle
Except for a whole bunch of satellites they've built for other customers and components they've built for other spacecraft builders. Sierra Nevada Corporation isn't exactly new to spaceflight, but they are new to this kind of vehicle.
The Dream Chaser in particular was originally developed for the Commercial Crew program at NASA and very nearly won that contract too. If anything, this cargo resupply is likely a much better fit if you think they are not quite so ready for flying crews up to the ISS. It is
read the headline, thought it was about beer (Score:2)
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And that's not even getting t
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It should be noted that while they did contract out a majority of the design and construction they operated those systems themselves after their completion and had a heavy hand in developing most of them.
What you are describing is how NASA did stuff prior to the 1980's. Since then, even the operations have been handled by other contractors like United Space Alliance, who prepared and launched the Space Shuttle starting during the Ronald Reagan administration.
What makes this commercial cargo contract different is that in the past companies like Boeing and Rockwell International would sign a "cost-plus" contract where the government took the financial risk for what happened. The government agreed that they
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It's contracted out design and production since the Apollo era.
Yes and AFAIK, this was historically done with "cost plus" contracts that had no incentive for cost reduction. Basically the companies could name their cost for a project and then be guaranteed a profit margin on top. The companies would add complex management structures and build overly complex machines in order to maximize their profit. NASA became a key tool in dispersing "pork barrel" money to various congressional districts.
The model for the contracts with SpaceX and Orbital is "fixed cost for servi
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Of course Ames was an old U.S. Navy base where airships were warehoused and moored before it was transferred to NASA. The old airship hanger is still there, along with the runway which serviced the air wing which used to be based there too.
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Since NASA is effectively becoming a procurement department to outsource everything it used to do, why not just get rid of NASA entirely? Put the whole contract, etc on eBay.
All mass human endeavors are essentially some form of distributed work. At some point the work is handed-off from one entity to another. What has mattered, historically, is who makes the decisions.
If you look at NASA historically from their early formation as NACA, their role has been to steer new technology to push the envelope. At times they adapted existing technology to suit their purposes like the Mercury with Redstone ICBM rockets or Gemini with Titan II, and at other times they used purpose-bui
Horray for spaceships that fly! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Cool! It will be great to see some winged spacecraft again!
It is conceptually the same thing as the shuttle and vertical launch will eventually result in the same structural metal fatigue and heat shield bonding problems that got the shuttle program cancelled after the second failure in 2003.
Re:Horray for spaceships that fly! (Score:4, Informative)
WTF are you talking about?
The second failure was due to the sidemount configuration, with a foam impact on the leading edge of the wing.
This is a topmount configuration, so there's no chance of that.
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what happened to the shuttle is that it was based on 60's technology and was never meant to last that long.
Tech has improved a great deal and now a small simple craft can be built cheaply.
DC was never meant to go as many time as an aircraft, but it will certainly go at least 10x. And later can be modified to be self propelled.
The shuttle program was a science fiction writers interpretation of 'aircraft style access to space' as a 'big gas can with a glider strapped to it', this was a result of something that happened in December 1963 on the north shore of Lake Tahoe which resulted in the OXCART program being cancelled, the development of which was being fast tracked through CIA Strategic Reconnaissance which was also cancelled.
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The US needs to place spy satellites, collect/alter any other nations satellites as needed and return to a few different very secure runways as an interesting long term next gen design consideration.
All with the nice PR spin of reuse, precious science experiments "returning" and massive cost savings of a winged space plane
A very public water landing or not atmosphere ready is not what the US mil missions need long term.
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Wings on a hypersonic re-entry vehicle? Oh yeah, that's cool.
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Cool! It will be great to see some winged spacecraft again!
You mean like the one that's in space right now? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Essentially a ULA contract? (Score:5, Insightful)
Am I reading this wrong or is this essentially a contract to ULA by proxy as the Dream Chaser is launched atop an Altas V? ULA had the CST-100 in development as their direct crew / cargo craft but it was knocked out of competition.
So unless I'm mistaken this end up being a contract for the 3 main launch systems, SpaceX, Orbital Sciences and ULA.
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CST-100 was not knocked out of competition. They are getting lots of money (more than SpaceX) to do crew launches, nominally starting in 2017.
(They lost a cargo bid, but that was never the main purpose of CST-100 to begin with.)
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Knocked out of competition for cargo and these contracts are for cargo launches.
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Add on different top parts and hope the sensitive payloads dont get too much of a mission ending shaking as the big rocket was totally designed for a different generation of missions.
Or give one huge no bid contract for a real rocket and correct top part to one company that can still design it all really well.
Or keep importing really well made rockets and fitting the non mil 100% m
Re:Essentially a ULA contract? (Score:4, Informative)
Rockets cost a lot of money, but spacecraft aren't cheap, either. Dragon, Cygnus, and Dream Chaser (assuming it ever goes anywhere) are major R&D costs, plus a bunch of complicated engineering to manufacture.
As for launchers, Dream Chaser may currently be slated to fly on Atlas V, but Falcon Heavy (or something else) could end up taking that role. By the time Dream Chaser is operational, Atlas V may well no longer be the best option in its weight class.
Also, for something that needs a pretty heavy booster, the Dream Chaser cargo capacity is miserable. I suppose that's not surprising, given the weight cost of its chosen landing mechanism, but it does make me wonder *why* they chose that mechanism.
Can it be mated to the Falcon 9X? (Score:3)
If the cargo version of the Dream Chaser (which I note is also winged and reusable), can be launched on the Falcon 9X (I think this is the version that has the reusable first stage) then almost the entire vehicle is reusable!
I think it will, unfortunately, still require a (small?) second stage to get it into orbit but perhaps the Dream Chaser (cargo version) can boost itself into orbit. In any case it would provide another reusable re-entry option for the Falcon (the Dragon space capsule of course has been proven to be recoverable).
Interesting to note that the wings on the Dream Chaser are folding so it can fit inside a launch fairing. Is this the normal launch profile? Does it never launch "naked" with wings unfolded? Perhaps the aerodynamics are just too problematic for a winged vehicle on the tip of a booster stack. Maybe that's why the crewed version didn't get approved (it would not be good to have the crew inside a launch fairing in case of an accident).
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Interesting to note that the wings on the Dream Chaser are folding so it can fit inside a launch fairing. Is this the normal launch profile? Does it never launch "naked" with wings unfolded?
It can launch on a smaller rocket with the fairing, or on an Atlas V without the fairing. I expect manned launches will be without the fairing. Assuming they every fly the thing, rather than doing nothing but aerodynamic testing on the lifting body.
A lot of the engineering pace at which these things proceed seems rather absurd, to me. It's like the scaled down hyperloop test track: why build small, when it costs the same to build at deployment size, with the benefit that you don't have to retool or reeng
Re: More disgusting... (Score:1)
5% tax on the adult entertainment and alcohol industries in the US would accomplish the same thing.
Or 5% tax on firearms and ammunition. It would require a law that owners would receive rock-solid assurance that the .gov will stop trying to backdoor ban firearms in exchange. "Think of the Children" bleeding heart Democrats get their tax revenue to feed ALL the children instead of violating the Constitution to protect a couple.
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With NASA's budget, we could feed every hungry child in this country.
Which is already being done (or at least attempted) with food stamps, school lunch programs, and even direct subsidies and tax breaks to food banks. There is no reason for a child to be hungry in America, and it certainly isn't for a lack of effort on the part of the government.
What should be remarkable is that more money is spent on lipstick than on spaceflight. Get your priorities down.
Sierra Nevada Corp runs on cronyism (Score:5, Interesting)
They're intrinsically corrupt, and specialize in getting work by greasing the palms of politicians and giving sinecure jobs to retired high ranking military types.
Unusually for a medium large defense contractor, SNC is not a publicly held company. It's completely owned by a husband and wife team, the Ozmans. They are of Turkish decent and Mr Ozman was originally a Turkish national. I have met them and had some casual conversations.
The fact that SNC has no share holders changes their reporting requirements and makes it easy for them to do things for people who "help" them.
Before I worked at SNC they were closely involved both professionally and personally with JIm Gibbons [wikipedia.org], former Governor and House Member for Nevada. He's a real piece of work. While he was in office SNC hired Gibbon's wife as a consultant for a very murky position. When this came out there were a lot of calls for an investigation but nothing happened. The Ozmans and Gibbons went on a junket to Turkey and Gibbons was never able to produce any documentation showing that he had paid for anything on the trip. That looks like a form of bribery to anyone who has a pulse, but again there was no follow up. It's interesting that the owners of a military contracting company should be so close to a politition called "one of America's worst governors" by CREW [wikipedia.org].
SNC has huge clout in Nevada because they are the biggest military contractor with headquarters in the state. Other contractor do a lot of work there, but have there home office somewhere else. This means that any Federal level militarily pork that is going into Nevada is very likely to end up at SNC.
I'm 100% certain that if you were to spend some time searching press releases, you would discover that a fair number of former high level government/military types from the space program took their retirement and now have juicy jobs at SNC. They're might even be some fancy vacations/fact finding trips in the mix, but I bet that the kind of inducements being offered at this point are a lot less crude.
SNC getting a plumb ISS resupply contract is very strange. SNC does not build any of the major Dream Chaser components themselves. United Launch Alliance is supplying the launch system and Lockheed-Martin builds the supply capsule. The capsule design is based on old NASA lifting body work. It's not clear if SNC is building anything, even the avionics. What they appear to be doing is acting as a systems integrator with no investment in original technology. They may be the only organization in the world that is getting paid for space access that does not have any proprietary expertise in space technology. SNC also bought a micro-satellite company, but that has very little to do with the resupply contract.
So without doing something underhanded, how does a company with such shallow technical credentials get a contract like this? (Sound of crickets...)
Dream Chaser is sexy, just like the old Dyna-Soar (Score:2)
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Sexy is meaningless for real space work. The lunar landing module was not sexy, it was practical. You want sexy, go and look at fantasy rocket designs for 1930 pulp science fiction magazi
ahhh (Score:2)
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Because only a single company based in a certain geographical region is ever permitted to be named after the major geographical feature of that region...
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