NASA Commercial Crew Program for Space Station Faces Delays, Report Says (reuters.com) 32
Plans to launch the first NASA astronauts since 2011 to the International Space Station from the United States look set to be delayed due to incomplete safety measures and accountability holes in the agency's commercial crew program, Reuters reported Wednesday, citing a federal report released on Wednesday. From the report: SpaceX and Boeing Co are the two main contractors selected under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's commercial crew program to send U.S. astronauts to space as soon as 2019, using their Dragon and Starliner spacecraft respectively. But the report from the Government Accountability Office said the issues could cause delays in the launch of the first crewed mission from U.S. soil by a private company and could result in a nine-month gap in which no U.S. astronauts inhabit the ISS.
Last I checked... (Score:5, Insightful)
The first flight article just left the Plum Brook test center bound for Florida and mating to a Falcon 9 Block 5.
I fail to see where SpaceX is behind on this. Now, if you want to look at Boeing, last I heard the first flight article has yet to even finish being built, much less undergone vacuum, vibration, and cold testing like the Crew Dragon has.
But, hey, their capsule only costs the taxpayer 50% more than the Dragon, and was started 4 years earlier.
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At the very least provide some references for that. I tried googling "spaceX bought their space rating from congress", but came up with nothing so I guess they've been bribed too.
Go on, just one or two links...
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At the very least provide some references for that. I tried googling "spaceX bought their space rating from congress", but came up with nothing so I guess they've been bribed too.
That guy has been spewing that same line for the past 5 years. He claims he was a member of the evaluation team and was forced to sign off, in other versions. Quite blatantly a ULA partisan, and an incompetent one at that.
Or he's a Russian shill. So hard to tell these days.
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^^^^ This
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Last I heard they were still planning on fueling with the crew onboard. Which NASA is still saying no to.
Re:Last I checked... (Score:4, Informative)
No decision either way has been made. The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel has listed several hazards that need to be mitigated, whether by changing loading order or through other means (and, speaking informally, members of the panel suggested other methods were completely possible). A decision is "expected shortly", but that was two months ago and I couldn't find anything newer, so either "shortly" doesn't mean what it normally does, or the decision was not made widely known.
RRocket Rider's Prayer (Score:1)
Rocket Rider's Prayer
© 1986 Stephen Savitzky. CC-by-nc-sa.
When the rocket stands before us like a tower of glass and steel
Then no words in any language can express the way we feel
Mingled joy and hope and terror as we're starting on our way
And we suddenly consider that it just might help to pray.
So first let's pray to Vulcan, ugly god of forge and flame,
And also wise Minerva, now we glorify your name,
May you aid our ship's designers now and find it in your hearts
To please help the lowest bidders who've
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Here is a daring article from 1945 [archive.org], maybe you can catch up?
Re:NASA internal estimates confirm conclusion (Score:5, Informative)
This is pure politics, with ULA buying its way to the top with political "contributions".
The USAF recently completed a bid process for launching secret missions and SpaceX won the bidding.
https://www.space.com/40978-sp... [space.com]
"This is the fifth competitive procurement under the current Phase 1A of the EELV program since SpaceX entered the market to challenge ULA. The $130 million award for the Falcon Heavy launch is considerably lower than the average $350 million price tag for Delta 4 launches. "
https://fee.org/articles/compe... [fee.org]
"One of the keys to SpaceX’s success has been its ability to substantially undercut the prices of its competitors. While SpaceX lists its Falcon 9 rocket starting at $62 million a flight, the US Air Force budgeted $422 million for a single ULA flight in 2020."
In time competition will bring the competitors together. SpaceX will raise it prices and the ULA will have to cut their to compete. The ULA will switch from using Russian RD-180 engines to the BE-4 engine Bezos is developing, but hasn't begun engine qualification testing and doesn't plant to till 2019. Meanwhile, the ULA has ordered, and Russia will supply by the end of 2018, TWO new batches of the Russian RD-180 engine.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news... [zerohedge.com]
Those engines make the ULA dependent on the Russians and pose a security threat to the US.
Amazingly, NASA says the ULA is "ahead" of SpaceX! Only in NASA and the ULA's political dreams. I wonder how much money changed hands for NASA "insiders" to claim the ULA is "ahead" of SpaceX when SpaceX builds and supplies every part of their American made Falcon9 and Falcon Heavy, engines included.
Curtailing Musks cash cow? (Score:5, Interesting)
I read this interesting piece yesterday "The War on Tesla, Musk, and the Fight for the Future" [dailykos.com].
Quote: "people with 10,7 billion dollars bet against Tesla stand to utterly lose their shirt".
Musk doesn't seem too bothered because, quote: "Musk can create contracts at will from SpaceX (and, to a lesser extent, Boring Company). SpaceX is on a roll and flush with cash." and this "Musk can sell off a portion of his SpaceX stake to personally bail out Tesla. There’s a massive demand for buying into SpaceX that hasn’t been able to be filled because it’s privately held. And Musk has shown repeatedly throughout his history that he isn’t, if anything, afraid to go personally “all in”."
I wonder how much Musk is relying on US Government contracts to keep his cash cow nice and fat if it needs to be slaughtered for Tesla?
Of course the other reason for this will be to allow Boeing to catch up but who'd pass up the chance to kill two birds with one stone.
I'd expect more to follow this If I'm right. I hope not.
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I read that article too. I'm dubious of the claim that SpaceX can/will bail out Tesla. SpaceX has a lot on its plate (the BFR and the Starlink satellite program, which requires SpaceX to self-fund thousands of moderate sized satellites) and can't go to the stock market to raise funds. Further, Tesla has achieved its primary social goal (get the world to take electric vehicles seriously) but SpaceX has not (colonize Mars.) Given this, I think Musk would let Tesla die rather than endanger SpaceX. This wouldn'
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Very interesting article! Thanks for the link
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Musk will not need to bail out Tesla. Tesla is past that point. They make good solar systems, battery packs, and cars, and there is high demand for each.
However, if he felt like selling some private stock in SpaceX, he would only be able to sell it to accredited investors. People who have millions to play with. Selling to plain folks takes a lot more regulation. And in general accredited investors place realistic values on things. They're not the folks bidding up bitcoin, etc.
Re:Curtailing Musks cash cow? (Score:4, Funny)
They make good solar systems, battery packs, and cars, and there is high demand for each.
I for one am dead keen on buying a good solar system. I want multiple habitable moons around a gas giant - that would be really cool.
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I want multiple habitable moons around a gas giant - that would be really cool.
Only until the Death Star comes around.
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Only until the Death Star comes around.
Don't worry. They won't start charging their main weapon until the moon is within firing range, giving you just enough time to destroy it.
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And in general accredited investors place realistic values on things.
Magic Leap, Theranos
Analysis from April (Score:3)
My favourite space news and analysis site is www.nasaspaceflight.com. (This is a misnomer - it covers space stuff world wide, not NASA specific, and so far as I can tell has no affiliation with NASA.) They last looked at the commercial crew program in April in a pair of articles:
https://www.nasaspaceflight.co... [nasaspaceflight.com]
https://www.nasaspaceflight.co... [nasaspaceflight.com]
Both were pretty up-beat about prospects, however the SpaceX article says:
[...] SpaceX aims to conduct a crew test flight of Dragon, known as DM-2. This mission is currently slated for December 2018 but is likely to slip into early 2019.
And the Boeing article says:
Officially, Boeing is targeting August 2018 for its Orbital Flight Test (OFT), their uncrewed certification mission for Starliner, to be followed in November 2018 with their Crew Flight Test (CFT). Those dates are based on the last quarterly review by the Commercial Crew Program in February, and there is some indication that those dates are likely to slip at the next quarterly review in May – with the CFT slipping into 2019.
TFA takes early 2019 as a start point:
SpaceX and Boeing Co are the two main contractors selected under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s commercial crew program to send U.S. astronauts to space as soon as 2019, using their Dragon and Starliner spacecraft respectively.
and seems to be talking about delays beyond this.
“Boeing and SpaceX continue to make progress developing their crew transportation systems, but both contractors have further delayed the certification milestone to early 2019,” the report said.
Reading between the lines, I take it that there is a significant time between certification and first crewed flight, so certification in early 2019 means no crewed flight in early 2019. Both capsules will have an uncrewed test flight some months before the first crewed flight. I don't know whether certification comes before or after the test flight.
Re:Analysis from April (Score:4, Informative)
Update: An AC pointed to this article:
https://arstechnica.com/scienc... [arstechnica.com]
This makes it clear that certification comes after the first test crewed launch, and is likely to be in the late 2019/early 2020 time frame.
The report shows when NASA believes Boeing and SpaceX will each have completed a single non-crewed test flight, a test flight with crew, and then undergo a certification process to become ready for operational flights. This is known as the "certification milestone."
So this is about when the second crewed flight of each capsule can happen. Possibly the first (test) crewed flight won't go to the space station.