NASA Awards Blue Origin, Nanoracks, Northrop Grumman Over $400M In Contracts To Avoid Space Station Gap (techcrunch.com) 39
Just two days after officially (and quietly) confirming that it intends to replace the International Space Station with a commercial station by 2030, NASA has awarded over $400 million in agreements to three companies to further develop private station plans. TechCrunch reports: The three companies, which received the awards under the agency's Commercial low Earth orbit (LEO) Destinations program, are: Nanoracks for $160 million; Blue Origin for $130 million; and Northrop Grumman for $125.6 million. NASA received eleven proposals in total, director of commercial spaceflight Phil McAlister said Thursday. He added that of the three chosen proposals, there was a diversity of technical concepts and a variety of logistical and launch vehicle options offered. "This diversity not only enhances the likelihood of success of NASA strategy, but it also leads to a high degree of innovation, which is critical in most commercial space endeavors," he said.
The three companies have already released a handful of details about their proposals. Blue Origin is calling its station concept "Orbital Reef," and it is designing it with Boeing, Sierra Space and others. The team said it wants to launch the station in 2027. Meanwhile, Nanoracks is calling its station, which is being developed with its parent company Voyager Space and aerospace prime Lockheed Martin, "Starlab." While Northrop didn't give its station proposal a flashy name, it's working with Dynetics to deliver a modular design based around its Cygnus spacecraft.
These substantial awards mark the first phase of a two-phase process as NASA seeks to ensure that there will be no gap between the retirement of the ISS and the introduction of a new station. NASA has repeatedly stressed, both to Congress and more recently in a report by the Office of Inspector General, that the overall success of the development of a thriving economy in LEO is dependent upon avoiding this gap. "If there is no habitable commercial destination in low Earth orbit after the ISS is decommissioned, NASA will be unable to conduct microgravity health research and technology demonstrations needed for long-duration human exploration missions to the Moon and Mars, significantly increasing the risk of -- or delaying -- those missions," the agency said in the report.
The three companies have already released a handful of details about their proposals. Blue Origin is calling its station concept "Orbital Reef," and it is designing it with Boeing, Sierra Space and others. The team said it wants to launch the station in 2027. Meanwhile, Nanoracks is calling its station, which is being developed with its parent company Voyager Space and aerospace prime Lockheed Martin, "Starlab." While Northrop didn't give its station proposal a flashy name, it's working with Dynetics to deliver a modular design based around its Cygnus spacecraft.
These substantial awards mark the first phase of a two-phase process as NASA seeks to ensure that there will be no gap between the retirement of the ISS and the introduction of a new station. NASA has repeatedly stressed, both to Congress and more recently in a report by the Office of Inspector General, that the overall success of the development of a thriving economy in LEO is dependent upon avoiding this gap. "If there is no habitable commercial destination in low Earth orbit after the ISS is decommissioned, NASA will be unable to conduct microgravity health research and technology demonstrations needed for long-duration human exploration missions to the Moon and Mars, significantly increasing the risk of -- or delaying -- those missions," the agency said in the report.
Re: These substantial awards mark the first phase (Score:2)
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There's no reason it should be. None of these proposals require any technology that hasn't already been developed, and a space station is little more than an oversized satellite, so there is no reason that it shouldn't be possible to design and build one in nine years. Yes, by the standards of "old space", it would take twenty years and be ten times overbudget by the end, but I like to think times are changing.
Re: These substantial awards mark the first phase (Score:1)
and a space station is little more than an oversized satellite
People will ask what that even means. When they do, you can tell them it means you're an idiot.
Boeing (Score:3)
Missing from the summary is that Bezos' bald eggplant spaceyacht proposal is actually a partership with Boeing, so there are real engineers on the project.
Nanoracks, who I think makes server racks for space, is actually the Lockheed Martin proposal.
And Northrop is also working with Dynetics, who is also already a Defense and NASA contractor, so they'll probably win.
It seems whichever company was tasked with the 3d rendering gets the credit on slashdot...
Notably absent is Axiom Space, which won a separate award to send up modules to attach to the ISS before separating and self-orbiting as its own station, but the company clarified that it did not bid on CLD.
So based on current plans, we could end up with as many as 4 stations.
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Does Boeing still have any real engineers left?
Re:Boeing (Score:4, Funny)
No, they're all integer.
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They rather seem to be imaginary the way Boing has been operating.
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I'm now waiting to see who manages the most twisted version of hung, drawn and quaternioned.
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Yes. They're in Washington, though, where Bezos is (SeaTac has Microsoft, Amazon and Boeing together).
The problematic part of Boeing exists in Illinois, because the suits at McDonnell Douglas couldn't handle the engineers and thus decided to get away from engineers and their problems and run a company where they're insulated from problems and wish to ignore them.
The engineers in Washington need to find away to cut loose the dead weight that exists in their Illi
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When you say four stations, are you including the Chinese one and a possible Russian one?
It would be nice to preserve the ISS for posterity, but it sounds like parts of it will be re-used. Particularly if the Russians want any key modules, the rest will have to be de-orbited.
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When you say four stations, are you including the Chinese one and a possible Russian one?
It would be nice to preserve the ISS for posterity...
Ah, forget posterity. Anyone else decides to pull another anti-sat test, and it will be nice if we can preserve our ability to even put shit in orbit, or safely get through it.
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No. There are three new private station proposals, plus the ISS-module-new-station-transformer.
It is likely only one of the new 3 will be funded to the build phase, but NASA has made it clear they'd like to see more than one. It's not actually being billed as a contest between the three, they've simply accepted 3 proposals instead of 1.
The Russians are unlikely to really be doing a thing. Putin hasn't approved the project, there is just interview statements from the some guy. And what he said was that they
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Missing from the summary is that Bezos' bald eggplant spaceyacht proposal is actually a partership with Boeing, so there are real engineers on the project.
Not sure about you, but when Boeing announced this new USS Enterprise-MAX program, it didn't exactly inspire confidence...
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I think it's time to buy shares.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals... [pinimg.com]
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Blue Origin is calling its station concept "Orbital Reef," and it is designing it with Boeing, Sierra Space and others.
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Dipfuck, did you consider that perhaps burying one mention of the main company, while running another company in the headline, might not refute my comment?
Don't be a fucking idiot. I don't like the messaging; you like it just fine. That doesn't mean I'm wrong, it just means you have stupid opinions.
And if you were a little smarter, you'd have realized that my comment contains evidence that I even read the story, and so you'd know that I still made the comment I made. But you're too busy humping my leg for t
The joke used to be ... (Score:2)
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Is Starship not viable as an ISS module? (Score:3)
Honest question, if SpaceX's Starship can be the foundation of a lunar base why not make ISS out of them too? Though personally I would like to know about if anybody has been seriously thinking about armoring these things from debris. I would! I did find mention of Russian cosmonauts adding some armor panels to the ISS in 2007. Some other links about armoring the ISS:
Q10 from below link indicates there are some shields now.
https://www.esa.int/Safety_Sec... [esa.int]
The International Space Station (ISS) has debris shields deployed around the crew modules. These shields are composed of two metal sheets, separated by about 10 cm. The outer ‘bumper shield’ exploits the impact energy to shatter the debris object, such that the inner ‘back wall’ can withstand the resulting spray of smaller-sized fragments. Between the walls, fabric with the same functionality as in bulletproof vests is deployed. This design enables the shield to defeat debris objects up to 1 cm in size. The same double-wall design is used by military forces to protect heavy armoured vehicles, such as tanks, and in this usage is called ‘spaced armour’.
And, there is a 1997 book called "Protecting the Space Station from Meteoroids and Orbital Debris" (free PDF download as Guest).
https://www.nap.edu/read/5532/... [nap.edu]
From page 29:
Active armor, which uses an internal energy source to deflect incoming objects, is not being considered for use on the ISS. More than 100 different shields have been designed to protect the various critical components of the ISS, although all of the designs are modifications of three ISS primary shielding configurations: the Whipple bumper, the multishock (or stuffed Whipple) shield, and the mesh double-bumper shield.
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Well first we have to see what Starship turns out to be. Musk has a history of wildly exaggerating, so it's best to wait for demonstrations of these capabilities before planning to make use of them. NASA has been fairly conservative so far, with clear goals and criteria for success and failure.
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I would expect this could and will be done if the starship lives up to Musk's expectations. It would have to do some of this anyway if it is to support a colony on Mars.
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I don't think you want a space station with the large fuel tanks. If something goes wrong, the whole thing goes boom.
That said, Starship would be a great launch platform, and it would enable putting up a heavier station that is better armored against solar radiation and space debris. I expect the Blue Origin proposal intends to use the New Glenn rocket to launch, which is intended to have similar characteristics.
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It's not even a new idea:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_workshop [wikipedia.org]
Just make it a small O'Neill cylinder (Score:1)
We want Earth-like gravity!
Private? (Score:3)
awarded over $400 million in agreements to three companies to further develop private station plans
Why is NASA bankrolling a "private" station?
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1) They need a new station, and they don't build stations.
2) They need it in a specific time frame
3) They need to be able to use it - so they have requirements. You want the players to listen to your requirements? You pony up some cash
4) When they help pay for it, you can influence the design, the better to meet 3)
There's probably more, but that comes to mind right off.
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