Competition to Build the Space Shuttle's Successor

Neil Halelamien writes "The competition for the prime contract to build the Crew Exploration Vehicle, the successor to the Space Shuttle, is ramping up. Currently, 11 different companies are creating preliminary designs for systems and vehicles which could be useful in implementing NASA's Vision for Space Exploration. By the end of the year, NASA will select two teams to independently develop and build a CEV design. The two teams will launch competing unmanned prototypes in 2008, at which point NASA will award a final winning contract. Aerospace giants Boeing and Northrop Grumman have formed one team. Another "all-star" team, announced a couple of days ago, is headed by Lockheed Martin. A third team in the running is underdog t/Space, a company with a free enterprise approach to space exploration, which includes notable figures from the commercial spaceflight arena, such as Burt Rutan and Gary Hudson. There is concern that a NASA budget boost to help pay for the exploration program could draw some opposition, as most other government programs are anticipating budget cuts."

Comments

Enough with the links already...

[Anonymous Coward]

At a certain point it becomes counter-productive. Just tell me which one to click on to get the article.

Isn't having a goal more important than a vehicle?

[bigtallmofo]

Is NASA putting the cart before the horse here? Don't we need a coherent goal to shoot for before designing a vehicle? The goal as stated on NASA's site is:

"The fundamental goal of this vision is to advance U.S. scientific, security, and economic interests through a robust space exploration program."

Could they be any more vague? Whatever happened to the days of "land a man on the moon and return him safely to the Earth." You know, goals that people actually knew what the heck you were talking about?

Having the wrong goal is worse than no goal

[Bruce Perens]

The worst thing about Apollo was that its goal, though of course ambitious for the time, was too shallow. Land a man on the moon and safely return him to earth we did, and then ran out of goal and the motivation to go any farther. If the goal is not to establish a viable self-sustaining human presence in space, a permanent colony away from the perils of Earth, there is no point in sending more people out there. If the goal is just scientific exploration, robots are 1000 times more cost-effective.

Bruce

The Rutan plan

[Anonymous Coward]

For a good overview of the Rutan proposal, check this pdf at their website. It's a heckuva read...they advocate building a real frontier which ultimately generates tax revenues. They want to use flotillas of vehicles for redundancy, and keep it simple...eg., to land on the moon, just burn more fuel and land the whole vehicle, instead of just a separate lander. Less development time, less to go wrong, and for the first 20 to 40 flights it's cheaper that way. They also ding NASA for micromanaging...they say engineers should question everything, and you can't do that if you have to justify every deviation from the written plan to NASA's managers.

Re:Common sense prevails at last!

[Waffle Iron]

It took the guys at Scaled composites to show you that they could build a cheap light, ingenious low-earth-orbit vehicle and launch it cheaply from its mother plane.

From an energy standpoint, Space Ship One only got 3% of the way to low-earth-orbit. They still have 97% more work to do. It design is totally unsuitable for going into or out of orbit; at hypersonic speeds it would snap apart like a toothpick an burn up. Scaled Composites is basically at square one with respect to an orbital vehicle.

Not Addressing The Real Problem

[FireIron]

Unfortunately, neither the new Bush space initiatives, nor a new spaceship design will fix all the things that are wrong with the federal space program. Key among these problems is the lack of clear leadership and good management on NASA's Board of Directors, a.k.a. the US Congress.

Congress has never been able to give NASA a set of clear goals, and then provided it with the long-term funding to meet those goals. This has forced NASA into sort of bureaucratic survival mode, lurching along from fiscal year to fiscal year, trying to keep moving the ball forward without a long-term roadmap to follow.

China, Science, the Economy and the Space Elevator

[metope]

First of all, I think that China will probably beat the US in terms of manned space exploration. They will go back to the moon before the US even finishes their new space vehicles. This is sad because China apparently understand economics better than current US leaders do. It might seem that the Apollo program was just a big expensive government program but the truth is that all the expensive science generated far more money that it spent. Science is good for the economy for it provides people with technology that lifts the economy and increases growth in the country. As complicated as going to the Moon and Mars and expensive as it seems might be, it is good for the economy. All the new technologies generate new industries which will further the economic growth. Our leaders in the US have forgotten that by limiting science funding and cancelling things like the particle accelerator in Texas. Second and most important, it is too expensive to think of old ways to get out of this planet. The best and most efficient way is to build the SPACE ELEVATOR. Fund nanotechnologies to get the cable for the elevator built. It is estimated that it would cost $100 a pound at the beginning to lift things into orbit using the elevator and maybe even go down to $1 a pound as more elevators are built. Science fiction but so was landing on the moon before Apollo 11.