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NASA Awards Space Cargo Grant

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the fedex-unavailable-for-comment dept.

pha7boy writes "NASA has made a recent award of 171 million dollars to Orbital Sciences Corp. of Virginia in order to aid the company in developing a feasible space cargo delivery service. 'The US space agency intends to hold an open competition in the years ahead for actual space station cargo-delivery contracts, but Orbital of Dulles, VA, is one of two companies receiving financial help from NASA to develop their proposed systems. The other is Space Exploration Technologies of El Segundo, CA.'"

6 of 43 comments (clear)

  1. What's wrong with ATV? by sunbeam60 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I thought the whole idea of an *international* space station was that we didn't have to duplicate technology efforts between the partners? ESA developed the ATV for the express purpose of resupplying the ISS, so what's this duplicate piece of tech doing?

  2. Superguns by edwardpickman · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Superguns were the coolest idea I ever heard of for low cost launching systems. The cargo would need to be able to survive a 100G excelloration but that's not a problem with raw materials and even electronics can be hardened for that force. The cost would be a fraction of current rocket technologies and they could launch far more often. It's a brilliant system so I can't believe no one has pushed it since the inventor died.

    http://www.astronautix.com/lvfam/gunnched.htm

  3. 1960s called they want their space program back by clarkkent09 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    $171 million to build and demonstrate a launch system capable of delivering cargo to the international space station.

    You mean they are getting paid to demonstrate something like the 42 year old Soyuz? And once we have a way of delivering something to the earth's orbit, we can get ready for the big push to fly to the moon over the next 20 years or whatever. If someone in the 1960 predicted this would be the state of the US space program 50 years later, people would laugh at how ridiculously pessimistic that prediction was.

    --
    Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
  4. Re:Can my dreams of being an astronaut come true? by CRCulver · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I wasn't thinking of UPS, I was thinking of FedEx. In Michael Flynn's future history beginning with the novel Firestar , FedEx becomes a major investor in the private space industry because of the possibility of delivering something anywhere on Earth in just a couple of hours. Interesting how in real life this company hasn't yet decided to expand up into space.

  5. Unbalanced? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If a large projectile is being fired, and a "spin" isn't put on it (like with rifling) then wont the distribution of mass of the projectile cause it to veer off angle?

    In other words, the cargo inside the projectile would need to be balanced just right, or spun. Check out the rifling wikipedia article.

  6. Re:SpaceX by khallow · · Score: 3, Interesting

    OSC has proven that it can put small payloads into LEO using solid fuel boosters. For cargo delivery to the ISS, you need a system that can match orbits rather well. That means advanced avionics and more flexibility in the upper stage. For that kind of capability, SpaceX seems to be rather better positioned as their liquid-fuel engines have restart capability.

    I'd put money on OSC's avionics. And the Minotaur IV and V use the axial thrust vectoring of the Peacekeeper missile. Frankly, if true, that'd make the Minotaur the best rocket on the planet for placing things accurately since the Peacekeeper remains the most precise ICBM ever built. Turning Peacekeepers into space vehicles has been tried before. E'Prime attempted that in the early 90's. They got blocked by US Congress, probably at the behest of competitors.

    Yes, the last Falcon I launch did not deliver payload to orbit. But the failure mode was fairly innocuous: slosh in the upper-stage fuel tank together with some positive feedback. Throughout the oscillating burn the risky parts of the system (pumps, engines, guidance) performed well enough to indicate that had the engine not run dry a bit too soon because of the propellant being centrifuged to the tank sides, the burn would have been complete and on target.

    While that is true, it is also true that SpaceX needs to put something in orbit if it wishes to stay in business.