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Space Shuttle To Be Replaced By SpaceX For ISS Resupply
destinyland writes "Next year SpaceX will perform resupply missions for the International Space Station after the Space Shuttle is grounded, as part of a $3.5 billion NASA resupply contract. 'The fledgling space industry is reminiscent of the early days of the personal computer,' notes one technology reporter, 'when a number of established vendors and startups reversed-engineered Microsoft's DOS and manufactured PCs using the Intel 8080 chip set. We're likely to see a similar industry shakeout in the private space vehicle market segment in the coming decades.'"
LMFAO!!!
I love how journalists rewrite history. So now the personal computer industry was founded upon stealing DOS from Microsoft and building PCs from 8080 chips?
Wow. Just wow.
Let's hope their wrong. Doesn't anybody remember how crappy the first PC clones were? And compatibility, compaq gear didn't work with tandy, whcich didn't work with... etc. etc.Not what you'd want to experience when you're trying to dock to a space station made by another manufacturer.
Yes it was JUST like the early computer days.
SpaceX bought a shuttle, worked on it in their parents garage, brought it to Berkley and got friends to help out.
I suggest an equally stupid title:
The fledgling Independant Space Industry is just like the Alaska Gold Rush; Folks are excited about getting up their and getting rich!
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
This is a great idea. Since NASA has lost the last 40 years on good scientific research but no exploration
Seriously, what it is with the insane, ingorant NASA hate around here these days. No exploration? What about spirit and opprtunity?
Don't they count?
And when it comes to rocketry, sure, the shuttle is getting a little long in the tooth, but is there any other vehicle capable of either servising Hubble, or bringing anything down?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
that doesn't understand computers, and why that revolution doesn't apply to every other technology.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
For anyone who would like to read a good article about SpaceX check out that link. And it's not just SpaceX that will be delivering cargo to the station under COTS, there's also Orbital Sciences.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I explored Paris via Google Maps, but it's just not the same as being there.
What, exactly, is it about the space industry today that is supposed to be reminiscent of those false memories of the early days of the personal computer? All the startups reverse engineering Space-Shuttle-compatible launch vehicles in their garages and undercutting the United Space Alliance on price?
Its hard to figure out which is worse, the analogy proposed or the recollection of history that it is in part based on.
There is no money to be made directly from space exploration.
If mars had large wooded forests and a magic crystal that was trivial to turn into some paradigm shift technology, then yeah.
NASA's exploration allows us to better understand the universe, and gives focus to companies to develop RnD to accomplish goals. That RnD and it's results is the market payoff, and why the space program actually more then pays for itself.
Satellite launches? sure, that can go private.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Theres a can-do attitude that NASA lost long ago.
Elon Musk is an amazing dude. At a time where rich people are not popular, here is a reason that people
should become rich , he uses his paypal money to do the stuff he wants to do like electric cars and spaceships
and in doing the stuff that makes him happy benefits us all.
Problem is that all that stuff in space is much harder to get to than Paris, although probably less hostile to foreigners.
I'm happy to read that SpaceX will be taking over resupply. We should encourage private launch companies.
Having NASA handle all launch needs was putting all our eggs in a single basket, and killed any chance for private launch. It's already expensive and hard to develop a new space launch system; to do it when NASA is offering launches at cut-rate prices was impossible. (NASA has always been embarrassed by how expensive the Shuttle actually was, and never charged anywhere near a profitable amount for flying things on the Shuttle.)
Once we have several private companies flying things to orbit, we can expect the cost to orbit to come down drastically. And once you are in orbit, you are halfway to anywhere in the Solar System.
NASA is talking about a return to Mars 30 years from now. That's crazy; once we have cheap launch, we can assemble a Mars mission in pieces, rather than launching the whole mission on one giant rocket (as we did the Apollo missions). If you can cheaply and reliably launch dozens of launch vehicles, each ferrying up a tonne of fuel, you could make a Mars mission with lots of gear, lots of fuel, lots of safety margin.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Conspiracy theories are fun and all, but I think the more obvious explanation will suffice here-- We simply haven't had motivation to push our space programs as we have in the past. Certainly there have been innovations and rocket scientists dreaming up new and better propulsion systems, but there has been no grand scale programs to put them to the test. With any luck, China and India will be pushing their own space exploration programs to spur on a new space race, but short of that a lot of Americans simply don't care.
+1 Disagree
It was the Intel 8088 chip not the 8080 chip used in the IBM PC and PC Clones.
MS-DOS was not reverse engineered, it was originally IBM PC-DOS and Microsoft released the MS-DOS to work with IBM PC clones that had reverse engineered the IBM PC BIOS. MS-DOS used GWBASIC.COM to replace the IBM BASICA.COM that used the IBM PC BIOS and wouldn't work on PC Clones.
Some say MS-DOS and IBM PC-DOS which was based on 86-DOS/Q-DOS was really a reverse engineered DRI CP/M-86 with some commands renamed to be more user friendly and moved into RAM instead of the floppy disk. DRI later on released DR-DOS to compete with MS-DOS. Anyway DRI lost the DOS wars and when they tried to make a competitor to Windows named GEM, they got sued by Apple and had to change the way it looked.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Disclaimer - I work for NASA.
I don't think the cost per kg of cargo is a driving factor on this decision. The US government has a vested interest in supporting both SpaceX and Orbital on the COTS contract. If successful the vehicle SpaceX is developing will provide a domestically produced launch vehicle that has shows some promise in having a lot of launch flexibility and much cheaper rides to orbit.
Additionally, if SpaceX is successful it will provide some negotiation power in getting upmass to ISS (the rides get more expensive when Progress is the only game in town) and will also provide some competition on government contracts to the United Launch Alliance consortium of Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
Worst...sig...ever!
I explored Paris via Google Maps, but it's just not the same as being there.
No, but it *is* about the same as looking at someone else's holiday photos.
Don't forget the #1 rule of manned space flight: *you* don't get to go. And if you're stuck on earth, does it really matter if the pictures you're looking at were taken by man or machine?
is there any other vehicle capable of either servising Hubble, or bringing anything down?
There are plenty of vehicles that can bring themselves down; most of them do, somewhere around South Pacific. If you mean "safely" then the list narrows, but a used satellite, well past its "use by" date, is just not worth of bringing down in one piece. The value is in data bits, not in bits of metal and silicon - and data can be easily sent over the radio.
Hubble is yet another issue. The original cost of Hubble was estimated at $400 million, but it grew out of proportion because of endless delays with launch and because of the defective mirror. It would be probably cheaper and better today to build a copy of Hubble telescope, with all new cameras installed and all the improvements made, instead of replacing failed components one by one in a risky and limited servicing mission. Many components of Hubble telescope are not serviceable anyway. So while STS is a system capable of servicing Hubble, the overall value of such a service is debatable. Of course, if you have STS you use it, but I wouldn't say that without Shuttle the Hubble telescope project can't happen - there would be some other vehicle to launch it on, likely a cheaper one.
640 tonnes of lift capacity ought to be enough for anyone. ;)
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
I explored Paris via Google Maps, but it's just not the same as being there.
Actually you were checking out Paris on a completely different site, but the same principle applies.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
What do you mean, an african or european man?
Are these unladen men?
Just because there's nothing like it doesn't mean it's a good idea.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Here come the parasites.
Could turn into a buy-off of a threat to big aerospace.
If NASA were serious they'd cut out all their launch technology development and just put up a $2000/kg bounty for reaction mass delivered to orbit, by any domestic system, at the desired inclination and altitude, starting immediately. Grab it with a tug later.
You can always use reaction mass.
Let the industrial learning curve do the rest.
Of course, if they did that, launch services would become so affordable, there would be private space stations and they'd lose their mandate for big bucks operational budgets and have to go back to science.
Seastead this.
The biggest concern isn't the cost so much as the existence of a domestic supplier, whether it be Orbital, SpaceX or the big old guys.
Of course the other important part of COTS is encouraging the development of a fixed-price contract system for orbital launches instead of the cost-plus system that dominates vehicle development right now, a change that does have the implication of leading to lower costs.
Great idea! They are putting a lot of faith in an organisation that has exactly one successful orbital launch of a dummy spacecraft to their credit. SpaceX is an admirable organisation, but it is a decade away from being able to launch large payloads. The Falcon 9 has never flown. Given the track record of the Falcon 1 we can expect failures. And when they lose a mission to ISS, what then? Will failure be tolerated?
an ill wind that blows no good
Not really. The really important thing about the Hubble servicing mission - and the various service and resupply missions to the ISS - is learning how to WORK in space. If we're planning on anything long term, we must have the capability to routinely get up out of bed, out the door and fix whatever broke (remember Murphy?).
Obviously, we aren't there yet. It took years of training and planning to fix the Hubble. It took years of training and planning to fix the solar cells on the ISS. We've got to get to the point where we can go 'oops, the widget broke, need to go out and replace it' without spending months choreographing every move. It's routine and boring but it's exactly what we need to do to STAY in space. That's why ISS is important and that's why the Hubble resupply missions were critically important.
Even if you're correct and it's cheaper to just chuck the old one and launch Hubble II.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The first three settlements in what is now Southern California were never heard from again. But look at the place now...
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The shuttles have taught us a great deal about what you need to be designing into a SHUTTLE rather than a single use rocket. The costs, maintenance, and safety issues that crop up over the 20-30 year life span of a launch platform designed to be re-used. There are things you learn over the long term. Who would have thought that foam insulation around the liquid fuel tanks would be more dangerous because it is light weight than it would be if it were heavier? It took many many launches before we learned it (in a worst case scenario, sadly). Point is, that's just the one big glaring example. There are countless other reliability and availability lessons learned.
We already knew we could make a rocket get into space. We needed to make it almost commercially reliable and cheap. We're not there yet, but a long way closer, yes?
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
omfg.
to = let's go to the movies.
too = there are too many of them.
two = there are only two of them, not three.
there = let's go there.
their = it is their house.
they're = they are going to the house.
seriously people. 3rd grade stuff here. learn these 6 simple things or be doomed to look like an idiot when you write.
What we really need, and will soon get, is a space race with the Chinese.
They'll of course, use the interest payments from the Obamabonanza Loans to pay for their program. The US will be funding both sides of the 'race.'
Wow. Yes, it matters. Because even if I don't get the excitement etc. of being on Mars, someone does, and I bet that person is just as excited as I would be. And I get a small piece of his excitement by listening to his radio transmissions, or watching himself walk around on the surface, or reading about it in the newspaper... whatever. Is it as good as the real thing? I doubt it's even in the same league. But it's also better than nothing, and nothing is what you seem to think we should have.
I'm really picking up a huge vibe of jealousy here. "If I don't get to go to Mars, nobody else should either." Or perhaps it's just that you think others should feel that way. I don't really get it. But perhaps you're also one of those people who don't think I should aspire to be wealthy because the so-called American dream is really a myth designed to keep me in de facto indentured servitude for my entire life, only my deluded hope of bettering my situation or my children's preventing me from overthrowing the bourgeoisie.
(Is there a law like Godwin's for calling someone a communist? I think there should be. By the way, I'm not trolling or... flamebaiting... a lot of people actually believe what I wrote above. I don't get that either, but it does explain the parent's sentiment, if I'm reading him correctly, and also why he's +4 insightful when he should be, at most, +4 buzzkill masquerading as "realism.")
And are they carrying coconuts?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Yet.
Bound to be plenty of stuff we can make that are just better when made in microgravity, like ultrapure crystals & medications, foamed metals, stuff like that...
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Leaving aside the gross inaccuracies about the history of the personal computer in TFA, there's one giant shrieking difference between the "Fire in the Valley" days and the current commercial space rush: startup costs. Any number of early personal computer companies really were started by a couple of guys in a garage with a few thousand dollars. There may very well be some space industry parts vendors who still start this way. But no one starts a private launch company without a ton of money up front.
It's still exciting, but not in the way the early personal computer days were. Back then, you could look at, let's say, Wozniak and Jobs and think, "That could be me!" No one at my pay grade is having that thought about SpaceX.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Wasn't Lebensraum ("living space") one of the main justifications for World War II? People just want to explore.
And is a bizarre sort of way, Großdeutschland actually happened, only we now call it the European Union and it's (arguably) a good thing.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
The fledgling space industry is reminiscent of the early days of the personal computer,' notes one technology reporter, 'when a number of established vendors and startups reversed-engineered Microsoft's DOS and manufactured PCs using the Intel 8080 chip set.
I had to double check that it wasn't kdawson that edited this article. Wow. You usually do a pretty good job, timothy. But this?
No one "reversed engineered Microsoft's DOS" and it did not come out until the industry was pretty well established. The original IBM PC's BIOS was reverse engineered. The only thing Microsoft ever did that ran on an 8080 was Microsoft BASIC (which was indeed a true standard of its time - even Apple adopted it as Applesoft BASIC).
In the earliest years, the world was 6502 dominated - Apple, Commodore, etc. There wasn't any need to reverse engineer Apple Software, because they published it all in the Apple ][ red manual.
Once the 8080 came out (and its competitor the Z80) there still wasn't any need to reverse engineer software as CP/M was effectively open source.
PC DOS was very much a late comer to the game and as the industry was moving from 8 to 16 bit. Just because a bunch of whacked out journalist bozos said that the IBM PC (on the traffic light controller 8088, or so sayeth the official Intel documentation on that chip) "legitimized" personal computers doesn't make it correct.
Sheesh.
The 8080 chip was what grown up hardware enthusiasts were using in their S-100 computers. The kiddies had the weaker, cheaper 6502 parts.
Don't diss the 6502. It was a wonderful chip for its time and although it ran at slower clock speeds than later 8080s and Z80s, it still ran code faster because very few clock cycles were wasted. The instruction set was remarkably well done.
If you've never read through Woz's Sweet 16 interpreter, which fit in just a bit over a page of memory (about 270 bytes) and emulated a 16 bit architecture CPU, you have not experienced True Programming.
The 6502 was a remarkable work of engineering. It's a great pity that they never followed up on it.
Seriously, what it is with the insane, ingorant NASA hate around here these days. No exploration? What about spirit and opprtunity?
Children ...
NASA should never have been a government agency. That was President Eisenhower's doing and aren't all Republicans evil?
The moon missions were done as stupidly as they possibly could be. The mathematics of space, delta-V is everything and once you're in Earth orbit you're half way to anywhere, dictated the establishment of a space station that could be used to launch further flights outward. This was debated before they chose the throw-everything-away-along-the-way design they ended up using.
So after all the money spent on R & D we ended up with less than two dozen men walking on the moon and nothing to show for it afterwards except that a follow on space shuttle that occasionally blows up and kills everyone on board.
Or, let me put it another way, we could have had colonies established on the moon and probably Mars by now if we had pursued space exploration sanely. A space station with a hostile environment outside isn't any more difficult than the world outside Mom's basement.
Ah, it's Slashdot let me try a car analogy. What good is it to drive a car if it could only remain within 1 mile of your house?
Now, get off my lawn.
Can we debunk this one once and for all? Parisians as a whole don't seem to be any more or less hostile to foreigners than the inhabitants of any other large city.
Granted, I grew up just outside of New York City, and accordingly have absolutely no expectation for total strangers to give me much more than the time of the day (especially in another language), but such is city life -- Paris gets an unfair rap, and really is a wonderful city. Every locale has its little quirks...
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
and without NASA there wouldn't be any Google Maps at all.
I agree. I've been to Paris, and the people there were perfectly nice to me.
I think this is an example of selection bias. A few loudmouths went to Paris, acted like jerks, and then came back and told everyone around them how horrible the Parisians were. Meanwhile, normal people went and were treated normally, and didn't say "gee, the people in Paris seemed nice".
I witnessed an American tourist giving a really abusive attitude toward a hotel manager. She had come a day early; her reservation was for the following night. "Madame, I am sorry, we simply don't have any rooms available tonight." "But I have a reservation!" "Your reservation is for tomorrow night." "THAT'S NOT MY PROBLEM!" He wound up calling her a cab to take her to some other hotel. I'll bet she told her friends she was horribly treated.
The worst treatment I received in Paris was when we weren't sure how to eat some prawns. We had never before received prawns with the head, legs, etc. still attached and we weren't sure what to do. I asked the waiter as politely as I knew how, "how does one eat this?" He showed me how simple it is: you just grab the head, pull, and *pop* it comes off. I thanked him. He showed me again. I thanked him again, with a little less enthusiasm. And then he just stood there, with this smug little smile on his face, pulling the heads off of all the prawns, as if we were too stupid to do it for ourselves, even when shown. Well, somehow we survived this incredibly abusive mistreatment, and I can't say I lie awake at nights worrying about it.
If you take the trouble to learn even a few words of French -- such as "merci", for "Thank You" -- the French people really appreciate it. They don't expect you to speak perfect French. (Although, a lot of the people I did meet didn't speak any English; if you can't speak any French, you will be limited to pointing at things. But you can actually get around pretty well that way if you have to. Just please learn a few polite phrases.)
A 670kg payload ought to be enough for anybody.