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Russia Doubles Price For Launching US Astronauts
Third Position writes "NASA on Tuesday signed a contract to pay $55.8 million per astronaut for six Americans to fly into space on Russian Soyuz capsules in 2013 and 2014. NASA needs to get rides on Russian rockets to the International Space Station because it plans to retire the space shuttle fleet later this year. NASA now pays half as much, about $26.3 million per astronaut, when it uses Russian ships."
"You wanted us to adopt market pricing, yes Comrade?"
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
What if the kill the astronaut? Do we get a refund?
Rocket rides YOU!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
We sure did...
Its too bad we're all demand and everyone else is the supply.
I think we failed our own economy by selling it out
The moment US decided to go for the shuttle the game was over. Form over function is ok for household gadgets but not for space exploration.
The US had did have the best launch system and just tossed it aside because it was more cool with a rocket with a bolted on hip looking spacecraft.
HTTP/1.1 400
...still, with about $500mln per shuttle launch, I think dollar for dollar, russians would have a better perspective on achieving this all.
The basic problem with the shuttle is that it's a big, heavy vehicle, many tons of dead weight that need to be launched into the orbit. The russian rockets in final phase of the flight weight very little compared to the payload. They don't haul heavy-duty engines necessary for startup, landing gear, wings, and all that stuff that is not needed in the orbit. That means hauling 10 tons of cargo in 10 runs by russians will be still cheaper than hauling all the 10 tons in one run by a shuttle.
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What the hell is going on with our country?!
You gave up to chase stock markets instead.
Stick Men
The US got side tracked with the Apollo project and putting a man on the moon before the commies. If they continued developmental on the X-15, then we may have had a reliable space plane a lot sooner.
essentially - yes.
There are serious problems. Like, the engines are running a sustained explosion of hydrogen-oxygen mix, which produces temperature quite a bit higher than anything we have at our disposal could survive. It's pretty much only the shape that keeps the explosion far enough to be safe. Oxygen oxidizes everything it touches for prolonged time, hydrogen leaks through thinnest gaps deemed secure normally. Add stability - like ballancing a broom vertically on top of your finger, the unstabilized rocket will happily fly DOWN. Control acceleration - you could easily bring astronauts to orbit in half the time and quite a bit less fuel, except they would have to be scooped with a spoon from the rocket. Your "grain silo" has walls that aren't much thicker than alufoil, and can be easily pierced with a pencil, but it holds liquid hydrogen at room temperature. Check what pressure is liquid hydrogen at room temperature.
When you start adding it up, and especially if you add up all the -failed- tests before you get things right, you come up with much more than $60mln.
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Problem 2 - the engines have to run at sea level and in a vacuum.
If you plan on SSTO, then yes, you will either end up with a horribly un-optimized exhaust manifold design, or with variable geometry manifolds (or aerospikes or whatever). If however, you do multi-stage to orbit (like most conventional launchers), you simply optimize the first stage engine for sea level up to 20 miles (or whatever the hell the cut off point is for stage 1), and stage 2's engine can be optimized for 20 miles and up.
The shuttle is pretty much the only vehicle i can think off with liquid fuel engines running both at sea level and in actual space, and it cheats by using SRBs and dumping its fueltank
The problem still stands though, there is a reason we have actual rocket scientists, because it is frickin hard, especially if you want something where the risk of loss of life is acceptably low to todays society (which is rather hypocritical in that respect)
People, what a bunch of bastards
It's also possible that we're not reciprocating any more so they charge us the full price instead of giving us a discount. Put another way, when we had a shuttle, the price of sending astronauts up in Russian craft was partially paid by letting them use our shuttles.
How dare you disparage the brave, wealth-creating superhumans on Wall Street. If it weren't for them and their innovative, useful products the economy would crash and tens of millions would be unemployed.
We've become a bunch of scaredy cats. The Shuttle can still work if you accept the risk that we will lose astronauts during space travel. That's the price of space travel. It's not political like Obama or Bush. It has to do with our country being perfectly content sending thousands of young Americans to die in the foreign sands of war-zones, but terrified that seven grown men and women might die while exploring space. We're just being fucking stupid about this, and I say this with much love for the United States.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Yeah, he gutted the future that was planned and replaced it with something less retarded.
The future of the space program as embodied in Constellation was just more over-budget under-performing missions that failed to do anything to expand our horizons or solve the major problems making space exploration prohibitive.
To me the future of our space program looks brighter than ever.
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