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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 does it cost with Shuttle?
http://opencm3.net, http://www.nongnu.org/gm2/
Prices go up when competition declines. Shock and horror expressed by those ignorant of basic economics. Film at 11.
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20090513/155009780.html
Yawn.
How we know is more important than what we know.
About $75 Million ($450 Million per launch)
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Can't blame this one on Obama. The shuttle was to be retired with no replacement before Obama took office. He did gut the future of the space program though.
History is so yesterday!
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/information/shuttle_faq.html
Funny how it was cheaper to fly as a paid passenger than astronaut.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Its just another round of outsourcing.
Soon the USA will be lacking cutting edge skills and capacity in hi-tech manufacturing, and won't be able to compete with India.
The UK dropped all that sort of stuff in the mid-60s and look at us now. We welcome the US to the third-rate Nations club!
the rocket is just going straight up, what's so hard?
No, it's not.
Are you telling me that if I had the best part of $60 million I couldn't design, build and fly my own rocket in to space?
Elon Musk has spent a good part of a billion so far, has some of the brightest minds in the world working for him, and that's the cheapest *anyone* has developed a launcher for so far.
Just strap a sealed chamber onto a grain silo of fuel, surely?
Good luck with that.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Rocket rides YOU!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
There's a "ride" at the Cape where you get into a pressurized module in the cargo bay of a mockup shuttle and they rattle you around a bit. It's not fun, but I'm sure its educational or something. Anyway, it's actual size, 15 ft by 60 ft (4.6 m by 18.3 m), they cram about 80 people into it. Even the fattest Americans, who can fit in the seats, wouldn't overmass the shuttle. There's no reason they couldn't actually make this module and take that many people into space.. but of course, NASA would never do that.
How we know is more important than what we know.
If USA hadn't canceled the constellation program, the perception of exclusivity for Russia would be diminished, and USA would have a big shiny carrot to barter some short term help with.
"It's a doughnut stuffed with M&M's. That way when you finish the doughnut, you don't have to eat any M&M's."
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
So...this would be NASA's version of how many people can you cram in to a Volkswagon?
We lead the space race, put men on the moon, landers on Mars, explored the furthest reaches of our system, made huge technological breakthroughs via the space race and now we're reduced to begging for rides from the commies?
What the hell is going on with our country?!
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
In other news, the dollar has dropped in value on the exchange market and foreign providers have been forced to double their prices to make up the difference.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Problem 1 - the burning fuel is hotter than the melting point of the engines.
Problem 2 - the engines have to run at sea level and in a vacuum.
Problem 3 - flying through atmosphere at 2000 MPH
Problem 4 - getting down
Get back to me after you think you have those solved cheaply and safely.
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.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I'm sure I remember watching this film once where this guy and his dog - his name was Grummit or something - managed to build this pretty cool rocket that ignited using a fuse. It was a bit old fashioned, but it seemed like a really cheap way to get to the moon. They didn't look like millionaires, and they seemed to have built it just using a saw, some metal, and a few household items, so I'm sure it can be done for a lot less than $60m. I think they managed to harvest a lot of cheese from the surface, too, so there could be an exciting business opportunity there for you. If I recall, the film also showed their design plans for this rocket, so perhaps watch it and copy it. Good luck!
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
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
The Russians tried that once. They ended up paying NASA about $2 million per astronaut. It turns out NASA hired Hollywood accountants.
I really hope that there are no loose ends in this deal... it would be suck that, after getting the astronauts to the ISS, they discover that back-to-earth service is not included and they need to negotiate a new contract for it...
Yes, I am Dogbert.
Why can't
Are you telling me that if I had the best part of $60 million I couldn't design, build and fly my own rocket in to space? Even a brute force solution wouldn't be that expense, surely?
Hear that sound? that's every rocket scientist on Earth laughing at you.
First things first, bond != shares. You can own 100% of the bonds issued by a company and it won't buy you any controlling interest as long as the company is solvent.
Now, on to the real discussion. The problem we have is that free trade (without a common market) artificially imports the lower regulatory standards from the exporting country. Even in the EU, you have issues like where Danish pork producers are utilising rearing technique which are discouraged or banned in other EU countries (and getting away with it).
Of course, a part of the price differential is because of the discrepancy in the cost of production, but a big component of that is how the legal and regulatory framework is established (or not) in the exporting country. How much of the social cost of production (ie. environmental damage) is internalized through taxes and fines? How much protection is offered to workforce producing the goods?
To make free trade work, there must be a common standard of not only the products themselves, but also how they are produced.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
The US is no longer the largest market for a lot of things, from cell phones (China has more cell phone users than the entire American population) to cars (China is #1 in new car sales worldwide).
They can now pick and choose the markets the enter. It's why they refused to buy the Hummer, and why China/Walmart Refuses To Bid On NASA Contract. They're simply not that desperate for business any more, not with their economy still growing at almost 10% per year.
Well, he didn't state the requirement that he should reach space alive. That alone should cut a huge amount of the cost. :-)
He also didn't tell from where he wants to start. If his self-designed rocket is first carried into the upper atmosphere by a professional rocket, this again saves a lot of cost and probably considerably simplifies the design. AFAIK, space officially starts at 100km height, so if the professional rocket carries him to a height of 99.9km, I guess designing a rocket which manages the last 100 meters before it breaks shouldn't be that hard.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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.
The enemies of Democracy are