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NASA Buys 12 Seats On Soyuz
jamax noted that NASA has announced the purchase of 12 seats on Soyuz for 2014 to 2016. The price tag was $753 million — just a stitch over $62M per chair to the ISS.
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Seriously, isn't this cheaper than we can do ourselves? Granted, we need our own program for national security and all that, but this still sounds cheaper than what we have been doing, with the Shuttle program.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
More like just a stitch under $63M, yes?
Here's hoping Dragon rolls out smoothly...
The pain was excruciating and the scarring is likely permanent, but that just means it's working.
At least we're not outsourcing our space program to India just yet... give it a few years.
Around 1971, could anyone have imagined this is where we would be in 2011? Having no ships of our own and hitching rides from the Ruskies' spacecraft originally designed in the 1960s?
Take off every sig. For great justice.
I actually think this sort of cooperation is a good thing. The space race and Cold War have been over for a long time. It's about time we started acting like it.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I for one find it shameful that politics (both sides are at fault) has resulted in this situation. Give NASA the means (funds) needed but don't restrict them to a preset supplier list or technology. Then sit back and let them do the job. Yes, there needs to be specifications, lets say deliver 4 people to LEO with X KG supplies, but otherwise leave them alone. I do hope that Dragon can ramp up faster since it now appears NASA will not be able to do so.
Conservative, mod down for violating
More disconcerting is the fact that ANY serious dispute with Russia will need to be taken into account as they could refuse to launch to the ISS (or let our astronauts down) in a diplomatic crisis.
Depending on another country that you are not the best friends with to provide you with the ONLY transportation to your space station does not sound like a good idea.
if nasa funded manned falcon 9s, they are what, 50 million a flight, and 7 seats? so, thats a saving of at least half a billion dollars, using an american launch system to boot.
That is a lot to pay for economy class. Do they at least get an in-flight movie or a boxed lunch?
NASA needs to get their shit together, and develop their own damned spacecraft so we don't have to borrow Russia's ships. If Congress can bail out the evil, lying, fraudsters called BANKS, they can fund science and technology research.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
How is the safety record for the Soyuz? If an accident winds up with some astronauts dying can you image the media $hit storm?
launching 12 to 14 chairs ... Steve Ballmer likes that!
and achieve what exactly ? whats so disconcerting about it ?
yay we dont shuttle your half assed astronauts to low earth orbit so they can sit there and stare out at the earth from the ISS portholes for six months at a shot.
big whoop.
its not like the ISS is doing anything critical or military related. the military stuff will still launch on delta iv heavy boosters off vandy or the cape.
the ISS can also sit there parked in orbit for years with no one on board. its not like its going to fall down cuz joe blow astronaut was not up there to go out and shove it back up the gravity well or something. hell there were plans to shut the whole stupid lame ass project down anyway. its a white elephant. no commercial value, minimal scientific value compared to robotic probes and basically worthless for long term space exploration due to its placement in low earth orbit.
now build a tanking platform with robotic spacecraft construction/assembly/food production/power generation/roid mining gear at lagrange points l1/l2 for staging earth/moon/mars/europa missions and that makes much more sense.
could possibly tend to distract one's vision & attention from the oncoming sphere, or some other crap. thanks.
Who negotiated that, Madoff?. Tito paid only 20 megabucks, and that included the stay on the ISS, not only the transport up and down. Taking a little volume discount into the equation, everything over 15 M$ is plain ripoff.
btw, someone got a spare hundred M$ for me? I wanna go to the moon!
You should sue your pusher for selling you some really bad dope, man!
"NASA has efforts underway to develop an American-made commercial capability for crew transportation and rescue services to the station following this year's retirement of the space shuttle fleet."
Seems like a lot of people missed this part, but is there any real information on these efforts? I know there have been private-sector developments in space flight (Virgin for example), but are there any examples, prototypes, or even a rough napkin-sketches on what these new "crew transportation and rescue services" will look like?
Getting taken to the cleaners by the criminal gangsters and thugs otherwise known as the Russian government, is bad enough without worrying about what will happen if some kind of diplomatic crisis happens, and the Russian government starts using the prospect of the ISS crashing in the South Pacific as leverage in their rather cynical and thuggish foreign policy.
Simple math - even back in 2004, the shuttle program had already cost $145 billion. So even if all the subsequent flights had been free, it would still have beenover $1 billion per mission.
Part of this is due to the shuttle never achieving any of its design goals. It was supposed to have a rapid turn-around time (2 weeks), and a usable service life of between 100 and 125 flights per shuttle. The turn-around time obviously was never met, and obviously, the shuttles (Atlantis, Challenger, Columbia, Discovery, Endeavour - I'm leaving out the Enterprise test vehicle, which never made it into space), didn't even average 25% of the original number of missions per vehicle. It was because of these failures that fleet production was stopped at 4, rather than 8, and never did achieve 50 launches per year - it didn't even average 50 launches per decade.
so long as there's no personal contact, it's just #s. you don't get a cut, but it looks like that's maybe better for right now, for you.
I just got some email about fancy new fully-reclining bed-seats on flights from NYC to Germany. I don't actually have plans to take that flight but I was curious what those seats cost and I balked at the idea of paying $3600 for round-trip airfare. I would have instead gone steerage class on the same flight for $600 round-trip.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Priceline - William Shatner Busts A Move
Science does not hold your country hostage. It can't say "Nice mortgage you have there, shame if someone had to foreclose it to cover his own losses".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Put US Flag stickers all over the exterior of the craft like the advertising on NASCAR vehicles. Our fragile ego is saved, problem solved.
With less than 1/2 of one percent of the annual federal budget, this isn't going to happen any time soon. Maybe if we can stand down the war machine for a while....
Anyway, Constellation was looking like a viable option. Unfortunately, it was way over budget. With the scrapping of Constellation, I think we're going to see some commercial partnerships forming where the launch vehicles will be owned and possibly operated by the contractor.
Our Space Program has been relegated to buying tickets from Communists... Thank you Obama. Destroyer of Worlds.
By centralizing this service to Russia, and by providing additional funds (assuming they go towards program), you perhaps allow for more development and technology being put forward for this sort of thing, rather than having two super nations running parallel programs essentially wasting money.
Sort of sucks for the USA, I'll admit. However as a human race thing, it might turn out for the best.
This will also undoubtedly be a major source of Russian pride, and may well be better funded as a result.
Anyway just thought I would throw this out there rather than all the doom and gloom I see from most.
They learned tricks of capitalism US airlines.
You know if you feel nostalgic, I'm sure Russia can re-commission Buran. It's cheaper, get better millage and has a smoking section.
It was a philosophical difference and we lost. While the Russians refined their skills building (and improving) the same old technology, our Congress was distracted by lobbyists for the STS contractors to build the Next Big Thing. Just a case of, "Ohhhh! Shiny!"
Perhaps we need someone like Stalin, who can go through the ranks of politicians and upper management from time to time and thin the herd. If the mahogany row crowd had to worry about the occasional visit from a death squad, maybe they'd keep their heads down and let engineers get their jobs done.
Have gnu, will travel.
Does that include luggage?
"When everyone is dead, the Great Game is finished. Not before."
Rudyard Kipling, 1900
so yeah $700 million seems like a lot, but it is way less than the two shuttle launches that would be required to send up 12 people. STS runs $3 billion per launch! it's over, we're done!
NASA needs to get their shit together, and develop their own damned spacecraft so we don't have to borrow Russia's ships.
You try getting your shit together when your mission, mandate, creed, materials list, allowed technology, and half of your design are handed down to you from on high by a bunch of technologically clueless dipshits that spent their high school years playing the popularity game rather than learning calculus.
You want NASA to build it's own damned spacecraft that isn't a bloated, over budget, expensive piece of shit? Get their funding out of the hands of the petty, squabbling, corrupt retards that are on the Congressional science and budget committees. Until they are given a wad of cash that doesn't have 100 riders and 30 pieces of pork attached to it, the folks at NASA won't be able to design a damned thing worth designing.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Look and see - the current administration in this country has made it clear that NASA's mandate is not to put men in orbit (that's for commercial interests to do), not to put men on moons or other planets (although research on heavy-lift spacecraft is still funded, the current administration views this also as a task for commercial interests), not to perform interplanetary research. NASA exists to get kids into science and math, expand international relationships, and to make sure the Muslims of the world feel like they're included in our space program.
It took Congress to force the current administration to preserve the aforementioned heavy-lift program, as well as our support for the ISS (although without a shuttle fleet or a replacement vehicle I don't see how that's going to work). I suppose our President feels like ecological monitoring and feel-good programs are all NASA is good for.
Amazing - a Democrat brought the US Space Program into this world, and another Democrat took it out. Perhaps the current US President is less like John F. Kennedy and more like his antimatter counterpart?
NASA needs to get their shit together, and develop their own damned spacecraft so we don't have to borrow Russia's ships. If Congress can bail out the evil, lying, fraudsters called BANKS, they can fund science and technology research.
Except, the ship doesn't move with words. It's moves with money, and lots of it. Do you really think the government has your "best interest" in mind?
Government is simply an entity to control the population and service the wealthy. If it wasn't, we wouldn't deal with Tyrannical governments with an idea like "as long as they herd their sheep, we'll have a solid flow of cash".
The aliens need to attack us, or we need to blow this planet to bits already. Population has reached the J curve, limiting factor is close for our species, and that is either us, viruses or aliens. Let's shoot for a combo, viral alien human hybrid who eats people. Wait, wasn't that on a show somewhere?
There were 7 Apollo missions that attempted to land men on the moon. 6 of those were successful. In each of those 2 men landed on the moon. So 12 men walked on the moon.
The solution is simple, we need to figure out some way for the loss of our ability to send people and supplies into orbit to result in a global financial crisis. That will get Congress into action. The best part is that if they do it right, the NASA execs could take home billion dollar bonuses a mere 6 months later.
NASA doesn't need to do anything except perhaps learn to deal a little bit better with deadlines, and also work with the weather. What needs to happen is Congress and the rest of the science-illiterate fucktards in Washington need to quit bitching about how much money is being drained by the space program. Yes, going into space is ridiculously expensive. Yes, performing research in space is expensive. Yes, it is expensive to do anything directly related to space.
This is no different from anything else at the forefront of technology. If I told Intel I wanted them to produce a single set of prototype processors, they would want more than a few million dollars from me in return. And whether these prototypes got any results the first time around? Well that would be anyone's guess. NASA is similar in that they need massive funding to research, hypothesize, test, prototype, test, and finally implement their designs. They are on the goddammed forefront of human evolution, and a bunch of suits don't give a shit because it affects their bottom line.
Ridiculous.
Unfortunately this story is now down the page, so this probably won't be read much, but I'm going to correct the false assumption here that seems to have played a major part in this thread.
NASA does not launch military spacecraft. That job, today, falls to the United Launch Alliance (primarily, smaller payloads can go on other US commercial providers), a wholly separate organization from NASA. (ULA does occasionally launch NASA spacecraft, but at that point, NASA is simply a customer who is buying a ride to orbit.) The last time NASA itself launched a military payload was STS-53 in 1992. Since then, all payloads have gone up on unmanned Air-force or commercial launch vehicles. (Why is this? Challenger. The military did not want to be grounded for another two years if another shuttle had an accident.)
So no, we do not need NASA for national security, and have not since 1992.
Back to the point of the main article, I find it interesting that congress appears to be perfectly happy to send hundreds of millions of dollars to Russia for rides to orbit, but have to be dragged kicking a screaming to let NASA pay some American companies to develop the same capability, possibly for even cheaper (i.e. SpaceX's goal of 20-30 million per seat to the ISS)
We need more death rays.That's how to get funding.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
Not to mention that the budget the politicians hand down with their decrees is never enough, and every four to eight (recently eight) years a new politician comes around and throws out half of your funding for the old to-do list and gives you a new to-do list.
There's a reason NASA has only been successful at (comparatively) cheap probe missions lately. They aren't as sexy or popular so they can go through development with much less political "help".
That's less than $1M per kilogram, sounds like a bargain.
Well then I guess Science doesn't have to worry about being the first ones up against the wall when the people get sick of the bullshit, then, does it?
Well, yes and no.
No, NASA shouldn't develop it's own spacecraft to go to ISS when private industry can do just as good a job for less money. We don't need another expensive manned spacecraft launch to drop a few people off at ISS.
Yes, NASA should be going beyond what private industry can do. Lagrange points, Moon, Asteroids, Mars, whatever. They should be building the craft and technology that we need to go there.
We WERE designing new ships. Obama cut the program off.
Ares I was supposed to be faster and cheaper, turned out to be neither. But it did keep the masters at ATK appeased, and that was fine for some in congress. I keep wondering if there is a money trail there.
What a waste. We could have had multiple manned launchers now based on EELVs and SpaceX Falcon but no, the cargo cult of Apollo lives on in the minds of many in congress, and you have Senior NASA administrators not funding COTS-D because, they are just so sure it's impossible for the contractors to deliver at the low, low prices they claim.
Now look what is happening on the hill. We have congress dictating that we need a heavy lift rocket, and insisting NASA can do it all themselves with the usual cost plus contracts for way less than what NASA and OMB reckon it will cost. Hey that sounds like what happened to shuttle during development. And gosh didn't they underfund Ares I development also, leading to "the gap" and, our total reliance on Soyuz for years to come.
This is not leadership. At best it's ignorance. At worse it's corruption.
It seems to me, we sent men to the moon with slide rule calculaters, i.e. a human had to understand
the full dynamics of a problem at hand, and the slide rule gave him a 3 digit answer.
Now with modern computers we get 64 + bit answers, and often no human seems to understand the dynamics of the problem
and trusts the computer will be correct..
We did very well with the 3 digit acuracy of a slide rule, and the requirment to us, of understanding the problem we were working on.
Best Regards
FL: