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NASA Buys 12 Seats On Soyuz

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the i-can-see-my-house-from-here dept.

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.

4 of 236 comments (clear)

  1. rewind 40 years by eobanb · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

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  2. Re:American pride aside by click2005 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Agreed. Wouldn't it be much better & cheaper to create a global space agency. Use the best technology from all the member countries.
    We are one people and its about time we started acting like it.

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  3. Re:Value? by Chrisq · · Score: 5, Funny

    In what way do secret spy satellites contribute to national security?

    If I told you that I'd have to shoot you.

  4. NASA DOES NOT LAUNCH MILITARY SPACECRAFT by Larson2042 · · Score: 4, Informative

    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)