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NASA Funded Commercial Space Projects Heating Up
coondoggie writes "NASA's role as commercial space entrepreneur is going well and the four companies it is funding to build future spacecraft that could take astronauts to and from the International Space Station and other destinations are moving forward. That was the chief observation in a status report the space agency issued this week entitled 'NASA's return on investment report.' You may recall that in April NASA split $270 million between Boeing ($92 million), Space Exploration Technologies (Space X--$75 million), Sierra Nevada ($80 million) and Blue Origin ($22 million) to continue development of commercial rockets and spacecraft capable of safely flying astronauts into orbit and to the International Space Station." Gubers33 pointed out another article about NASA's upcoming plans for Jupiter, Mars, and the Moon.
Orbital beer runs? Awesome!
Imagine if we spent all the money from the war on space exploration. We'd all be able to leave this planet and not have to worry about what happens back on Earth.
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im pretty sure pretty much all rockets have failures early in their development careers. spacex mitigated that somewhat with having its failures on its smaller falcon 1 rocket, and once they ironed out the issues, built its larger more expensive falcon 9, which is 2 for 2 successes so far. so quit your anonymous coward bitching. spacex are putting more shit in space for less cost than the fucking chinese for fucks sake.
Consider a hypothetical moon colony -
Much as a I'd like space to be nice and peaceful, that doesn't seem to be in our natures right now - and just shifting the theater of conflict to space would put the well-funded military R&D pipelines on track to developing numerous technologies that we were going to need anyways - but they'd do it faster than if the goal was peaceful colonization, since it's now a matter of "national pride".
This update points out that dark forces within NASA are urging the return of cost-plus contracting for crew transport (scroll down to "Commercial Crew" section therein). This will get us straight back into the traditional world of missed schedules and massive overruns, if it's allowed to happen. USAan readers please hold yourselves in readiness to contact your elected lords and, um, representatives.
The original Atlas rockets had repeated failures, including one that blew up live on national network television. The Mercury astronauts were invited to attend that one live and in person, in hopes they would continue to support the rocket for when they would take a trip on it into space.... that was to happen just a couple of months later.
Don't go into how rocket manufacturing technology has improved so much since then, since it is still a crap shoot to see if the rocket actually works in the first place. There is some improvement in terms of new metallurgy and other stuff, but why is SpaceX singled out here from anybody else? Why does Boeing or ATK have a monopoly on the knowledge for how to get into space? (which they don't)
Building rockets is a tough business, and any new rocket is going to have problems. I sure don't know why the SLS is any better than the Falcon 9, other than the fact that it hasn't actually flown at all nor is the design even stable for that matter.
International joint ventures, particularly between governments, is a foolish and expensive thing unless the point is explicitly to improve diplomatic relations. The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project was precisely that, where the whole point of the mission was to increase the exchange of information between two nations that had spaceflight capabilities and learn how to help one another out if there was a reason for helping one another out.
Congressmen, the people who make the appropriations for NASA budgets, don't have many constituents in places like the UK, France, or Germany. Simply put, they don't care about international commitments as long as they can keep getting re-elected. A choice between killing their favorite pork project vs. some international space mission to Mars? The choice should be patently obvious.
BTW, Congress doesn't like to give up their political power all that much. Yes, they could make a long-term appropriation over multiple years, but they also like to micro-manage a whole lot, perhaps a bit too much. Why else is the SLS being called the "Senate Launch System" where not just the broad goals but the individual components and even the structural design are being designed by the wonderful aerospace engineers on Capitol Hill in the "upper chamber" of Congress? Even crazy details like the particular kinds of metal and the thickness of that metal in the engines to be used are even going to be prescribed by law. By the time funding is finalized, the contractors won't have to do anything but production work because the Senate will have designed the monster in such detail that they won't have to.
International joint ventures, particularly between governments, is a foolish and expensive thing unless the point is explicitly to improve diplomatic relations.
Expensive I'll grant. Foolish depends on what you're attempting to accomplish. One of the causes attributed to the success of the ISS is that the international agreements made it too difficult for Congress to pull the funding in the next budget cycle. So if your purpose is to get a solid commitment to something, involving international partners may be worth the cost.