'Space Freighter' On Its Way to Resupply International Space Station

SchrodingerZ writes "An ATV 'Space truck' [launched Friday] from Kourou base in French Guiana to the International Space Station. 'The robotic truck is heading to the International Space Station (ISS) with new supplies of food, water, air, and fuel.' It launched at 04:34 GMT for a 63 minute flight into orbit. At 20 tonnes, the ATV is the biggest ship servicing the station now that the U.S. shuttles have been retired. The Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) launched with a Ariane 5 carrier rocket, it is the 'third such craft to be sent to the station by ESA (European Space Agency).' It will dock with the ISS on the night of the 28th and 29th, Paris time."

Comments

Really expensive

[zrbyte]

Reading TFA, this resupply mission is hugely expensive compared to what SpaceX will deliver (if nothing goeas wrong in their next launch)

Now, being European and all gives me some pride that the ESA is doing this and all, but the whole thing just seems so wasteful. Especially if we consider that the Dragon capsule will be reusable.

Re:Really expensive

[DerekLyons]

Reading TFA, this resupply mission is hugely expensive compared to what SpaceX will deliver (if nothing goeas wrong in their next launch)

ROTFLMAO. No shit it's more expensive - it's delivering more cargo. It can provide reboost to the ISS, which Dragon cannot. It can supply propellant and bulk gasses, which Dragon cannot. It can dock itself rather than relying on the Canadarm 2 to berth it...
 
You get what you pay for.
 
As I've said before in these discussions: It's not just about price, capabilities matter.* It doesn't matter how cheap something is if it cannot do the job. A subcompact may only cost a quarter of what a full size pickup does, but four subcompacts cannot replace a fulls size pickup - and only a fool would confuse the two in the first place.
 
* Seriously, it's annoying to have to keep repeating this. Is it really such a hard concept to grasp?

Re:Really expensive

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Two years from now, you won't be asking this question, and your children may ride on commercial space ships.

I very much hope you're right. But you can't be sure you're right, and neither can anyone else. Meanwhile, you may have noticed that there's a space station in orbit that needs resupply now, not at some indefinite point in the future.

Commercial space ships are a giant wave of the future (http://www.spacex.com/media.php)

This looks like a fun game! Can I play?
Social networking is the wave of the future (http://www.facebook.com)
Fusion power is the wave of the future (http://www.generalfusion.com)
Printed newspapers are the wave of the future (http://www.nytimes.com)

You remind me of this: "Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value," -- Marechal Ferdinand Foch

Straw man. GPP wasn't questioning the value of space travel; he was questioning the value of the specific approach of SpaceX and other companies which are claiming that they will offer reliable space transportation at dramatically lower costs than government space agencies have so far managed to do. And they may be right, but so far, nobody knows for sure. What we do know for sure is that we have been hearing optimistic "we can do X for $Y" statements pretty much since the beginning of the space age, and no matter who's saying it, the price always turns out to be $ZY, for values of Z much greater than 1.

BTW, that Foch quote was from 1911; I suspect that a few years later, he'd have freely admitted he was wrong. Equally wrong was Giulio Douhet, in 1921: "Would not the sight of a single enemy airplane be enough to induce a formidable panic? Normal life would be unable to continue under the constant threat of death and imminent destruction." Look at the position taken by the pessimists, and that taken by the visionaries, and the reality is usually somewhere in the middle. Also, it's interesting to note that it was precisely the massive government investment (on all sides of the conflict) in aviation technology in WW1 that spurred the growth of the aviation industry in the interwar years, and laid the groundwork for the equally massive, government-investment-funded growth during WW2. In 1911, airplanes were toys. By 1918, they were reliable and sophisticated machines. And this did not happen as a result of visionaries and dreamers, but of hard military necessity.

Re:Really expensive

[caseih]

Space-X's rocket is hardly a paper rocket. It actually exists, has been fired several times, and has had two test flights that were fairly successful. Later this year a test flight will carry actual cargo to the space station. Space-X is in my estimation only about 2 years away from being able to do regular cargo runs to the space station. Their human-rated Dragon capsule is also coming along nicely. Their design looks good, and by combining the escape system with the maneuvering system they've managed to reduce weight and increase reliability and safety over the systems used by the old Apollo program and the current Soyuz program. In about 6 years they will be able to fly astronauts to the space station (really).

I'm very excited about what they are doing. I hope that NASA and the government support them because they really are doing good work, and doing things that NASA can't (if because it's pulled 8 ways by different levels of government). Right now it looks like Space-X is really our only chance to get humans into space. Why waste more money on paper rockets like constellation, or even the Orion capsule at this stage.

There are other companies like Boeing, Bigelow, and others that are in the running too. They should be supported, and given NASA contracts where appropriate.

I find the skepticism, particularly on the part of Republicans, to private space flight be very puzzling. Their sarcastic congratulations to Space-X for doing what NASA did 50 years ago was really grating. I'd think that they'd be very excited that a private company is having success. Granted all rockets these days are made by private companies, but they are typically funded in large part by government (air force, NASA, etc).

Re:Really expensive

[M1FCJ]

The reason they are against it is plain and simple: "They're not in control of it". All of these small private companies have managed to beat Boeing and Lockheed with a fraction of the budget and pork barreling and they don't like that fact a bit at all.

Re:Thanks Europe, thanks Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

You can thank Obama for that. He is beholden to his corporate dot-com masters on the left and completely dismantled the Constellation program that George W. Bush had the vision to initiate. Under Bush we had hope for the future, but under Obama it is nothing but sadness. Hopefully Romney or Santorum can turn this country around and get us back on track for reaching towards the stars!

Re:value for money :::Really expensive

[nojayuk]

About half of the ATV's payload mass delivered to the ISS is fuel for the station-keeping thrusters that are used along with the ATV's own motors to allow the ISS to maintain its orbit. The Dragon capsule only carries dry or bottled cargo that must be transfered to the station by hand and the Dragon's service module can't be used to carry out stationkeeping burns.

Re:value for money :::Really expensive

[Patch86]

Roughly speaking, I believe the SpaceX solution carries about half the payload of an ATV, and costs not substantially less than half the price. So you don't save vast sums of money doing it that way.

And as mentioned elsewhere, one of the ATV's main jobs is station-keeping: using its engines to boost the the ISS back into a higher orbit. That accounts for a fair chunk of the expense of the vehicle design, and is something that the Dragon can't do.