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SpaceX and Boeing Battle For US Manned Spaceflight Contracts
An anonymous reader writes: $3 billion in funding is on the line as private space companies duke it out for contracts to end U.S. reliance on Russian rockets for manned spaceflight. The two biggest contenders are SpaceX and Boeing, described as "the exciting choice" and "the safe choice," respectively. "NASA is charting a new direction 45 years after sending humans to the Moon, looking to private industry for missions near Earth, such as commuting to and from the space station. Commercial operators would develop space tourism while the space agency focuses on distant trips to Mars or asteroids." It's possible the contracts would be split, giving some tasks to each company. It's also possible that the much smaller Sierra Nevada Corp. could grab a bit of government funding as well for launches using its unique winged-shuttle design.
Contracts this big never go to just one company. They'll both get a slice of the pie - the only question is who gets the bigger slice.
As an astronaut, I wonder which would appeal to me more? The "Exciting Choice" or the "Safe Choice?" On one hand, I'll be strapped to it as it launches it (and me) into space. On the other hand...I'm an astronaut! My choice of car is probably NOT a fucking Volvo.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Does SpaceX got the same load of cash as Boeing to "pursuade" the authorities? At least that's how congress works currently.
While commercial corporations interested in launching their product into space may go with the best price/performance ratio, the chances of a USG contract even being written in a vendor-agnostic manner are slim. It's all about whose district or state the potential money will go.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
This will depend on how much each company is willing to fund individual congressmen.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Tourists/profit.
now I can't get this image out of my head http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
At some point, we'll need to get off this rock or expire as a species. Getting people in space helps us understand how to do that better.
SpaceX closed 9 deals, w/possible 2-3 heavies. Four more in the next few weeks, incl one non-GEO, then maybe 4 more before end of the year.
Source: https://twitter.com/AvWeekPari...
I'd like to see both awarded a minimum number of flights (say 1/4 or 1/3 of total planned) at a fixed maximum price, and the price of all additional flights negotiated down from that maximum price, relatively close to the date when the hardware has to be built - say a year before flight. This would also leave an opening for other competitors to come in later. It would probably be beneficial to allocate in lots of, say, three or four up to 10 at a time. I would also require all vendors / vehicles to use the same interfaces - mount points, power, fluid, and data connections, etc. so any vehicle could be swapped out for any other on short notice. Of course, some vehicles are going to have to have special equipment, but that could also be handled using a modular system.
The net result of this would be a continuing reduction in the design, manufacturing, and launch costs, as more components become commoditized to fit all vehicles - all vehicle vendors will benefit. Soon any launch vehicle could be used to launch any 'standard' vehicle. The result of this would be an increase in the economic feasibility of space launches for both NASA and others private and public, making the market larger. Outcome: boom in space development. Boeing and SpaceX would both benefit from this approach in the long term, and possibly others as well. The key to economic space development is just this kind of commoditization, repeatability and increased reliability that long production runs with continuing improvements can provide.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
If Boeing gets a full contract we'll probably get to watch US manned spaceflight end in my generation. Boeing won't do anything worthwhile, they'll burn taxpayer money at an unsustainable rate to launch a handful of astronauts a year, claim every few years they need more and eventually the program will fold under its own weight the same way SLS will once they launch a few of them and claim victory. If SpaceX gets it we may have a few incidents (launch aborts, failure to reach orbit, maybe some fatalities), but I'd wager that they'll advance space travel at an amazing pace with an exponential increase in astronauts, decreasing launch costs and payloads into orbit.
"There is no purpose to manned spaceflight. The scientific return comes from unmanned spaceflight."
You are currently modded +4 Insightful for having claimed, essentially, that the HST repair and upgrade missions could have all been done by unmanned systems. I have points, I could have modded you as you deserve. I could just ask for a citation - you're making an extraordinary claim there and you really do deserve to have to back it up or retract it. Instead, I'm taking a couple of months vacation from Slashdot - there's too many like you around - the signal to noise ratio keeps dropping towards an absolute zero, and I join all the 3 digit old farts in saying "This site just ain't what it used to be!" .
Who is John Cabal?
There is no purpose to manned spaceflight.
There's always purpose to investigating the unknown. If we didn't, we'd still be living in trees.
You need both. The Science figures out what is interesting enough to investigate in detail. Manned missions then do that detailed investigation. The Moon landings weren't for science - they were a political statement. The science was just a bonus of that statement. But learning how to mine asteroids? Efficiently get between the surface and LEO and points farther? Will infinitely improve the human condition. They won't do it for probably 50-100 years, but that doesn't mean we don't do them.
Now, you need a lot more unmanned missions to figure out the few manned missions that will be worth the time and money.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Try out Soylent News instead. The SNR is much better.
"There's someone in my head but it's not me." - Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon
You are describing how either Boeing or Space-X would get sub-contractors to compete so they can get good quality components for a decent price. If you take the creativity out of the current bid phase, you'll never get innovation and "new" designs going up in to the sky. Oh and don't forget, it just may be that whoever wins this, might have to comission things from the losing party just to fullfill the contract.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
That's actually a silly argument. We don't have to get off this rock. We could learn how to play nice with this very comfortable spaceship that just popped up out of nowhere. Even if we want to get off this rock, we don't have to do it just now. We could use the money for more important things or just spend less.
No, the real reason to go into space (and the ocean, don't forget the ocean) is because it's cool. The rest is just filler for a grant proposal.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Hey Bozo: Check out this Boeing Bad Boy.
It's everything the Shuttle should have been (second time's a charm). They know how to build things.
So does SpaceX. Unfortunately, the winner will likely be the one with the most political clout (YoYoDyne), but engineering wise, they both are good designs and both companies can execute.
The best we can hope for is that SpaceX gets enough tossed at them to keep going.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
It's everything the Shuttle should have been (second time's a charm).
Completely unable to perform a launch escape, you mean? The shuttle did that, already.
Yeah, people's lives are on the line here. You've got to go with the company who's got a proven track record in safely launching a modern human-capable spacecraft.
http://www.spacex.com/dragon
Wait, which is the exciting choice then?
We could learn how to play nice with this very comfortable spaceship that just popped up out of nowhere.
Says some hippy who has no clue about the real world.
Yeah, maybe we could all go and live in little hippy communes after 99% of the population magically vanish, but, in the real world, we have to get off this rock before some wacko starts spreading the new geneticlaly-engineered super-plague they knocked together in their garage. We'll be lucky if we have decades, let alone centuries.
It's peculiar that TFA labels the Boeing design the 'safe choice' when it hasn't flown yet, despite $0.5B of investment from NASA. And the Atlas V launch vehicle may have flown a lot of missions, but it isn't man-rated yet.
The SpaceX Dragon has flown several times, and has spent months in orbit docked to the ISS. Now I realize the manned Dragon has many new systems, but it seems to me SpaceX is a lot closer to a man-rated capsule than Boeing.
You are currently modded +4 Insightful for having claimed, essentially, that the HST repair and upgrade missions could have all been done by unmanned systems. I could have modded you as you deserve. I could just ask for a citation - you're making an extraordinary claim there and you really do deserve to have to back it up or retract it. Instead, I'm taking a couple of months vacation from Slashdot
Good, because you're putting words in his mouth. I could do math with pen and paper, without computers and calculators and my answers would at least theoretically be just as correct but it wouldn't be cost-efficient at all. It's an apples and oranges comparison but Hubble cost:
From its original total cost estimate of about US$400 million, the telescope had by now cost over $2.5 billion to construct. Hubble's cumulative costs up to this day are estimated to be several times higher still, roughly US$10 billion as of 2010.
Space Shuttle program cost:
The total cost of the actual 30-year service life of the shuttle program through 2011, adjusted for inflation, was $196 billion. The exact breakdown into non-recurring and recurring costs is not available, but, according to NASA, the average cost to launch a Space Shuttle as of 2011 was about $450 million per mission.
The numbers we'd really like to know though is that out of those $2.5 billion to design and construct, how much would it cost to just make a new Hubble and launch it. Just the five servicing missions (confusingly named 1, 2, 3A, 3B, 4) alone at $450 million each - that's aggregate, not marginal cost though - would be $2.25 billion. It is certainly possible to argue that science would have progressed further without the Shuttle program, all things considered.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
While I'll concede some truth to what you say about NASA, with SpaceX (and competitors) we will soon have bootstrapped the manned spaceflight industry enough such that no one will care anymore whether people like you make blanket statements about the value of manned spaceflight.
The only people's opinions that will matter will be the paying customers. Presumably, those willing (and waiting) to pay for a manned launch think there is a purpose and value to it.
If even a short trip off this tiny rock of a planet becomes affordable in my lifetime, I'll be buying.
- Necron69
There is no purpose to manned spaceflight.
If we want to settle Mars and generally expand into space, you need manned spaceflight. I know not everyone thinks that is important. But some people, myself included, do believe that is a worthwhile endeavor.
The scientific return comes from unmanned spaceflight. Manned spaceflights are stunts to keep the pork flowing to Congressionally powerful districts. There is nothing done by manned spaceflight that could not be done unmanned for one tenth or one hundredth the cost as an unmanned mission.
This is true, if the only reason for spaceflight is pure science. I am a huge fan of pure science, but I don't think that is the only purpose of spaceflight.
The problem is that NASA is run by ex-flyboys and astronauts. There is an internal battle between the manned spaceflight directorate and the science directorate (NASA/JPL). The former do maned pork and are always trying to steal funds away from the science guys. The manned fighter-jocks tried to kill planetary science many times, the last time was earlier this year. At one point they allocated more for a Space Toilet (30 mil) than they did for a Europa mission (15 mi). NASA needs a shakeup and the science guys need equal control at the top.
I think the bigger problem is that NASA funding (and therefore mission selection) is completely hostage to election cycles of Congressmen, Senators and the President. It's impossible to have a coherent long term plan.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
created by Satan
I thought it was the Communists who were trying to steal our precious bodily fluids/
Have gnu, will travel.
We need to get off this rock. Smarter people than I (Hawking, Musk) have been saying this for years.
The "upgrade" to Hubble could have been accomplished more cheaply by launching another Hubble.
I think for the cost of the shuttle program, you could treat the HST as disposable, and just keep building and launching them until you get it right.
OTOH, the cost of JWST has blown out even further than Hubble (approx $9b, from an initial budget below $2b) precisely because there's no human servicing, which means everything in the overly-complex design must deploy perfectly or the entire mission is a bust. Eliminating the added cost of making the spacecraft serviceable is more than made up for by making the need to ensure the spacecraft can't fail.
So "the science guys" aren't a guarantee of savings, once a robotic mission becomes the flagship program and everyone tries to latch on to the teat to fund their idiotic ideas.
The problem with HSF at NASA is the legacy of Apollo, the hundred thousand employees and contractors, the scattered NASA centres and even more scattered contractor networks, which all make HSF unaffordable. (For example, the annual cost of the Shuttle program was the same regardless of how many missions they flew that year, 6, 4, 2 or none. The annual budget for operating the completed ISS is, by amazing coincidence, exactly the same as the annual budget during the construction, which was by yet another amazing coincidence, exactly the same as the annual budget during the last four years of development.)
By developing private human space-flight, we can reduce the cost of doing on-orbit repairs until it's cheaper to send humans to fix something than to write off the spacecraft and send up a new one.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
OTOH, the cost of JWST has blown out even further than Hubble (approx $9b, from an initial budget below $2b) precisely because there's no human servicing
No, it's because it's a one-off mission with no incentive to cut costs beyond what money is available to consume. Even without human spaceflight, you could make this spacecraft cheaper per unit and more reliable, just by making more than one of them.
I realize there are a finite number of contracts that NASA can award, but why not have multiple companies with man-rated rocket capabilities? Perhaps that would lead to opening up the manned spaceflight market outside of the public sector, much like how several companies make commercial aircraft.
Maybe Congress will wise up and support the endeavor instead of trying to thwart it. We can dream I guess.
From the article:
“Boeing is the safe choice, SpaceX is the exciting choice and Sierra Nevada the interesting choice,” Loren Thompson, an analyst with Lexington Institute, an Arlington, Virginia-based research group, said in a phone interview.
Loren Thompson, as the COO of the Lexington group has a notorious history of "advocacy" for big air force contractors according to this article from Harpers Magazine. The title of the article is "Mad Men: Introducing the defense industry's pay-to-play ad agency". Here is a quote from the article:
Lexington claims to "shape the public debate" on a wide array of policies (including "the unnecessary intrusion of the federal government into the commerce and culture of the nation"), but its priority is clearly defense. "By promoting America's ability to project power around the globe", reads its mission statement, "we not only defend the homeland of democracy, but also sustain the international stability in which other free-market democracies can thrive", Lexington does not publicly disclose its donors, but much of its funding - about $2.5 million in 2008 - comes from defense giants, including at least three whose prospects are evaluated in this brief. Lexington's free-market pabulum, then, is underwritten by an industry that is beholden to government planning, direction, and money, and that operates entirely outside the constraints of supply and demand.
Loren Thompson, Lexington's chief operating officer and the author of this report, played a supporting role in a 2003 scandal involving Boeing's attempt to secure a lease-to-buy agreement with the Air Force for one hundred aerial-refueling tankers. The contract - which at $24 billion would have cost the Air Force significantly more than simply buying a new fleet outright - was canceled when Senator John McCain discovered that an Air Force procurement official had fixed the deal for Boeing while negotiating a job for herself with the company. McCain also unearthed emails showing that the Air Force had used Thompson to help sell the deal to the press. As a senior aide to Air Force Secretary James Roche put it in one of the messages: "We've got Loren doing the Lord's work again. '3rd Party' support at its best."
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Uh, yeah.
So, now:
1. You need to redesign it to not need a fairing to protect it during launch.
2. Provide an abort motor which can launch it at several gs away from the exploding booster.
3. Build wings strong enough that they won't be torn off when you're boosting away from an exploding booster at Max Q, said booster probably no longer pointing 'into the wind'.
4. Design your launch trajectory so you can now turn around and return to a runway somewhere.
Which will be simple, right?
Hint: you might want to look at the excitement the X-20 guys went through trying to make it abortable.
While bledri gave a sensible reply, there are a few things I think bear mentioning.
First, I doubt that you've never heard of some peoples' desire to colonize space. So your "no purpose" is merely a purpose that you choose not to back. It remains that manned spaceflight is a necessary precursor to colonization. You can't do colonization for a tenth or hundredth of the price using unmanned missions. And if you want to do such colonization sooner rather than later, then manned spaceflight needs to be sooner as well.
Second, space development not just about science (again as bledri noted). What bears mentioning here is that space science is only as useful as what we end up doing in space. If we have a lot of people living in space, then space science is very useful. If we don't then it's just another very expensive hobby.
Finally, there's the matter of how effective unmanned missions could be. The whole program is achingly slow to the point that scientist can and do die of old age before resolving unknown problems brought up in a previous unmanned mission. So sure, if your idea of doing things in space, are a few space probes (and I consider the 100 or so currently active NASA space science missions just a few), then it doesn't make sense to manned missions for scientific endeavors. A Mars rover putting around for half a decade does about as much research as two people in two days, but that's ok as long as all you want to do is check off a box ("doing Mars science?" "Check!").
Even if you don't have a human presence on site, having people a fraction of a light second away rather than a light hour really steps up that game.
And I haven't even touched on my main beef with unmanned efforts - completely ignoring powerful economies of scale (for example, making several probes at a time rather than a never ending series of one-off missions in order to spread development costs over more science-producing probes).
So to summarize, you aren't the only person with space-oriented purposes (and some of those other purposes do require manned spaceflight) and a manned presence, which necessarily means manned spaceflight, would really help space science, the thing you are interested in, both by enabling it to be more effective with a shorter command loop, and by providing a far stronger rationalization for the pursuance of space science than merely idle intellectual curiosity.
Given that each vendor negotiated its own unique benchmarks with NASA, and Boeing's benchmarks were so simple they required no actual hardware to be built, it's a no-brainer that they finished their becnhmarks before the other vendors who acyually had to build and fly stuff... It's funny when multiple "news" sites put out essentially the same stuff on the same day promoting a company who has cleared all their hurdles at just the moment in time when this highly manipulated talking point is briefly valid. (the other guys will soon hit their final benchmarks which are far more technically valid and difficult)
Boeing is the ONE vendor who absolutely should NOT be selected; First, because they offer nothing unique (just an Apollo-shaped capsule, like the Orion Lockmart is building for NASA already, but without many of the capabilities of Orion) at a time when two other companies are offering capsules (SpaceX and Blue Origin) both of which have innovations Boeing's CST-100 lacks (SpaceX pioneering a future propulsive landing after initial parachute mode capability, and Blue Origin exploring the Bi-Conic capsule architecture). Second, Boeing is only planning to proceed if they win the government contract... in other words: they are NOT advancing "commercial spaceflight". This whole push to have NASA launch astronauts on "commercial" crew vehicles is not just intended to lower NASA costs through competition, but it's also supposed to help kick-start commercial spaceflight (NOT be just another crony-capitalist play).
Boeing has built a showroom mockup of their capsule, and have said the jobs associated with their capsule hinge upon NASA contract money.
SpaceX has flown the cargo version of their capsule to the ISS and back already multiple times (the only vendor with a current proven capability) and appears to be already building flight hardware for the manned version; they will be flying pad abort and altitude abort tests this winter. They plan to proceed with or without NASA money, meaning they are actually commercial rather than pure-government dependent.
Sierra Nevada has built an atmospheric test vehicle and flown it on an approach and landing test at Edwards; The flight was successful, proving the aerodynamics and controls but the landing gear, recycled from a fighter for this non-space test version, failed (not an issue for the actual space version). Sierra Nevada has repaired the test vehicle (which survived its gear failure incident remarkably well) and will be flying additional tests this fall (including manned flights). They have already bought the rocket to launch their first orbital vehicle in 2016 and have begun assembly of that actual space-capable vehicle. They have been in talks with the Japanese and the Europeans and have a business model to allow them to proceed with or without a NASA contract, making them fully-commercial.
Blue Origin already flew an abort test. They're pretty secretive about the rest... but then they have that right since they are running purely on Jeff Bezos' money rather than the taxpayer's dime. Blue Origin's business model is absolutely commercial - they have never depended on NASA (taxpayer) money.
Wow, and you think you have a clue? With your juvenile sci-fi drama????
NASA hasn't incrementally developed spacecraft for decades. Their obsession with one-off throw-away designs is a major annoyance of mine.
So the topic was human vs robotic. And it's clear that removing the human element has done nothing to reduce the cost of programs like JWST. On the contrary, it's blown the cost out by over 300%.
Step-wise, incremental development would lower costs no matter what program you are talking about, manned or unmanned.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
And it's clear that removing the human element has done nothing to reduce the cost of programs like JWST. On the contrary, it's blown the cost out by over 300%.
300% of what? You're making the unwarranted assumption that the telescope would have cost less. I don't see that happening. I think it would have cost about the same amount either way. That's because that's how much money was available to be snagged.
OK, I'll state my position on the species, since you asked, albeit not very politely.
Currently, we know of exactly one place that houses sentient life. That's the dirtball we're all on right now. While the odds are there's another dirtball similar to this one that has some sort of sentient life, we haven't found it yet (weather we want to or not is a question that is outside this context). It's not like we haven't been trying either.
With this in mind, I would consider it a travesty if we got wiped out by a handful of idiots with a gene sequencer, a handful of idiots with a centrifuge, or a cosmic event like a gigantic rock smacking our beloved dirtball. We're smarter than that. I don't know that we're the end-all be-all of knowledge with certainty, but we're the only ones we know of for now. Even though we are evolving and won't the be same thing in $BIGNUM years (perhaps not even recognizable to a member of the species today), I still think that we, as a species, have risen to the point to where we can ensure that something more than a fossil record is left, if we do the work. I believe we have the intelligence, we just need to keep grinding away until we get the full body (or at least a large enough body) of knowledge to get it done. Some people state that we already have this, we just need an investment.
As for my 'concern about the species': Being a member of it, I have a vested interest in it. I would think this would be a universal truth, but I could be wrong. The divisions we create among ourselves are merely theater when considered in the larger context, despite the fact that they often drive us to do horrific things to each other.
Space nutter indeed... There's no need to sink to insults. Of course, this is the internet...
I feel like Sierra Nevada, and Orbital Science never get enough coverage on these things. I mean... I get why Blue Origin doesn't, but having worked with Dream Chaser, and watching Antares launch successfully I think they are both significant contenders.