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NASA Expands Commercial Space Program
An anonymous reader writes: Just 10 days after NASA awarded multi-billion-dollar contracts to SpaceX and Boeing for future manned rocket launches, the agency announced today it is expanding its commercial space program to include contracts for delivery missions to the International Space Station. "Under the Commercial Resupply Services 2 RFP, NASA intends to award contracts with one or more companies for six or more flights per contract. As with current resupply flights, these missions would launch from U.S. spaceports, and the contracted services would include logistical and research cargo delivery and return to and from the space station through fiscal year 2020, with the option to purchase additional launches through 2024."
They laid off a bunch of people working on Dream Chaser after NASA awarded those contracts. Here's hoping they all find good homes.
...cargo delivery AND RETURN to and from the space station.
That narrows down the to 1.
This is no more an expansion than when I expand the supply of water to my house by paying my water bill every month.
The current resupply contracts are expiring soon, so this is a second round of contracts for the same service.
TFA makes it sound like this is a relatively significant shift from in-house to contract work for NASA; but I've also read stuff over the years that gave the impression that a lot of 'in-house' NASA projects had, either as entire programs or as significant subcomponents, major involvement from various contractors, mostly the same ones that crop up in military/aerospace work.
Does this move represent an actual change in NASA's in-house capabilities, or is it more of a shift between "NASA Project: virtually all details brought to you by Lockeed-Martin" and "NASA just pays SpaceX to do the whole thing and present the results"?
I don't really want to get bogged down in a slugfest over whether it's a good thing or not(unless somebody has an interesting perspective on 'morale among directly-hired-by-NASA engineers' or some other actual information, not just a regurgitation of the usual talking points on in-house, contract, and COTS; but I would like to know what this shift represents: is NASA actually cutting back in favor of buying off-the-shelf, or is NASA just switching from 'contractors do most of the work, overall program is theoretically NASA' to 'Contract is for finished product, NASA is buying results, not parts.'
The real question is whether NASA is doing more with less money?
My opinion is that a lot more could be done with a lot less. In fact, NASA may not be necessary at all. Ask the Indians.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
That is pretty much a given, I think I did some back of the napkin calculations a while back and with the money that NASA has burned/is burning on Constellation/SLS they could put the mass of a WWII aircraft carrier into orbit with commercial launchers. Imagine what could be done with that kind of payload to orbit capability, instead if we keep our current course we're looking at maybe a half dozen extremely expensive launches over the next two decades and that assumes they find the money & missions to put on them.
MOM vs MAVEN is pretty easy to answer.
For starters, I don't think you will be able to successfully employ a rocket scientist for $9,888 or what ever ridiculous wage they worked for. Second MOM weighs in at 15 Kg, while MAVEN weighs in at 65 Kg. These probes function much differently.
MAVEN is there to look at dry river beds and research Mars's Atmosphere as well as serve as a relay for the rovers on the Mars.
MOM is just a proof of concept explorer for India. They threw in a few scientific instruments for kicks.
I am thrilled that India did what they did with MOM, but this in no way justifies that they are accomplishing the task of what NASA is doing for less. I hope China gets in on the action as well. I hope the US gets motivated to try and do more with less as well.
Place something witty here
We have Kennedy, Houston, and are building one in New Mexico. It is not at this point clear if the commercial guys are going to want to launch from the government facilities; should we take this as a suggestion that NASA is anticipating the construction of another commercial spaceport in the US somewhere?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Eventually, and soon with luck, going to space will not be grand projects requiring investing in new tech, it will just be services that NASA will hire. Things like the bidding war between Boeing, SpaceX, and Sierra Nevada for a space ship will be a thing of the past, and NASA will just look for the cheapest bidder to get their stuff up much like paying for shipping on a package. Sierra Nevada should keep working on their Dream Chaser because the days where somebody else will step in to pay them to develop and build it as a new project are hopefully growing near their end.
If everything goes as usual, in a few years the space companies will agree in price fixing and managers will flow back and forth between them and NASA to make sure nobody complain.