Congress Decides To Delay US-Launched Astronauts, Keep Using Russian Services

New submitter surfdaddy writes: In order to protect the entrenched big aerospace companies, the Congress has increased NASA's budget for FY2016 but has cut funding for "commercial crew." Commercial crew is the funding used by SpaceX for the planned initial manned launches in the first half of 2017. With this cut, the launch of U.S. astronauts from U.S. soil using U.S. rockets will be delayed two years, and we will continue to send millions of dollars to Russia for launch services. "Senate appropriators suggested that NASA’s plans announced earlier this year to procure Soyuz seats for missions in 2018 indicated that the agency was not confident at even this early stage that the two companies with commercial crew contracts, Boeing and SpaceX, could remain on schedule to begin flights in 2017. ...

Comments

Re:No boas here

[nitehawk214]

There will never be a Delta IV Orion with humans on it. Even ULA is planning to sunset Delta and Atlas for a new rocket to replace these. Probably will somehow manage to make it even more expensive for taxpayers and a way to keep retired Air Force colonels employed.

Glitch at Space Station changes it's orbit

[Trax3001BBS]

"a Soyuz spacecraft docked at the station unexpectedly started" yep, that would do it.
http://www.space.com/29632-soy...

Re:No boas here

[cheesybagel]

1. Orion is too heavy so it can't be launched on anything less than a Delta IV Heavy. That's assuming its weight doesn't increase further.
2. ULA is cutting Delta IV core production.
3. Delta IV Heavy is not man-rated. The rocket just ain't reliable enough.

Re:Comparative advantage

[cheesybagel]

Quoting
http://mic.com/articles/11354/...
:
At $60 million-a-seat, the aging Russian Soyuz program will hopefully soon be eclipsed by the $20 million-a-seat Dragon.

The Dragon is the name of the SpaceX capsule.

Re:Offshoring

[bobbied]

As soon as the upstart can actually deliver a human rated vehicle that makes trips to the ISS and back, that will surely change.

Remember the issue here that nobody has confidence that Space X can provide the necessary service by the time it is needed in 2017, so other arrangements simply have to be made now with the Russians to make sure we can keep crew on the ISS. The commercial crew program wasn't the only NASA budget item to get hit because of this, and it 's not totally defunded but lost $344 Million and is still getting $900 million.

So, don't be too upset.... It's not what some people think it is..

Re:Offshoring

[surfdaddy]

I mean the entrenched US players, like Boeing and their part of the contracts. Congress sees SpaceX as a threat to the jobs in their districts which fund the incumbent inefficient companies like Lockheed, Boeing, etc. Congress is playing pork politics with US progress and competitiveness, and destroying the innovation (what little is left) in our space protram in the process. You make it sound like this is a sensible approach, but here is the quote directly from Charles Bolden, NASA Administrator:

"“I am deeply disappointed that the Senate Appropriations subcommittee does not fully support NASA’s plan to once again launch American astronauts from U.S. soil as soon as possible, and instead favors continuing to write checks to Russia.

“Remarkably, the Senate reduces funding for our Commercial Crew Program further than the House already does compared to the President’s Budget.

“By gutting this program and turning our backs on U.S. industry, NASA will be forced to continue to rely on Russia to get its astronauts to space – and continue to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into the Russian economy rather than our own.