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NASA Awards Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser an ISS Commercial Resupply Contract (examiner.com)
MarkWhittington writes: The Verge reported that NASA has awarded the second round of contracts for the commercial resupply program. Two companies, SpaceX, and Orbital Sciences, which have been hauling cargo to the International Space Station in the first phase of the program, will receive contracts to fly at least six flights each to the ISS through 2024, the anticipated end of operations year for the space station. But Sierra Nevada has also gotten a six flight commitment, using a cargo version of its Dream Chaser spacecraft.
I'm sure the brewery of the same name would like a contract to resupply the ISS as well.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Cool! It will be great to see some winged spacecraft again!
Am I reading this wrong or is this essentially a contract to ULA by proxy as the Dream Chaser is launched atop an Altas V? ULA had the CST-100 in development as their direct crew / cargo craft but it was knocked out of competition.
So unless I'm mistaken this end up being a contract for the 3 main launch systems, SpaceX, Orbital Sciences and ULA.
If the cargo version of the Dream Chaser (which I note is also winged and reusable), can be launched on the Falcon 9X (I think this is the version that has the reusable first stage) then almost the entire vehicle is reusable!
I think it will, unfortunately, still require a (small?) second stage to get it into orbit but perhaps the Dream Chaser (cargo version) can boost itself into orbit. In any case it would provide another reusable re-entry option for the Falcon (the Dragon space capsule of course has been proven to be recoverable).
Interesting to note that the wings on the Dream Chaser are folding so it can fit inside a launch fairing. Is this the normal launch profile? Does it never launch "naked" with wings unfolded? Perhaps the aerodynamics are just too problematic for a winged vehicle on the tip of a booster stack. Maybe that's why the crewed version didn't get approved (it would not be good to have the crew inside a launch fairing in case of an accident).
Lots of grim faces when they didn't get the commercial crew contract.
They've never flown a vehicle, except for in-atmosphere aerodynamic tests, and they've only announced a second round of tests last October. I'd be surprised if they make delivery deadline.
They're intrinsically corrupt, and specialize in getting work by greasing the palms of politicians and giving sinecure jobs to retired high ranking military types.
Unusually for a medium large defense contractor, SNC is not a publicly held company. It's completely owned by a husband and wife team, the Ozmans. They are of Turkish decent and Mr Ozman was originally a Turkish national. I have met them and had some casual conversations.
The fact that SNC has no share holders changes their reporting requirements and makes it easy for them to do things for people who "help" them.
Before I worked at SNC they were closely involved both professionally and personally with JIm Gibbons, former Governor and House Member for Nevada. He's a real piece of work. While he was in office SNC hired Gibbon's wife as a consultant for a very murky position. When this came out there were a lot of calls for an investigation but nothing happened. The Ozmans and Gibbons went on a junket to Turkey and Gibbons was never able to produce any documentation showing that he had paid for anything on the trip. That looks like a form of bribery to anyone who has a pulse, but again there was no follow up. It's interesting that the owners of a military contracting company should be so close to a politition called "one of America's worst governors" by CREW.
SNC has huge clout in Nevada because they are the biggest military contractor with headquarters in the state. Other contractor do a lot of work there, but have there home office somewhere else. This means that any Federal level militarily pork that is going into Nevada is very likely to end up at SNC.
I'm 100% certain that if you were to spend some time searching press releases, you would discover that a fair number of former high level government/military types from the space program took their retirement and now have juicy jobs at SNC. They're might even be some fancy vacations/fact finding trips in the mix, but I bet that the kind of inducements being offered at this point are a lot less crude.
SNC getting a plumb ISS resupply contract is very strange. SNC does not build any of the major Dream Chaser components themselves. United Launch Alliance is supplying the launch system and Lockheed-Martin builds the supply capsule. The capsule design is based on old NASA lifting body work. It's not clear if SNC is building anything, even the avionics. What they appear to be doing is acting as a systems integrator with no investment in original technology. They may be the only organization in the world that is getting paid for space access that does not have any proprietary expertise in space technology. SNC also bought a micro-satellite company, but that has very little to do with the resupply contract.
So without doing something underhanded, how does a company with such shallow technical credentials get a contract like this? (Sound of crickets...)
5% tax on the adult entertainment and alcohol industries in the US would accomplish the same thing.
Or 5% tax on firearms and ammunition. It would require a law that owners would receive rock-solid assurance that the .gov will stop trying to backdoor ban firearms in exchange. "Think of the Children" bleeding heart Democrats get their tax revenue to feed ALL the children instead of violating the Constitution to protect a couple.
There is just something sexy about this little craft, and I think it has some of the same allure as the old Boeing X20 Dyna-Soar design. It's kind of an irrational thing, but I'm glad they got the nod as I've really wanted to see it fly. The Dyna-Soar was also a small design winged craft meant to be put on top a rocket for launch, but never got past design and planning. To quote the Wikipedia page, it "suffered from two major problems: uncertainty over the booster to be used to send the craft into orbit, and a lack of a clear goal for the project."
Sexy is meaningless for real space work. The lunar landing module was not sexy, it was practical. You want sexy, go and look at fantasy rocket designs for 1930 pulp science fiction magazine covers. Since space access is really important, dump the sexy and appreciate the practical. It gets you further.
Why is Snark Required?
Since NASA is effectively becoming a procurement department to outsource everything it used to do, why not just get rid of NASA entirely? Put the whole contract, etc on eBay.
All mass human endeavors are essentially some form of distributed work. At some point the work is handed-off from one entity to another. What has mattered, historically, is who makes the decisions.
If you look at NASA historically from their early formation as NACA, their role has been to steer new technology to push the envelope. At times they adapted existing technology to suit their purposes like the Mercury with Redstone ICBM rockets or Gemini with Titan II, and at other times they used purpose-built machines that were designed under their supervision like the Saturn rockets and eventually the Shuttle. NASA didn't manufacture these themselves, but they did use them to attempt to do new things.
Getting to Earth Orbit and remaining in space generally isn't pushing the limit anymore. If anything it's figuring out how to make-routine something that we've successfully done many times. As such it makes sense that now we should figure how to do it cheaper and with more capacity and with more frequency. That hadn't been NASA's mission, and it really shouldn't be NASA's mission. They need to figure out our return to the Moon. They need to figure out how to get to Mars. They need to find some awesome uses for Lagrange Points. They need to investigate new propulsion systems that reduce the demand for reaction mass. Once a given technology is reasonably mature they need to hand it off and pick up the next new thing.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
It's contracted out design and production since the Apollo era.
Yes and AFAIK, this was historically done with "cost plus" contracts that had no incentive for cost reduction. Basically the companies could name their cost for a project and then be guaranteed a profit margin on top. The companies would add complex management structures and build overly complex machines in order to maximize their profit. NASA became a key tool in dispersing "pork barrel" money to various congressional districts.
The model for the contracts with SpaceX and Orbital is "fixed cost for service". This gives an incentive for the companies to reduce costs, and they have. SpaceX is currently the least expensive launcher in the world, even without re-use of their rockets. And that includes China. The incumbent players, Lockheed Martin and Boeing have helped to created a PR campaign that brands the owner of SpaceX, Elon Musk as a "corporate welfare queen" partly for relying on government contracts through SpaceX. This coming from companies that, through defence contracts, rely mostly on government money. It is quite absurd propaganda.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Wait, what kind of beer from Sierra Nevada? Is it like their pale ale?
They've never flown a vehicle
Except for a whole bunch of satellites they've built for other customers and components they've built for other spacecraft builders. Sierra Nevada Corporation isn't exactly new to spaceflight, but they are new to this kind of vehicle.
The Dream Chaser in particular was originally developed for the Commercial Crew program at NASA and very nearly won that contract too. If anything, this cargo resupply is likely a much better fit if you think they are not quite so ready for flying crews up to the ISS. It is going to be launched on the Atlas V, so the real challenge they are facing as far as the contract is concerned is simply if they can maneuver safely to the ISS once the spacecraft gets into orbit. The ability to perform atmospheric re-entry is merely a cost-savings scheme where they hope to be able to refurbish & fly these vehicles again for other customers.
The delivery deadline really isn't going to be all that hard for them to meet as long as Congress doesn't screw around with this contract and pull funding... again.
It should be noted that while they did contract out a majority of the design and construction they operated those systems themselves after their completion and had a heavy hand in developing most of them.
What you are describing is how NASA did stuff prior to the 1980's. Since then, even the operations have been handled by other contractors like United Space Alliance, who prepared and launched the Space Shuttle starting during the Ronald Reagan administration.
What makes this commercial cargo contract different is that in the past companies like Boeing and Rockwell International would sign a "cost-plus" contract where the government took the financial risk for what happened. The government agreed that they would pay all legitimate costs in the development and construction of the spacecraft, and in exchange the companies would be guaranteed a certain amount of profit (aka the "plus" of "cost-plus") for doing the project. What is happening with this commercial cargo contract is that NASA is paying a fixed amount of money per flight (plus some initial up front fees that are also a fixed amount) and it is up to the company to make sure they don't go over budget. Then again, any time that company can come up with a way to make it cheaper to meet the contract.... they can keep the profits. It places the financial risk on the companies making and launching these vehicle, not the government.
Of course Ames was an old U.S. Navy base where airships were warehoused and moored before it was transferred to NASA. The old airship hanger is still there, along with the runway which serviced the air wing which used to be based there too.
With NASA's budget, we could feed every hungry child in this country.
Which is already being done (or at least attempted) with food stamps, school lunch programs, and even direct subsidies and tax breaks to food banks. There is no reason for a child to be hungry in America, and it certainly isn't for a lack of effort on the part of the government.
What should be remarkable is that more money is spent on lipstick than on spaceflight. Get your priorities down.