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Astronauts Won't Be Flying To Space In Boeing's Starliner Until 2018 (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The Boeing Starliner, one of two new spacecraft meant to break the Russian stranglehold on sending people to orbit, has hit a snag. Originally scheduled to start flying next year, the Starliner won't carry a crewed mission to the International Space Station until 2018 at the earliest. Six years is long enough. Ever since the 2011 retirement of the space shuttle NASA has been pushing for privately built craft capable of ferrying astronauts to orbit, which would let the agency buy American-made ships and end its dependency on renting seats aboard Russian spacecraft. The Starliner and SpaceX's Dragon were chosen, and 2017 was to be the year. But while SpaceX has sent its ship to the ISS on multiple uncrewed cargo resupply missions, the Starliner won't make such trips until 2017 and won't carry people until 2018 at the earliest. SpaceX maintains that it will be able to send crews to orbit in 2017.GeekWire explains: "For Boeing to shift its crewed test flight from 2017 to 2018 isn't as much of a slip as it might sound: The company's earlier schedule had called for the visit to the space station to take place in mid-December."
It's not really american when the Atlas V, the rocket which this capsule ist built for, still uses russian RD-180 rocket motors. A rocket is a fuel tank and a rocket motor mostly. It's not the fuel tank that's hard to build....
SpaceX has repeatedly had delays also and pretty much nothing they do is on time to the point where people jokingly refer to "ElonTime." The Falcon Heavy for example was supposed to originally fly in 2012 and it still hasn't flown yet. So it isn't clear that Dragon will be ready when they say it is either. There was a flag left at the ISS to be taken back by the next American manned spacecraft to go to the station. http://www.space.com/12335-shuttle-astronauts-flag-model-space-station-tribute.html The race in the 1960s was to plant a flag and that race was between two countries. Now the race is to retrieve a flag and it is between two corporations.
FTFS:
SpaceX has sent its ship to the ISS on multiple uncrewed cargo resupply missions
To be fair, the Dragon that SpaceX has flown is a very different vehicle than the Dragon V2, which is the capsule rated to carry astronauts. So while they do have a leg up on Boeing in some respects (and will likely beat them on schedule) neither capsule is really flight-proven at this point.
Assuming it doesn't get pushed back again.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Although we proved it in the 60's, this stuff is hard. You've now got private companies competing, not cooperating via NASA to deliver this stuff.
The problem here is our federal government hot cancel contracts and retire heavy lifting vehicles. Frankly, the shuttles were not in immediate need of retirement. Endeavour, the newest, was built in '92 and could have been kept in rotation until there was a viable American-controlled alternative.
In the Reagan administration, the USS Iowa and Missouri were pulled out of mothballs to patrol the Strait of Hormuz. In fact, the USS Missouri served longer in this second period than it did in its maiden one.
To Copy from One is Plagiarism; To Copy from Many is Research.
CST is not reusable, can't do a powered landing on solid ground, and although it's supposed to be launch-vehicle-agnostic, it is currently planned to use Atlas 5 and we don't have a US engine for that yet.
Contrast the Dragon, which is in the heritage of a flying spacecraft, is designed for powered landing on solid ground so that it can bring experiments back even more quickly than a space-plane - and SpaceX has proven its ability in powered landings now, and is intended to be reusable.
Obviously everyone who is still in the game will aim higher with their next complete redesign, but SpaceX does seem to have made a technical jump over everyone else.
Bruce Perens.
...what could we accomplish if we spent that on making better robots?
And use them to replace politicians? AI FOR PRESIDENT!!! Seriously, I'm all for it....
This universe shipped by weight, not by volume. Some expansion of the contents may have occurred during shipment.
Boeing is concentrating more on human-rated flight from the start. This kind of delay is not unexpected.
Kriston
If the contract is fixed price, as with the original cargo contracts awarded SpaceX and Orbital ATK, Boeing will have no incentive to delay, as they won’t be paid anything until they achieve specific milestones and will get no additional monies to cover the added costs of the delay. If the contract is cost-plus, however, NASA’s traditional contract system used for SLS, Orion, and almost every other boondoggle since the 1960s, then Boeing will be paid regardless of the delay, and NASA will also be on the hook for paying the additional delay costs, thus giving Boeing an incentive to slow walk the construction.
Russia does not have a stranglehold; like they are preventing others from doing so. The US has dropped the ball, which is shameful.
Well... yeah. I thought that was kinda clear from the name. INTERNATIONAL Space Station....
The Dragon V2 is actually a very next-gen spacecraft, not least because it can do a propulsive landing. This means it can not only land gently and precisely in any random field that it needs to (and also safely abort and save the crew in the case of launch vehicle failure) but that it can potentially land on other planets, asteroids, whatever. That's a totally new capability that no other manned spacecraft has possessed before now.
Obviously you have never seen a shuttle. It is mostly a 1960's design and looks like a WWII bomber. The computers and systems were ancient, even after the upgrade, only the engines are very impressive. But you're just a fast food worker who likes wings in space. No fooling you.
The Falcon Heavy is scheduled to do a demo launch in November. I would not be surprised if they put a Dragon 2 capsule on it to do the unmanned flight test at the same time. If they do, it would be cool if they launched the Dragon around the moon. SpaceX has a history of doing experimental landings during real launches. Launching a Dragon atop of FH would be more efficient than just having a dummy payload and going around the Moon would certainly make the launch worthwhile.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
Before there was a viable replacement. He hoped the replacement would be in 2014. Probably not realistically until the early 2020s. There have to be several full configuration unmanned tests before building trust. The shuttle were rated for a hundred missions each. They retired less than a third into their lifetimes.
That is quite a lot of assertions, do you have citations to back any of that up?
I am not saying what was typed is untrue, but I don't recall ever hearing about an effort to possibly bring back the shuttle under Obama, and the main reason I recall hearing for the shuttle shutdown was conversion of facilities and funding which could not be done with the shuttle running.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?