Boeing and Space-X win NASA contracts for manned spaceflight

[Simon_Jester]

The Long March 9, which I assume is what you are talking about is supposed to deliver 130,000 kg, not tons. More importantly, it is only in study while the Falcon Heavy is slated for launch next year.

LM9 is supposed to launch people as well. Is the Falcon Heavy?

Does it matter? As you say, sometimes the module just needs to be big and heavy. But that doesn't mean the astronauts have to ride to orbit on the same rocket as the module. Especially if the launch system involves, say, a large (expendable) heavy-lift booster and a smaller (reusable) man-rated booster.

[Although the cost of a large booster that is not reusable is a problem, granted]

Anyway, this doesn't represent an advance in the state of the art, and it is news, among other things because as far as the US is concerned this means that our space launch infrastructure isn't going to wither away into nothingness. Also that the (second?) largest economy in the world might actually retain and preserve manned space participation over the long run.

[K. A. Pital]

I agree it is news. I am just a bit baffled over all the joy. There is no indication corporations would manage to complete it on time and safely. There is no indication that the space program is developing as opposed to retaining capacity, and frankly, given the possible early termination of the ISS by Russia in favor of the CSS, perhaps those would be ferries to nowhere.

[Simon_Jester]

The joy is coming in large part from Americans for whom this is partly a nationalistic thing- they do not want their own country's space effort to become a thing of the past. I imagine you would be at least somewhat saddened if Russia totally gave up on manned space, even if other nations continued.

[Perhaps you would not feel that way, but certainly you can understand the sentiment?]

Also, since corporations have successfully designed space capsules in the past, with varying levels of state involvement, it seems reasonably likely that these two companies can deliver more or less on schedule. Especially since Space-X already HAS a capsule design, comparable but superior to the Progress design- so all they really need is some technical improvement for man-rating.

[Borgholio]

I personally feel that corporate manned spaceflight has more staying power than manned spaceflight has had in the past. How many worthwhile NASA programs have been cancelled or defunded due to uneducated assholes in congress? If NASA goes under or is defunded again, Space-X will still exist and still have the ability to sell manned and unmanned spaceflight capability to anyone else in the world. In fact, if Space-X can do it cheaper than NASA (which makes sense given how a private corporation will seek to make this profitable), then we might get MORE NASA missions than in the past due to the reduced expense of launches.

[Sky Captain]

[Although the cost of a large booster that is not reusable is a problem, granted]

SpaceX already have managed to brake their spent Falcon9 first stages to zero velocity hovering over the ocean surface. Soon landing on barge may be attempted. Falcon Heavy will be made from 3 Falcon 9 first stages bolted together. If retrieval works as planned only upper stage will be used once. Depending on how much work needs to be done to relaunch used stages reusability could bring major price reduction.

Big difference comparing Falcon Heavy with SLS rockets is Falcon Heavy will immediately have commercial applications launching large satellites to geosync orbit while SLS rockets will just sit in the warehouse if there is no funding for missions demanding 100 + ton payloads that must be launched in one piece. Even if Falcon Heavy is used rarely Space X will still make profit from Falcon 9. Their production lines and workers will be busy even if Falcon Heavy flies only few times per year since Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy use the same parts.

[Simon_Jester]

SpaceX already have managed to brake their spent Falcon9 first stages to zero velocity hovering over the ocean surface. Soon landing on barge may be attempted. Falcon Heavy will be made from 3 Falcon 9 first stages bolted together. If retrieval works as planned only upper stage will be used once. Depending on how much work needs to be done to relaunch used stages reusability could bring major price reduction.

Well, my point was simply that a superheavy-lift rocket need not be a man-rated rocket, since the men can be launched in capsules while the bulk of the actual spacecraft is sent into orbit on the heavier cargo rocket.

It is desirable that the cargo rocket stages be reusable, of course.

[Zaune]

I agree it is news. I am just a bit baffled over all the joy.

I think it comes down to the fact that space enthusiasts in the US have to take whatever good news they can get.

[Borgholio]

I think it comes down to the fact that space enthusiasts in the US have to take whatever good news they can get.

We won the Space Race and now we're renting seats from our former enemies. I wonder if we can still consider the Space Race actually being "won" at this point...

[Darmalus]

I think it comes down to the fact that space enthusiasts in the US have to take whatever good news they can get.

We won the Space Race and now we're renting seats from our former enemies. I wonder if we can still consider the Space Race actually being "won" at this point...

The US tends to think of "The Space Race" as a single discrete event that has been over for over four decades, like a sporting event, not an ongoing competition or process. If you wanted to get any traction going you'd need to sell it as "The Second Space Race" or something.

[Patroklos]

I think it comes down to the fact that space enthusiasts in the US have to take whatever good news they can get.

We won the Space Race and now we're renting seats from our former enemies. I wonder if we can still consider the Space Race actually being "won" at this point...

Or an example of international cooperation that makes the "space race" dynamic both obsolete and a bit childish in this day and age. It would be nice if our manned program did not take a hiatus but I see nothing wrong with using an existing program's excess capacity if it's available and it's absolutely amazing that it's Russia given the state of things just 30 years ago.

NASA has another probe arriving at Mars for atmoshpheric measurements today, I am a bit sick of people pretending that NASA is dead despite some quite awesome state of the art projects taking place continually. India also has a probe arriving a at Mars shortly. Is that a tie for the US and India or a win for both and humanity?

[Simon_Jester]

Parables about tortoises and hares come to mind when talking of the space race...

The main issue is that with a race, at least everyone is trying to go somewhere as fast as they can. Competition creates incentive. When the journey becomes cooperative, everyone involved has to have some intrinsic motivator to care. Which brings space enthusiasts smack up against the fact that in modern America a lot of people don't care.

[Patroklos]

I think that is true to a certain extent, but its not just that people don’t care about space but also that for those who do the space they care about has changed. And I don’t just mean those who care overtly, but also those support it via their everyday wants and needs increasingly requiring space and related technology thus providing the same pressure that has yielded the development of so many of our modern technologies. We got to the moon and as far as the casual observer is concerned besides the impressive visual there is nothing to show for it. It was cool sure, but as the collapse in popularity for the later Apollo program shows it was fleeting because it was a race and we had finished it. When they do care about something specific to space now its communications and weather satellites, the apparent ease of robotic visits to even further flung locals compared to manned space flight, the coolness of having a manned international space station with people who look and talk like them instead of just Americans and Russians even if it is "just" right up there.

I am one of these. As much as I think a Mars mission is cool I am far more interested in sub orbital commercial flight via scram jets and other things (NASA isn’t just space afterall), the vast economic and social implications of imaging from space, the aforementioned communications technology, the thousands of things both space based and beyond that modern material science around things like carbon nano tubes mean, the possibility of doing something useful with a deep space mission like asteroid mining rather than a glorified mars safari, or even if it’s not going to be providing the people with material riches or better standards of life I will take the Webb over Mars any day.

We can talk about how boring space has become since the heady days of the first moon step but is it really? Since then we have had Skylab and the shuttle, Hubble and GPS, instantaneous worldwide communication and 24 hour real time weather status via satellite, plus dozens of robotic probes throughout our solar system. Even since the end of the shuttle we have had the Curiosity Mars mission, Webb (with all its problems, granted) moving towards launch and again we just orbited another probe around Mars. And even if all of that means little to some all those things actually make worthwhile manned deep space mission easier and more relevant in their own way.

I will not dispute the race dynamic can get something done, but it tends to be one giant and spectacular thing that is generally picked because it is giant and spectacular not because it is necessarily the logical next step or of scientific or economic relevance relative to other doable options. I do recognize that it can be useful to kickoff interest though. I am liking this current slow boil from multiple burners providing incremental and logical development of basic and useful technology and capabilities. As long as we can avoid too much inefficiency via duplications by cooperating at the operational level, which the ISS (including Russian taxi missions) and shared realestate for instruments onboard nationally launched probes appears to prove is the case, I see a broader swath of base hits coming even if there are fewer homeruns but you generally don't win games via homeruns.

All that said....I will be happy to see the US return to manned space flight. Not just for nationalistic reasons (which I am succeptable to) but because it is just another step towards normalization of space flight.

[Zeropoint]

Or an example of international cooperation that makes the "space race" dynamic both obsolete and a bit childish in this day and age.

Eeyup! In space exploration, the only "side" is Humanity's Side. We're all in this together, and anyone's success is everyone's success.

[Zaune]

On the other hand, there's nothing like playing on a nation's a collective inferiority complex to motivate them to Get Shit Done.

[Grumman]

On the other hand, there's nothing like playing on a nation's a collective inferiority complex to motivate them to Get Shit Done.

You say that like it's a good thing, as if a national midlife crisis is going to make them get the right shit done.

I don't want the government to devote resources to a prestige project like a manned mission to Mars because I feel the purpose of the government should be to make people's lives better, and sending someone to a desolate wasteland which would be utterly irrelevant if not for how expensive it is to get there doesn't do that.

[Irbis]

The only thing truly significant, which could alter space exploration as it is - which I see now - are the various SSTO projects, but so far none have advanced enough to matter. And, well, of course, if the Chinese actually deliver on the 130 000 tons to LEO promise with their rockets, that could also ressurect many projects that demand such an enormous rocket (Mars craft, heavier long-range interplanetary probes). Same goes for the SLS. That is also significant.

SSTO? That's still rehashing 80 years old technology. When you think that Iraq adventure alone wasted 10x of what some orbital elevator* designs would cost - and that even assuming 300% to 500% budget overruns...

*some as in designs like space loop or space fountain, not requiring exotic materials but very much buildable today, even if their designers were too optimistic with the cost (if you can call 50 billion dollars being optimistic, that is).

[K. A. Pital]

Rehash or not, true SSTO will drop costs of launch to low orbit to hundreds of dollars per kilo, making at orbital assembly feasible. Space elevators need physics breakthrough.

[Beowulf]

Rehash or not, true SSTO will drop costs of launch to low orbit to hundreds of dollars per kilo, making at orbital assembly feasible. Space elevators need physics breakthrough.

Define true SSTO. And why will it drop launch costs?

SSTO won't change launch costs much. It's reusability that will change launch costs. It's reusability that will let us amortize the costs of operations, vehicles, etc effectively. SpaceX thinks that if they can actually get reusability working on the Falcon 9, that they're looking at $5-7 million per launch. Which gets us to $380-530/kg.

[K. A. Pital]

True SSTO implies a fully reusable craft capable of controlled ascent from and descent to ordinary airfields. Space X thinks, but the ELV is just part of the cost - cosmodromes are not cheap either. I am also wondering about Falcon 9, but so far even first stage reusability is not achieved.

[TimothyC]

True SSTO implies a fully reusable craft capable of controlled ascent from and descent to ordinary airfields. Space X thinks, but the ELV is just part of the cost - cosmodromes are not cheap either. I am also wondering about Falcon 9, but so far even first stage reusability is not achieved.

Stas, you don't need SSTO if you can recover everything. To make it worse, I've seen numbers that show that most to the time the technology that allows reusable SSTO can allow a less expensive TSTO mission profile. Furthermore, by requiring the launch be from a runway, you've put a cap on the size of the payloads - the gear on the launcher now have to be able to take the full weight of the fully fueled launch vehicle (This is why many of the spaceplane designs a VTHL - much easier to have a thrust structure that has to take the weight than a thrust structure and gear).

[K. A. Pital]

True SSTO implies a fully reusable craft capable of controlled ascent from and descent to ordinary airfields. Space X thinks, but the ELV is just part of the cost - cosmodromes are not cheap either. I am also wondering about Falcon 9, but so far even first stage reusability is not achieved.

Stas, you don't need SSTO if you can recover everything. To make it worse, I've seen numbers that show that most to the time the technology that allows reusable SSTO can allow a less expensive TSTO mission profile. Furthermore, by requiring the launch be from a runway, you've put a cap on the size of the payloads - the gear on the launcher now have to be able to take the full weight of the fully fueled launch vehicle (This is why many of the spaceplane designs a VTHL - much easier to have a thrust structure that has to take the weight than a thrust structure and gear).

1. Recovering 'everything', let us be blunt, is a long way from now. SpaceX ran into problems making even the first stage reusable; other parts of the rocket will be harder to save, perhaps even impossible or hard enough to make it not worth the extra load and payload loss.
2. I have also seen many studies. But I tend to think of everyone's space, not space for the elite few who manage to carry the financial and expertise requirements for a cosmodrome.
3. A cap on payload size is only relevant for non-reusable or plain crappy systems like the Shuttle. For a reliable reusable controlled descent system such a cap is not damning. Building a large concrete runway is a hundred times easier than a cosmodrome. Is that not true?

[TimothyC]

1. Recovering 'everything', let us be blunt, is a long way from now. SpaceX ran into problems making even the first stage reusable; other parts of the rocket will be harder to save, perhaps even impossible or hard enough to make it not worth the extra load and payload loss.

SpaceX is encountering problems because they are trying to do something that only one other program (DC-X) has done - and even then with limited success. Problems are to be expected, And the team knows this. Second Stage recovery is more plausible with a TSTO spaceplane than with a conventional rocket.

2. I have also seen many studies. But I tend to think of everyone's space, not space for the elite few who manage to carry the financial and expertise requirements for a cosmodrome.

Ah, here we find the difference. You have made the fundamental mistake of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. I'd rather have the investment to drive costs down that might open the door to more access than your freakishly ideological (dare I say religious) devotion to a single approach.

3. A cap on payload size is only relevant for non-reusable or plain crappy systems like the Shuttle. For a reliable reusable controlled descent system such a cap is not damning. Building a large concrete runway is a hundred times easier than a cosmodrome. Is that not true?

Not once you start including all of the other things you still need (processing facilities, control centers, ect). Also, a cap on payload size is important if you have to fly a lot more missions to build what you want. Heck, Skylon has a 'target' payload cost that is the same as the non-resuable Falcon Heavy costs. A Falcon Heavy R(eusable) would have even lower costs.

[K. A. Pital]

SpaceX is encountering problems because they are trying to do something that only one other program (DC-X) has done - and even then with limited success. Problems are to be expected, And the team knows this. Second Stage recovery is more plausible with a TSTO spaceplane than with a conventional rocket.

I am sorry, but they are encountering problems because they are trying to do something other space agencies, which had neither smaller funding nor a smaller incentive to try it, simply decided against as the payload loss is immense and the value of reusable engines when jettisoned in a rocket fashion goes down severely due to many reasons. In fact, NASA and other space agencies told that to SpaceX at the front. And keep telling them that. They did not have a viable plan and they do not have a plan for the second stage at all.

Ah, here we find the difference. You have made the fundamental mistake of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. I'd rather have the investment to drive costs down that might open the door to more access than your freakishly ideological (dare I say religious) devotion to a single approach.

Tell that to Musk who wants to make an ordinary rocket fully reusable and is almost a religious believer in the goal (which may be good, or may be just a lot of wasted resources). Reusable rockets are a problem; people told him that. Reliability suffers. Reusability will suffer as well, as you can never be truly certain the damn thing is safe. The difference between a spaceplane and a reusable rocket is that a spaceplane is a plane; planes fly a lot and thus are acceptable testbeds. Rockets do wear out very quickly and prototypes destroy themselves.

Not once you start including all of the other things you still need (processing facilities, control centers, ect). Also, a cap on payload size is important if you have to fly a lot more missions to build what you want. Heck, Skylon has a 'target' payload cost that is the same as the non-resuable Falcon Heavy costs. A Falcon Heavy R(eusable) would have even lower costs.

So? A Skylon can be operated from anywhere. A Falcon Heavy Reusable does not exist, just like Skylon, and perhaps very much like the latter... most likely never will; full reusability of a heavy rocket runs into yet more challenges than just 'making the stage survive descent' where at the second stage you have to either slash the payload, like, twice or lose the stage. That is pretty much it. People had the opportunity to work on such solutions, in the European agencies for example, and decided against it.

[Simon_Jester]

An SSTO spaceplane is going to run into some of the same problems of safe engine reusability as a reusable rocket stage.

[TimothyC]

I am sorry, but they are encountering problems because they are trying to do something other space agencies, which had neither smaller funding nor a smaller incentive to try it, simply decided against as the payload loss is immense and the value of reusable engines when jettisoned in a rocket fashion goes down severely due to many reasons. In fact, NASA and other space agencies told that to SpaceX at the front. And keep telling them that. They did not have a viable plan and they do not have a plan for the second stage at all.

Yeah, that's why they are doing soft landings with the Falcon 9Rs out in the Atlantic.

Tell that to Musk who wants to make an ordinary rocket fully reusable and is almost a religious believer in the goal (which may be good, or may be just a lot of wasted resources). Reusable rockets are a problem; people told him that. Reliability suffers. Reusability will suffer as well, as you can never be truly certain the damn thing is safe. The difference between a spaceplane and a reusable rocket is that a spaceplane is a plane; planes fly a lot and thus are acceptable testbeds. Rockets do wear out very quickly and prototypes destroy themselves.

Your idea that a space plane is just a plane that goes faster and faster only counts if you are going to spend the effort to build it that way - and that costs a LOT of money. We don't even know how much that would cost, but you seem wedded to the idea of Horizontal Take-off/Horizontal Landing (HTHL), and I doubt I can convince you otherwise. I wonder why no one else is trying it seriously? Could it be the structural problems are just too nasty?

So? A Skylon can be operated from anywhere. A Falcon Heavy Reusable does not exist, just like Skylon, and perhaps very much like the latter... most likely never will; full reusability of a heavy rocket runs into yet more challenges than just 'making the stage survive descent' where at the second stage you have to either slash the payload, like, twice or lose the stage. That is pretty much it. People had the opportunity to work on such solutions, in the European agencies for example, and decided against it.

Way to miss my point.

The current payload cost (per SpaceX documents) for a Falcon Heavy launch (which they are booking for) is $2200 per kilogram. The target cost for your beloved Skylon (which doesn't even have the full prototype engines running yet - although I don't see any show stoppers) is 1430£ per kilogram, or about $2300. That is for an expendable Falcon Heavy, not a reusable one.

Also, you seemed to miss my earlier comment about making a second stage reusable:

Second Stage recovery is more plausible with a TSTO spaceplane than with a conventional rocket.

Also, for the record, there was a reusablitlity study in the 1960s that showed that if you can recover a liquid stage with the engine and most of the tankage intact, you can have a refurbishment at less than 10% of the cost of a new rocket. At that point you can deal with a payload that is half the size and still come out ahead of your initial rocket.

Face it Stas, any technology that allows for reusable SSTO operations allows for reusable TSTO operations at a lower price point*. It's reusability, not SSTO that saves money in the long term.

*Pending Polywell working out. Then we can have SSTS