Cancelation of: • OKA-T2• Orbital Technologies Commercial Space Station• Mars One• Golden Spike• Inspiration Mars
Quote from: The Amazing Catstronaut on 12/18/2015 07:52 pmQuote from: strangequark on 12/18/2015 07:11 pmSpaceX will fly 6-7 timesFalcon Heavy will not be attempted in 2016Blue Origin will have at least one additional flightVulcan Aerospace retools to downplay Stratolaunch and announces new, non-airlaunch plansXCOR is in the process of being liquidatedGod, that's depressing. Aiming low so you can't be upset?1 and 2 are just realistic. 3 is pretty positive. 4 is optimistic from a certain point of view (lots of capital that could be more productively employed). 5 is admittedly pessimistic.
Quote from: strangequark on 12/18/2015 07:11 pmSpaceX will fly 6-7 timesFalcon Heavy will not be attempted in 2016Blue Origin will have at least one additional flightVulcan Aerospace retools to downplay Stratolaunch and announces new, non-airlaunch plansXCOR is in the process of being liquidatedGod, that's depressing. Aiming low so you can't be upset?
SpaceX will fly 6-7 timesFalcon Heavy will not be attempted in 2016Blue Origin will have at least one additional flightVulcan Aerospace retools to downplay Stratolaunch and announces new, non-airlaunch plansXCOR is in the process of being liquidated
Eric Boe and Suni Williams will be named as the crew for the first Dragon 2 crewed mission.Chris Ferguson and Bob Behnken will be named as the first CST-100 Starliner crew.
Fresh from my 5-8 record for this year, here are some very boring predictions.Compared with 2015, 2016 will, overall, be a boring year for spaceflight. Space science-Costs related to the Insight mission delay will postpone next Discovery mission selection; Insight itself might not survive the review for breaking budget caps. Juno will be a big "meh" for the public as it doesn't have imaging as a major goal. Major arguments over planetary science budget at NASA.Commercial spaceflight-One major US loss, at least two Russian losses, all to workmanship issues. Overall, one failed launch to ISS. At least one dramatic Falcon landing failure, but several successes; overall return rate of about 75%. There will be a significant surprise with the upcoming commercial cargo award, causing lots of controversy.HSF-No big news in HSF, as no US-built capsules will fly into space, but the Boeing and SpaceX capsules continue development. No major new developments as the lessons from the losses and victories of the last year or so are digested.Smooth year for SLS as it moves towards 2018 flight. But concern begins to mount over long-term vision at NASA. While nothing really changes, though, because of uncertainty around US elections, warning flags will be flying by the end of the year.
While I got really lucky with predictions a few years ago, it was apparently a fluke--my predictions were hit or miss for the past year or two. But I'll throw out a few thoughts for 2016:1- SpaceX will recover several more stages throughout the year, including at least one via barge recovery.2- SpaceX will successfully hot-fire at least one recovered stage for a full-duration hot-fire, and will have at least one customer signed for a flight on a reused first stage by the end of the year.3- SpaceX won't get Falcon Heavy flying by year end, but may finally have it at the pad.4- NASA will award CRS-2 contracts to SpaceX, Orbital, *and* SNC.5- Blue Origin will fly New Shephard several times more in 2016, and will enter limited commercial service for unmanned payloads. While they may have another booster failure, they'll have enough boosters available that they'll be able to continue operations.6- Neither XCOR or VG will be flying their suborbital vehicles this year. XCOR will find a way to survive, and make real progress towards Lynx Mk 1 flying, but it still won't have air under its tires by year end. VG will be getting close to having SS2 back into operations by the end of the year.7- None of the dedicated smallsat launchers will fly this year, though both VG and RocketLabs will be getting close.I may add a few predictions later this week after I've had more time to think about it. ~Jon
Russia* ILS Proton continues to have much better record than government Proton* Soyuz 2.1v flies with RD-193* Russia (either ILS or government) suffers the first launch failure of 2015* Soyuz-5 doesn't receive official funding
Vostochny Cosmodrome gets delayed even further. Soyuz remains strong.
- The budget for Soyuz-5 / Feniks is already approved, even if the amount of money has not been publicly announced yet.
Quote from: Nicolas PILLET on 12/28/2015 11:37 am- The budget for Soyuz-5 / Feniks is already approved, even if the amount of money has not been publicly announced yet.Is it confirmed to be in the final version of the FKA plan? I haven't seen mention of it since the ruble crash and resulting rewrite. The rest were carry-overs from last year, I'll rewrite them before the end of the year.