Incidentally, it's $490M for 6 seats (which amounts to $81.7M per seat). Here is the letter by Bolden to Congress:http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/soyuz_seat_modification_letter.pdfHere is the original February 2015 procurement synopsis when NASA indicated that it was considering buying six more seats on Soyuz for CY 2018:https://prod.nais.nasa.gov/cgibin/eps/synopsis.cgi?acqid=163919
Does anyone know at what price ESA is getting soyuz seats?Edit: Or JAXA?
Interesting to note that Mr. Bolden specifically said that if Congress had fully funded the CCP as requested that we would be launching American crews from KSC by now. Instead, here we go again. That, to me at least, says that the Congress is (1) more concerned with Russian companies and Russian jobs building Russian spacecraft than it is with American companies and American jobs building American spacecraft, (2) the members of Congress are just too damn dumb to understand the economics they are cramming down the American taxpayers' throats - or - (3) you look in their eyes and the lights are on but nobody's home - we're screwed. Either way I'm angry.
Quote from: clongton on 08/06/2015 11:31 amInteresting to note that Mr. Bolden specifically said that if Congress had fully funded the CCP as requested that we would be launching American crews from KSC by now. Instead, here we go again. That, to me at least, says that the Congress is (1) more concerned with Russian companies and Russian jobs building Russian spacecraft than it is with American companies and American jobs building American spacecraft, (2) the members of Congress are just too damn dumb to understand the economics they are cramming down the American taxpayers' throats - or - (3) you look in their eyes and the lights are on but nobody's home - we're screwed. Either way I'm angry. Could be other things...If funding it not increased then CST-100 on a Atlas is history. o Only 2 LVs are required to supply crew to ISS. o Two US LVs > One US, One IP >> One IP, zero US. o Add common configuration for Class A cargo/crew, retirement , cost, reuse, etc... ==>>> The 'logical' choice is quite clear with limited budgetMore fog. o Congress will spend $6.2B to launch crew to ISS until 2024 and will wait for both of next generation EELVs ( Falcon and the new Atlas with the new DOD liquid engine programs) as no new significant BEO mission funding was provided as well, while maintaining a $Bs ISS backup option of launching a few mT capsule on a 70+mT LV with solids. o The space policy of keeping everything separate is still in place.. o "The real gap is the premature decision to retire the Delta V Medium" but hey, the USG cannot tell corporations what to do. So the plan remains.......flying SLS and Orion to BEO, fly crew on IP rocket, phase out ISS by 2020 2024 (why does the bill title contain the word Competitive?!) underfund 'commercial' crew, maintain as many LV product lines as possible, and dictated a HLV only BEO architecture.It's all so illogical....but only fools believe...
[...]Too bad ULA is not keeping the Delta Medium as with the RS-68A many of the changes needed to crew rate it have been done which would provide a back up crew LV.Even with a simple LAS control like on Mercury it probably would already be safer then the Soyuz rocket.[...]
I'm sorry, but the Soyuz-FG has an overall record of 51/51. And Delta IV has 29/30 (96.67%). Please have some respect for the Russian stack that has never ever lost a crew to a launch (in part thanks to its LES, but that only proves their resiliency).Soyuz has had 116 straight missions without a LOC and 32 years without a launch failure. No crewed vehicle has even been near to match that. The chance of dying in a Soyuz is 1.51%, while in the Shuttle was 1.83%. You might criticize Soyuz for many reasons, but not its reliability.
Quote from: baldusi on 08/06/2015 05:03 pmI'm sorry, but the Soyuz-FG has an overall record of 51/51. And Delta IV has 29/30 (96.67%). Please have some respect for the Russian stack that has never ever lost a crew to a launch (in part thanks to its LES, but that only proves their resiliency).Soyuz has had 116 straight missions without a LOC and 32 years without a launch failure. No crewed vehicle has even been near to match that. The chance of dying in a Soyuz is 1.51%, while in the Shuttle was 1.83%. You might criticize Soyuz for many reasons, but not its reliability.Foton M1 was lost due to a failure of the Blok-D booster and was riding a Soyuz-U.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foton-M_No.1Soyuz needs to have five engines start and operate normally at launch to complete it's mission in theory this is worse then the situation with the Delta IV Heavy.There has been no major failure of a Delta IV of this nature just two anomalies that resulted in lower then expected performance.If the crew vehicle has a fair amount of delta V Margin these may not have even been a LOM event or worst case an AOA or ATO abort.
So we are spending an additional $490M to launch U.S. crew on Russian rockets. But we can't buy any more RD-180's for the Atlas V that could send U.S. crew on a U.S. capsule that could be latter sent up on Vulcan ( ULA's expected NGLV )? And yet we have money to spend money developing a launch vehicle with no need and no payloads that could have funded the U.S. commercial crew taxi capsules. At least commercial crew taxi's are needed and could be used for more than just crew delivery to ISS.
Congress still hasn't given up on Orion at ISS no matter what the cost or wasteful overkill...
Quote from: Rocket Science on 08/07/2015 01:04 pmCongress still hasn't given up on Orion at ISS no matter what the cost or wasteful overkill...In which case NASA should give Congress what it wants, propose EFT-2 a manned test flight to the ISS to test the Orion's Docking port and docking navigation aids in 2022. This repeat of the Commercial Crew test flights will verify that Orion can dock with the docking port on the Asteroid Redirect Robotic Mission (ARRM) spacecraft.
Quote from: A_M_Swallow on 08/07/2015 03:40 pmQuote from: Rocket Science on 08/07/2015 01:04 pmCongress still hasn't given up on Orion at ISS no matter what the cost or wasteful overkill...In which case NASA should give Congress what it wants, propose EFT-2 a manned test flight to the ISS to test the Orion's Docking port and docking navigation aids in 2022. This repeat of the Commercial Crew test flights will verify that Orion can dock with the docking port on the Asteroid Redirect Robotic Mission (ARRM) spacecraft.I mostly agree, except that if such a notional EFT-2 goes up on D-IVH, it will have to be unmanned. As impressive as it is, D-IVH is not a human-rated launcher.NASA should definitely give Congress what it wants, Orion at ISS, in order to rebuild trust with Congress. The NASA Authorization Act of 2010 is still the law of record, and it mandates this capability. NASA's defiance on this issue is not winning it any friends on either the Authorization or Appropriations committees.Mark S.
If a down select occurred on commercial crew to one provider and NASA wanted to mitigate some risk. Would it be possible for NASA to mandate that the provider would have to show the ability to fly on the other bidder's launch vehicle? IE if Boeing was selected they would have to design the CST-100 to have the ability to mate and fly on the Atlas-V and the Falcon 9, vice versa if SpaceX was selected. Since it seems that a large part of risk in a crewed vehicle is during launch. This removes the dependency on a single launch vehicle for Commercial crew while not having to pay to develop two capsules.
Quote from: brovane on 08/10/2015 02:53 pmIf a down select occurred on commercial crew to one provider and NASA wanted to mitigate some risk. Would it be possible for NASA to mandate that the provider would have to show the ability to fly on the other bidder's launch vehicle? IE if Boeing was selected they would have to design the CST-100 to have the ability to mate and fly on the Atlas-V and the Falcon 9, vice versa if SpaceX was selected. Since it seems that a large part of risk in a crewed vehicle is during launch. This removes the dependency on a single launch vehicle for Commercial crew while not having to pay to develop two capsules. Possibly but NASA will also want capsule redundancy.
Quote from: A_M_Swallow on 08/10/2015 04:34 pmQuote from: brovane on 08/10/2015 02:53 pmIf a down select occurred on commercial crew to one provider and NASA wanted to mitigate some risk. Would it be possible for NASA to mandate that the provider would have to show the ability to fly on the other bidder's launch vehicle? IE if Boeing was selected they would have to design the CST-100 to have the ability to mate and fly on the Atlas-V and the Falcon 9, vice versa if SpaceX was selected. Since it seems that a large part of risk in a crewed vehicle is during launch. This removes the dependency on a single launch vehicle for Commercial crew while not having to pay to develop two capsules. Possibly but NASA will also want capsule redundancy.Sometimes you have to compromise.
Quote from: brovane on 08/10/2015 04:50 pmQuote from: A_M_Swallow on 08/10/2015 04:34 pmQuote from: brovane on 08/10/2015 02:53 pmIf a down select occurred on commercial crew to one provider and NASA wanted to mitigate some risk. Would it be possible for NASA to mandate that the provider would have to show the ability to fly on the other bidder's launch vehicle? IE if Boeing was selected they would have to design the CST-100 to have the ability to mate and fly on the Atlas-V and the Falcon 9, vice versa if SpaceX was selected. Since it seems that a large part of risk in a crewed vehicle is during launch. This removes the dependency on a single launch vehicle for Commercial crew while not having to pay to develop two capsules. Possibly but NASA will also want capsule redundancy.Sometimes you have to compromise.Another comprimise is to stick to two providers and continue using Soyuz for a longer period of time. It is also the most likely scenario given that CCtCap contracts have already been awarded.
Why do we need to buy seats for 2018 Soyuz seats at all? With an additional $490 available, it should not be too difficult for CCP to start rotating crews sometime in 2018. NASA is required to have a continuous presence on the ISS. Perhaps NASA could close the gap through long endurance missions.If I'm not mistaken, NASA/ESA/JAXA/CSA has selected crews and backup crews through the Soyuz launch scheduled for May 2017. Prior to this contract extension, NASA agreed to buy seats through the end of 2017. That leaves one astronaut going up in September 2017 and two in November according to the planned pattern of launches in 2016 as I understand it.We currently have a cosmonaut and an astronaut on a year-long mission and several cosmonauts have pulled it off on the Mir, including Valeri Polyakov who spent 14 months up there. So perhaps they could select three astronauts that can handle a long endurance mission, just in case, as they selected Scott Kelly. Could Congress simply chose not to pay for the 2018 Soyuz contract? Would there be some kind of legal contract cancellation fee?
The text of the CJS bill can be found here (NASA starts on page 39 of the PDF or 26 of the document):http://docs.house.gov/meetings/RU/RU00/20151216/104298/HMTG-114-RU00-20151216-SD003.pdfDivision B:https://rules.house.gov/bill/114/hr-2029-sa
Commercial crew is fully funded at $1.2438B!