Go Dream Chaser! If it ever flies people will come to love it much as they loved the Orbiter. A sort of a cross between Spirit and the Orbiter. The little spaceplane that could.
I am wondering if it means anything. SpaceX's proposal was for a launch abort system. Perhaps, NASA thought that it was too early to provide funds to a launch abort system at this point in time. But I doubt that this means anything for SpaceX for future awards.
Quote from: mmeijeri on 02/01/2010 09:35 pmGo Dream Chaser! If it ever flies people will come to love it much as they loved the Orbiter. A sort of a cross between Spirit and the Orbiter. The little spaceplane that could.Yes, Dream Chaser sounds like a great concept... like the Shuttle Orbiter, but smaller, which will have HUGE ramifications for lowering costs. It's small enough that you can afford to change/upgrade some of the subsystems after operational experience shows what is most efficient. Plus, it can launch on different launch vehicles, allowing costs to be further minimized.And about SpaceX: If they successfully launch Falcon 9 in the next month or four and assume regular Dragon flights to the ISS (with successful recovery of the capsule) within the next year or two, they will get a whole lot of lovin' as far as commercial crew.
I know its early, and today is a "busy day" and long term fallout/budgets programs details will take some time to become clear, but given that, what,if anything does spacex being excluded from this program mean?As has been ponted out, the bulk of the money went to systems using ULA launchers. Is spacex finding itself, along with orbital, pushed to the sidelines as the bigger players move into the commerical crewed space? Was this award treated as a preliminary seed money to companies not yet "in the process", or does it indicate nasa's thinking about who is going to service the new commercial crewed program? Could it be that since spacex and commercial crewed has become linked in the minds of commercial space critics, Nasa decided to expand the mindshare against such arguments? Is spacex, and their dragon capsule still a contender or has the company been more or less removed from future consideration when it comes to commercial crewd services?
Does Boeing still have LV people. I thought they all went to ULA.
The good news for SpaceX is that their proposal was for a launch abort system (LAS) and it doesn't seem like any of these other companies' proposal were for a launch abort system (as far as I know). So they didn't lose out to anybody in that sense. SpaceX insists that they only need help with the LAS and that they have enough money for Falcon 9 and Dragon with the COTS and CRS contracts. In a nutshell, NASA's not going to give SpaceX money for something that they are not even asking for. They may get money for a LAS once NASA stars awarding contracts for that. I admit that this is a guess on my part. But it seems logical to me...
I still wonder about orbital. The Taurus II is in the low end of cpacity in the medium rocket class, and the cygnus crew capacity would be 2-3 to ISS? It most likely has nothing to do with this award, again perhaps it comes down to the nature of the proposals falling in the scope of the award/award ammount.