Author Topic: Commercial Crew - Discussion Thread 1  (Read 640950 times)

Offline guckyfan

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Re: Commercial Crew (CCtCAP) - Discussion Thread
« Reply #800 on: 02/01/2016 03:06 pm »
- from a NASA perspective, CCP is not necessarily beneficial from a crude comparison of prices compared to buying from the Russians
 - from a US macroeconomics perspective, the expenditure for CCP is much more likely to benefit the economy as a whole, whereas it is difficult to argue that money spent in "modern" Russia can somehow benefit American interests.

CCP only makes economic sense from the the nation's viewpoint.  It also makes indirect economic sense for NASA by ensuring a second or third crew transport provider, thus greatly reducing the risk of a costly de-crew scenario.

If we attribute value to scientific research done at the ISS and increased value to more research, then the US crew vehicles are adding a lot value. IMO it has been consistently not been part of the calculation that they will allow one more crew member on the ISS and doubling the scientific work time. Presently two astronauts do maintenance, one does science. Increase by one astronaut will still have two doing maintenance but two doing science.

Offline joek

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Re: Commercial Crew (CCtCAP) - Discussion Thread
« Reply #801 on: 02/07/2016 01:10 am »
- from a NASA perspective, CCP is not necessarily beneficial from a crude comparison of prices compared to buying from the Russians
 - from a US macroeconomics perspective, the expenditure for CCP is much more likely to benefit the economy as a whole, whereas it is difficult to argue that money spent in "modern" Russia can somehow benefit American interests.
CCP only makes economic sense from the the nation's viewpoint.  It also makes indirect economic sense for NASA by ensuring a second or third crew transport provider, thus greatly reducing the risk of a costly de-crew scenario.
If we attribute value to scientific research done at the ISS and increased value to more research, then the US crew vehicles are adding a lot value. IMO it has been consistently not been part of the calculation that they will allow one more crew member on the ISS and doubling the scientific work time. Presently two astronauts do maintenance, one does science. Increase by one astronaut will still have two doing maintenance but two doing science.

That CCP cannot be justified purely on $/seat is evident.  Given current Soyuz seat prices, and assuming the current price trends hold, CCP payback is well beyond 2028 (somewhere in an ancient post I showed the plot/crossover, and it has moved right since then).

The added ISS research time-value has been previously discussed at some length.  For a rough attempt to quantify, see here.  If one considers added ISS research time-value, then (to quote myself):
Quote from: joek
...in the context of ISS, $/seat for crew transportation is pretty much in the noise when compared to $/hr of usable crew time.

Offline RonM

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Re: Commercial Crew (CCtCAP) - Discussion Thread
« Reply #802 on: 02/07/2016 01:30 am »
Even if US crew vehicles cost more, their value is in having additional ways to get crew to ISS. Right now, if something happened to ground Soyuz, ISS would have to be abandoned.

If ISS is temporarily abandoned, there is a chance that something could go wrong that would prevent crews from returning. Then we just threw away a $100 billion space station.

Don't be "penny wise and pound foolish."

Offline QuantumG

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Re: Commercial Crew (CCtCAP) - Discussion Thread
« Reply #803 on: 02/07/2016 10:00 pm »
Then we just threw away a $100 billion space station.

.. a few years earlier than planned.
Human spaceflight is basically just LARPing now.

Online yg1968

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Re: Commercial Crew (CCtCAP) - Discussion Thread
« Reply #804 on: 03/17/2016 01:16 pm »

Online yg1968

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Re: Commercial Crew (CCtCAP) - Discussion Thread
« Reply #805 on: 03/17/2016 01:33 pm »
Slide 6 is interesting. It has the SpaceX in-flight abort test around March 2017.

Offline AncientU

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Re: Commercial Crew (CCtCAP) - Discussion Thread
« Reply #806 on: 03/18/2016 12:41 pm »
Couple interesting clips from the VP of Engineering (now former VP) at ULA concerning flying crew:

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we’re flying Boeing’s CST-100, it's called the Starliner, we’re going to put six astronauts on top of an Atlas rocket, so 2017, we’ll fly it unmanned, in 2018, we’ll fly it as a manned flight.

Isn't this flight advertised as 2017?

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We’re working on getting it certified, and so right now, with Boeing, per the contract, we’re going through the human spaceflight organisation and looking at all the single point failures, all the redundancy, how things work, modifying the launch rockets primarily to meet their needs. It’s also interesting because the Boeing design doesn’t have an escape tower, it basically has four thrusters on the bottom of their capsule or the service module that will eject them off if there’s a bad day. And so there’s different things that the backpressure will tear apart, the backpressure of those thrusters if you have the wrong structural load will cause it to impinge on the capsule at very high altitudes, damages the heat shield, that will cause it to have a problem on reentry,

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Look, an achilles heel of the Atlas system right now is the Centaur upper stage.

Assume that this is the Centaur stage failing and damaging the heat shield...
Is this public knowledge? (Is now.)

Maybe they should do that in-flight abort demo (that analysis supposedly eliminated).

For transcript:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=39180.msg1504420#msg1504420
"If we shared everything [we are working on] people would think we are insane!"
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Offline arachnitect

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Re: Commercial Crew (CCtCAP) - Discussion Thread
« Reply #807 on: 05/25/2016 01:16 am »
http://tass.ru/en/science/877803

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Russia has no intention of concluding more contracts for delivering US astronauts to the International Space Station after 2018, the deputy chief of the state-run corporation Roscosmos, Sergey Saveliev, has told the media.

I assume this means no further seat purchases, but does it also mean no seat swaps?

Offline rocx

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Re: Commercial Crew (CCtCAP) - Discussion Thread
« Reply #808 on: 05/25/2016 08:23 am »
Maybe this is just tough talk that doesn't cost them anything, because they expect commercial crew to finally be flying by then?
Any day with a rocket landing is a fantastic day.

Offline Rebel44

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Re: Commercial Crew (CCtCAP) - Discussion Thread
« Reply #809 on: 05/25/2016 09:10 am »
Most likely just no purchases, with seat swaps being a new normal.

Offline Lar

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Re: Commercial Crew (CCtCAP) - Discussion Thread
« Reply #810 on: 06/03/2016 08:51 pm »
Try to stay on topic. Although Boeing tanker woes are related to Boeing, they are not really relevant to crew. Please don't argue this point, thanks.,
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Offline cambrianera

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Re: Commercial Crew (CCtCAP) - Discussion Thread
« Reply #811 on: 06/04/2016 07:44 am »
The real concern here is not the tanker, but the reliability of Boeing management.
And this, unfortunately, will be relevant to Commercial Crew.
Oh to be young again. . .

Offline The Amazing Catstronaut

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Re: Commercial Crew (CCtCAP) - Discussion Thread
« Reply #812 on: 06/04/2016 02:50 pm »
The real concern here is not the tanker, but the reliability of Boeing management.
And this, unfortunately, will be relevant to Commercial Crew.

Different people run different areas of the company. Boeing is simply enormous and the actions of one set of management may not inherently apply to another, especially in fields without too many direct overlaps.
Resident feline spaceflight expert. Knows nothing of value about human spaceflight.

Offline Marslauncher

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Re: Commercial Crew (CCtCAP) - Discussion Thread
« Reply #813 on: 06/08/2016 02:23 am »
Have we had any confirmation of actual flight hardware being put together at Spacex on the full version Dragon 2 capsule (taking reference from Boeing's CST) this is not meant to flame, just I almost typed Boring... We know Mcgregor has the shell version of the Dragon 2 for testing, however I would expect more testing to ramp up and thus play in to the design of the craft? We hear rumblings of FH hardware being produced also. Do we have any actual pictures of flight hardware being produced for the D2 and FH?

Thanks

John C


Online abaddon

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Re: Commercial Crew (CCtCAP) - Discussion Thread
« Reply #814 on: 06/08/2016 02:37 pm »
Latest public information on SpaceX CCtCAP progress can be seen here: http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=39832.msg1538623#msg1538623.
Quote
We know Mcgregor has the shell version of the Dragon 2 for testing
That has, apparently, been retired.
Quote
We hear rumblings of FH hardware being produced also. Do we have any actual pictures of flight hardware being produced for the D2 and FH?
There are no public pictures of D2 flight hardware that I know of.  FH is off-topic for this thread, there are several threads in the SpaceX General forum that cover it.

Offline A_M_Swallow

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Re: Commercial Crew (CCtCAP) - Discussion Thread
« Reply #815 on: 06/08/2016 10:28 pm »
According to the report accompanying the FY 2017 Budget NASA will be sending a quarterly report on the progress of Commercial Crew to Congress. I wonder if links to these documents will be appearing on this website?

Ref: http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=39540.0;attach=1335701;sess=7751

edit: add link
« Last Edit: 06/08/2016 10:31 pm by A_M_Swallow »

Offline Scylla

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Re: Commercial Crew (CCtCAP) - Discussion Thread
« Reply #816 on: 06/10/2016 07:45 pm »
Commercial Crew Manufacturing Gains Momentum Coast to Coast
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/commercial-crew-manufacturing-gains-momentum-coast-to-coast

By Steven Siceloff,
NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Florida

Manufacturing facilities are in operation on the east and west coasts to build the next generation of spacecraft to return human launch capability to American soil. Over the past six months, Boeing and SpaceX – the companies partnered with NASA to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station – each have begun producing the first in a series of spacecraft.

Rather than building one Boeing CST-100 Starliner or SpaceX Crew Dragon at a time, each company set out to produce several spacecraft in an assembly-line fashion while maintaining the careful attention to detail and inspections required of any spacecraft, particularly those that will carry astronauts into orbit.

NASA’s Commercial Crew Program partners are building and testing components across the United States as prototype spacecraft and flight test vehicles are carefully assembled. Subsystems for the operational missions are coming together, as spacecraft and rocket assembly lines gear up for production.

In Florida, where Boeing is constructing Starliners, engineers have assembled the crew module of the Structural Test Article that will be shipped to Huntington Beach, California, where it will join the previously delivered service module for extensive testing under a host of exhaustive conditions. The two main elements of the first flight-like Starliner - the upper and lower pressure domes - inside the Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida are undergoing early check outs and assembly before they are joined together for environmental qualification tests and the pad abort test.

SpaceX is welding the pressure vessels for four Crew Dragons, two test articles and two flight vehicles in the company's Hawthorne, California, factory. The next six months are expected to see each of the pressure vessels built up to different stages for structural and subsystem testing followed by uncrewed and crew flight tests known as Demo 1 and Demo 2 for "Demonstration Mission."

The launch facilities for both companies are deep into their modifications and construction. The Crew Access Tower on Space Launch Complex 41, at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, is in place and the Crew Access Arm astronauts will use to cross from the tower to the Starliner hatch will be transported to the pad for placement on the tower this summer. Additionally, about 25,000 lines of software code have been written for the rocket and launch site to communicate with all the new crew-specific hardware. All the work has been completed while still allowing launches of the United Launch Alliance Atlas V from the launch pad.

At historic Launch Pad 39A at Kennedy, where Apollo and space shuttle missions began, SpaceX is taking down the rotating service structure designed to handle shuttle payloads. They've also removed more than 500,000 pounds of steel from the fixed service structure and are building shielding around the tower to protect from the blast of the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. Its Crew Access Arm also is under construction and is slated to be installed on the tower later this year.

Numerous readiness reviews, which assemble engineers from NASA and the respective company, will be held throughout development before the launch sites are used for the first time to launch astronauts.

Last Updated: June 10, 2016
Editor: Steven Siceloff
I reject your reality and substitute my own--Doctor Who

Offline rockets4life97

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Re: Commercial Crew (CCtCAP) - Discussion Thread
« Reply #817 on: 07/23/2016 10:51 pm »
I was looking back today at the shuttle's launch history and saw that at its peak shuttle flew 9 flights in a year. The more steady cadence was 6 or 7 flights a year.

This got me thinking to the commercial crew vehicles. Once both the Starliner and Crew Dragon are certified how often do you think they will fly a year? Do you think the ISS could support upwards of 9 U.S. manned flights a year?

Offline joek

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Re: Commercial Crew (CCtCAP) - Discussion Thread
« Reply #818 on: 07/23/2016 11:15 pm »
I was looking back today at the shuttle's launch history and saw that at its peak shuttle flew 9 flights in a year. The more steady cadence was 6 or 7 flights a year.

This got me thinking to the commercial crew vehicles. Once both the Starliner and Crew Dragon are certified how often do you think they will fly a year? Do you think the ISS could support upwards of 9 U.S. manned flights a year?

Plan and budget is two flights/year with a rotation of 4 crew/flight (one crew of 4 rotation every 6 months).  More than that would require additional budget and additional ISS support; unlikely for the foreseeable future.

Offline rockets4life97

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Re: Commercial Crew (CCtCAP) - Discussion Thread
« Reply #819 on: 07/23/2016 11:51 pm »
Plan and budget is two flights/year with a rotation of 4 crew/flight (one crew of 4 rotation every 6 months).  More than that would require additional budget and additional ISS support; unlikely for the foreseeable future.

Ah, not surprised. I guess that is why you need somewhere else for crew to go besides the ISS. It seems like it will be awhile before U.S. manned spaceflight is as regular as it was during the shuttle era.

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