Quote from: yg1968 on 08/31/2022 10:42 pmPrice per seat went from $55M to $64M to $72M. That's probably to account for inflation.OK, I did some fact checking. The initial award to SpaceX was $2,600M. This increased to $3,490.9M for Crew-7 to Crew-9 and $4,927.3M for Crew-10 to Crew-14. Thus I get (3490.9-2600)/(3*4) = $74.2M/seat for Crew-7 to Crew-9 and (4927.3-3490.9)/(5*4) = $71.8M/seat for Crew-10 to Crew-14! Thus, there was no price increase, but a price decrease!https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-awards-spacex-additional-crew-flights-to-space-stationhttps://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-awards-spacex-more-crew-flights-to-space-station
Price per seat went from $55M to $64M to $72M. That's probably to account for inflation.
Quote from: DanClemmensen on 09/06/2022 12:55 amQuote from: Jim on 09/06/2022 12:16 amIt was easy to do and keeping Dragon and Falcon going is because Starship is not a viable replacement .Why would they decline?We are talking about missions after 2028, here. By that time, there is a real possibility that CRS and CCP are the only remaining customers for Dragon and for F9. Under these circumstances, SpaceX would need to keep the entire Dragon and F9 infrastructures functioning to support a total of about four flights per year, which means those four flights must pay the entire operational costs of that infrastructure. I don't see how the mission price in the ammendment can support that infrastructure at four flights per year.SpaceX may or may not agree with you about Starship as a viable replacement: I don't know. I am not knowledgeable enough to assess it, but SpaceX claims that they will have crewed Starship and Cargo Starship functioning by then, and I'm fairly sure their engineers can come up with something that uses them in conjunction with a "taxi" if Starship cannot dock with ISS and other stations.As I have told you before, during a press conference Jessica Jensen of SpaceX and Steve Stich of NASA said that there was no issues for SpaceX to continue Dragon and Falcon 9 until 2030. It's at 24 and 41 minutes of this video:
Quote from: Jim on 09/06/2022 12:16 amIt was easy to do and keeping Dragon and Falcon going is because Starship is not a viable replacement .Why would they decline?We are talking about missions after 2028, here. By that time, there is a real possibility that CRS and CCP are the only remaining customers for Dragon and for F9. Under these circumstances, SpaceX would need to keep the entire Dragon and F9 infrastructures functioning to support a total of about four flights per year, which means those four flights must pay the entire operational costs of that infrastructure. I don't see how the mission price in the ammendment can support that infrastructure at four flights per year.SpaceX may or may not agree with you about Starship as a viable replacement: I don't know. I am not knowledgeable enough to assess it, but SpaceX claims that they will have crewed Starship and Cargo Starship functioning by then, and I'm fairly sure their engineers can come up with something that uses them in conjunction with a "taxi" if Starship cannot dock with ISS and other stations.
It was easy to do and keeping Dragon and Falcon going is because Starship is not a viable replacement .Why would they decline?
2030 is a long time from now. It is still possible that SpaceX may propose to fly an uncrewed Crew Dragon on a cargo Starship and bring the crew up on a crewed Starship and let the crew taxi over to ISS using the Dragon, thus permitting retirement of F9, but there is no indication whatsoever that SpaceX is contemplating this approach. If NASA declines to allow their crew to EDL on Starship, the Dragon can EDL with the crew. Otherwise, Dragon can taxi the crew to crewed Starship and come back on cargo Starship for replenishment after its six-month ISS mission, saving the wear and tear of EDL and saving the water recovery. SpaceX could demonstrate this approach using Cargo Dragon on a CRS flight.
Quote from: DanClemmensen on 09/07/2022 12:14 am2030 is a long time from now. It is still possible that SpaceX may propose to fly an uncrewed Crew Dragon on a cargo Starship and bring the crew up on a crewed Starship and let the crew taxi over to ISS using the Dragon, thus permitting retirement of F9, but there is no indication whatsoever that SpaceX is contemplating this approach. If NASA declines to allow their crew to EDL on Starship, the Dragon can EDL with the crew. Otherwise, Dragon can taxi the crew to crewed Starship and come back on cargo Starship for replenishment after its six-month ISS mission, saving the wear and tear of EDL and saving the water recovery. SpaceX could demonstrate this approach using Cargo Dragon on a CRS flight.Why? Why all this complication? Make absolutely no sense! SpaceX will fly Crew Dragons on Falcon 9 until at least 2030... end of story. Why do you want F9 to retire so bad? F9 and Starship can coexist just fine!
Quote from: jmt27 on 09/07/2022 12:48 amQuote from: DanClemmensen on 09/07/2022 12:14 am2030 is a long time from now. It is still possible that SpaceX may propose to fly an uncrewed Crew Dragon on a cargo Starship and bring the crew up on a crewed Starship and let the crew taxi over to ISS using the Dragon, thus permitting retirement of F9, but there is no indication whatsoever that SpaceX is contemplating this approach. If NASA declines to allow their crew to EDL on Starship, the Dragon can EDL with the crew. Otherwise, Dragon can taxi the crew to crewed Starship and come back on cargo Starship for replenishment after its six-month ISS mission, saving the wear and tear of EDL and saving the water recovery. SpaceX could demonstrate this approach using Cargo Dragon on a CRS flight.Why? Why all this complication? Make absolutely no sense! SpaceX will fly Crew Dragons on Falcon 9 until at least 2030... end of story. Why do you want F9 to retire so bad? F9 and Starship can coexist just fine!Minimum cost of a Starship flight: $5 million (Elon said $2 million, I say BS). Minimum cost of an F9 flight: $30 Million, but only if there are sufficient F9 flights/yr to cover the infrastructure. All rockets eventually retire, usually when they are superseded by a more cost-effective rocket. Just because it's the most successful rocket in the history of spaceflight does not mean it will not retire.
Quote from: DanClemmensen on 09/07/2022 01:05 amQuote from: jmt27 on 09/07/2022 12:48 amQuote from: DanClemmensen on 09/07/2022 12:14 am2030 is a long time from now. It is still possible that SpaceX may propose to fly an uncrewed Crew Dragon on a cargo Starship and bring the crew up on a crewed Starship and let the crew taxi over to ISS using the Dragon, thus permitting retirement of F9, but there is no indication whatsoever that SpaceX is contemplating this approach. If NASA declines to allow their crew to EDL on Starship, the Dragon can EDL with the crew. Otherwise, Dragon can taxi the crew to crewed Starship and come back on cargo Starship for replenishment after its six-month ISS mission, saving the wear and tear of EDL and saving the water recovery. SpaceX could demonstrate this approach using Cargo Dragon on a CRS flight.Why? Why all this complication? Make absolutely no sense! SpaceX will fly Crew Dragons on Falcon 9 until at least 2030... end of story. Why do you want F9 to retire so bad? F9 and Starship can coexist just fine!Minimum cost of a Starship flight: $5 million (Elon said $2 million, I say BS). Minimum cost of an F9 flight: $30 Million, but only if there are sufficient F9 flights/yr to cover the infrastructure. All rockets eventually retire, usually when they are superseded by a more cost-effective rocket. Just because it's the most successful rocket in the history of spaceflight does not mean it will not retire.NASA doesn't care about Starship being cheaper than F9. Starship (as far as we know) will not have a crew escape system. Dragon does. As long as SpaceX gets NASA money they will keep flying Dragons on F9.
Quote from: jmt27 on 09/07/2022 01:12 amQuote from: DanClemmensen on 09/07/2022 01:05 amQuote from: jmt27 on 09/07/2022 12:48 amQuote from: DanClemmensen on 09/07/2022 12:14 am2030 is a long time from now. It is still possible that SpaceX may propose to fly an uncrewed Crew Dragon on a cargo Starship and bring the crew up on a crewed Starship and let the crew taxi over to ISS using the Dragon, thus permitting retirement of F9, but there is no indication whatsoever that SpaceX is contemplating this approach. If NASA declines to allow their crew to EDL on Starship, the Dragon can EDL with the crew. Otherwise, Dragon can taxi the crew to crewed Starship and come back on cargo Starship for replenishment after its six-month ISS mission, saving the wear and tear of EDL and saving the water recovery. SpaceX could demonstrate this approach using Cargo Dragon on a CRS flight.Why? Why all this complication? Make absolutely no sense! SpaceX will fly Crew Dragons on Falcon 9 until at least 2030... end of story. Why do you want F9 to retire so bad? F9 and Starship can coexist just fine!Minimum cost of a Starship flight: $5 million (Elon said $2 million, I say BS). Minimum cost of an F9 flight: $30 Million, but only if there are sufficient F9 flights/yr to cover the infrastructure. All rockets eventually retire, usually when they are superseded by a more cost-effective rocket. Just because it's the most successful rocket in the history of spaceflight does not mean it will not retire.NASA doesn't care about Starship being cheaper than F9. Starship (as far as we know) will not have a crew escape system. Dragon does. As long as SpaceX gets NASA money they will keep flying Dragons on F9.You may very well be correct and NASA may refuse to allow astronauts to launch on crewed Starship in 2028. Alternatively, they might. If Elon's dreams come true, they will be launching hundreds of people on Starship by then. NASA may not care about the money, but SpaceX would prefer to charge the same amount of money and keep more of it as profit. This is a "what-if" scenario, not a prediction.
NASA doesn’t proscribe LAS, they proscribe a certain LOC value, and LAS is just one method of achieving that.Commercial Crew has a LOC probability requirement of 1:270 flights. 300 consecutive successful launch and landings of Starship would be approximately enough. Maybe 100 if there’s good analysis, insight, and maybe additional survivable abort modes.
Quote from: Robotbeat on 09/07/2022 03:17 pmNASA doesn’t proscribe LAS, they proscribe a certain LOC value, and LAS is just one method of achieving that.Commercial Crew has a LOC probability requirement of 1:270 flights. 300 consecutive successful launch and landings of Starship would be approximately enough. Maybe 100 if there’s good analysis, insight, and maybe additional survivable abort modes.The problem is that Elon's dreams of hundreds of launches are not coming true on the original schedule. The plan in mid-2021 was to launch dozens of Starlink-on-Starship launches in 2022, but we aren't there yet. I remain hopeful that we are only a year late and we will see them in 2023 instead, but it's getting late. Those are the launches they need to demonstrate launch and EDL for crewed Starship.
NASA doesn’t proscribe LAS, they proscribe a certain LOC value, and LAS is just one method of achieving that.
3.3.1.3 Pad AbortThe CTS shall provide pad abort capability to protect the crew from a hazardous condition on thelaunch pad with a 95% probability of success with at least 90% confidence.3.3.1.4 Ascent AbortThe CTS shall provide continuous autonomous launch abort capability from lift-off throughorbital insertion with a 95% probability of success with at least 90% confidence in the event of aloss of thrust or loss of attitude control.
Commercial Crew has a LOC probability requirement of 1:270 flights. 300 consecutive successful launch and landings of Starship would be approximately enough. Maybe 100 if there’s good analysis, insight, and maybe additional survivable abort modes.
NASA doesn't require a Launch Abort "System", per se, but they do require pad abort and launch abort *capability*. People need to realize these requirements are publicly available and actually read them:
Contracts have changed and will continue to change after being signed all the time.If come 2028 it makes sense for NASA and SpaceX to send crew on some form of starship they will adjust the contract as needed.The current agreement does not preclude that in any way.Meanwhile the current contract was written as is because as of TODAY, that is what makes sense.
Based on the technical challenges associated with the Starliner development and testing, it is possible that Boeing will not be certified in 2023 due to issues that still need to be resolved prior to launch of the Crewed Flight Test and Certification.
ROSCOSMOS has been firm that it will not fly on a provider’s PCM until the third PCM flight to demonstrate mission success and safety of flight for that transportation system.
Also, a notice of NASA’s intent to award this sole-source action was synopsized on the GPE website (SAM.gov) per FAR Subpart 5.2 (See Section 6 above). No sources expressed an interest in response to the NOI (issued on June 1, 2022 with a closing date of June 16, 2022).
