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.