Well, apparently the redactions indicate order of magnitude.
New commercial crew video:<skip>
The Dream is Alive once more! (In a few years!)
Quote from: okan170 on 05/03/2015 12:37 amThe Dream is Alive once more! (In a few years!)Docking systems look great!
fund the HL-20/Dream Chaser to completion to gain some diversity in the fleet via a reusable shuttle for LEO ops.
It just kills me that we have both Orion and CST-100, which seems totally unnecessary, and yet we couldn't make room for DC, leaving the promising and long overdue HL-20 at yet another dead end. So frustrating! Orion seems totally unjustifiable to me, as does SLS, especially if there's potential for SpaceX to evolve its hardware for beyond-LEO missions. That we're entertaining pointless asteroid capture stunts just to find something for Orion to do indicates just how lost our space agency is, imo.
The Orion and SLS program where justifiable when first started. Even three years ago could anyone seriously buy into the concept of putting faith into Elon Musk and SpaceX for the US BEO manned spaceflight program?
You have billions already spent on SLS and Orion and you expect NASA to ask to abandon these programs and re-direct funding to SpaceX?
What you are seeing is a fundamental problem in how the US govt procures the development of multi-billion hardware from military fighters, submarines to space hardware. The process is broken, it isn't that NASA is broken.
Quote from: manboy on 05/09/2015 10:22 amQuote from: okan170 on 05/03/2015 12:37 amThe Dream is Alive once more! (In a few years!)Docking systems look great!The similarity between Orion and the CST-100 is obvious, as they both use the Apollo CM outer mold line. If our cash-strapped agency is going to be developing three different spacecraft, there should be room to make one of them a lifting body reusable shuttle imo. I say cut the Orion/SLS pork that's eating through NASA's budget, adapt CST-100 and Dragon for beyond-LEO missions, and fund the HL-20/Dream Chaser to completion to gain some diversity in the fleet via a reusable shuttle for LEO ops.
Three years ago there wasn't a funded BEO program, and there still isn't today. So the SLS/Orion represent "excess capability".
The U.S. Government doesn't have a funded BEO program, so they don't need any BEO hardware from anyone. But when that day comes for non-NASA hardware, normally there would be a competition held to find the best solution & provider. Maybe SpaceX would win, maybe not, but usually competition results in the best potential result.
However notice I said "normally", since the SLS and Orion were not the result of any competitive process, either for the solution or the provider. Which is part of the reason they don't perfectly match any known need.
You are comparing apples & oranges.The Commercial Crew program is a great example of competitive procurement.The SLS and Orion were not competitively procured, they were specified by Congress. So what they represent is how the political process screws things up, not that government procurement per se is broken.
DreamChaser is a lifting body capsule just like Dragon and CST, which also could be reusable of reusability made sense economically. I don't believe that it qualifies as a "reusable shuttle" as it needs to launch on top of an expendable EELV just like the other capsules.