Quote from: rcoppola on 04/18/2011 03:39 pmQuote from: clongton on 04/18/2011 03:28 pmQuote from: rcoppola on 04/18/2011 03:21 pmAre we not far enough along in the development cycles of the competing systems for NASA to make an educated decision as to which of the executions is most likely to succeed, with the greatest speed to market, most economical to develop and maintain, factoring in capabilities?I'd actually like to see SpaceX get enough to guarantee that they can finish up on their own after this so that in any future awards they can be cut out, keeping other less well funded but excellent companies alive.Remember, these are commercial companies and at some point they need to be weaned if they are going to retain the title "commercial". Sure the USGov can purchase their product or service, but at some point they need to stand on their own 2 feet and fund their day to day operations out of their profit margin, not from the US Treasury. I hope to see that happen to *all* the winners. I understand and agree to a point. And yes there are some exciting possibilities with less funded entities, however, I'm just not of the mind that we should belabor this point. The ultimate goal is to get a working commercial space man-rated transportation system in place as quickly and as economically as possible. The more we dilute what little funds we have, to companies so far from achieving an operational system, the longer we will have no domestic HSF, LEO capability.I'm sorry but the irony of this statement still bewilders me. We need a "commercial" space system and therefore need as much government funding (which come with government requirements and the more funding the more oversight) as possible. CCDev-2 is not and was not ever intended for full-up DDT&E of the vehicles. Even only if a hand-full of bidders get the majority of the pie, we're still talking close to each recipiant getting nearly what was given out for all of CCDev-1. If the business case is like what the CSF preaches, then CCDev-2 should show some flexibility, intent and will for capital investment. Government can't and shouldn't do it alone. Isn't that the main thrust of pro-commercial space extremists? Or is that just talk to get as much money from the government as possible?
Quote from: clongton on 04/18/2011 03:28 pmQuote from: rcoppola on 04/18/2011 03:21 pmAre we not far enough along in the development cycles of the competing systems for NASA to make an educated decision as to which of the executions is most likely to succeed, with the greatest speed to market, most economical to develop and maintain, factoring in capabilities?I'd actually like to see SpaceX get enough to guarantee that they can finish up on their own after this so that in any future awards they can be cut out, keeping other less well funded but excellent companies alive.Remember, these are commercial companies and at some point they need to be weaned if they are going to retain the title "commercial". Sure the USGov can purchase their product or service, but at some point they need to stand on their own 2 feet and fund their day to day operations out of their profit margin, not from the US Treasury. I hope to see that happen to *all* the winners. I understand and agree to a point. And yes there are some exciting possibilities with less funded entities, however, I'm just not of the mind that we should belabor this point. The ultimate goal is to get a working commercial space man-rated transportation system in place as quickly and as economically as possible. The more we dilute what little funds we have, to companies so far from achieving an operational system, the longer we will have no domestic HSF, LEO capability.
Quote from: rcoppola on 04/18/2011 03:21 pmAre we not far enough along in the development cycles of the competing systems for NASA to make an educated decision as to which of the executions is most likely to succeed, with the greatest speed to market, most economical to develop and maintain, factoring in capabilities?I'd actually like to see SpaceX get enough to guarantee that they can finish up on their own after this so that in any future awards they can be cut out, keeping other less well funded but excellent companies alive.Remember, these are commercial companies and at some point they need to be weaned if they are going to retain the title "commercial". Sure the USGov can purchase their product or service, but at some point they need to stand on their own 2 feet and fund their day to day operations out of their profit margin, not from the US Treasury. I hope to see that happen to *all* the winners.
Are we not far enough along in the development cycles of the competing systems for NASA to make an educated decision as to which of the executions is most likely to succeed, with the greatest speed to market, most economical to develop and maintain, factoring in capabilities?
Quote from: OV-106 on 04/18/2011 03:56 pmQuote from: rcoppola on 04/18/2011 03:39 pmQuote from: clongton on 04/18/2011 03:28 pmQuote from: rcoppola on 04/18/2011 03:21 pmAre we not far enough along in the development cycles of the competing systems for NASA to make an educated decision as to which of the executions is most likely to succeed, with the greatest speed to market, most economical to develop and maintain, factoring in capabilities?I'd actually like to see SpaceX get enough to guarantee that they can finish up on their own after this so that in any future awards they can be cut out, keeping other less well funded but excellent companies alive.Remember, these are commercial companies and at some point they need to be weaned if they are going to retain the title "commercial". Sure the USGov can purchase their product or service, but at some point they need to stand on their own 2 feet and fund their day to day operations out of their profit margin, not from the US Treasury. I hope to see that happen to *all* the winners. I understand and agree to a point. And yes there are some exciting possibilities with less funded entities, however, I'm just not of the mind that we should belabor this point. The ultimate goal is to get a working commercial space man-rated transportation system in place as quickly and as economically as possible. The more we dilute what little funds we have, to companies so far from achieving an operational system, the longer we will have no domestic HSF, LEO capability.I'm sorry but the irony of this statement still bewilders me. We need a "commercial" space system and therefore need as much government funding (which come with government requirements and the more funding the more oversight) as possible. CCDev-2 is not and was not ever intended for full-up DDT&E of the vehicles. Even only if a hand-full of bidders get the majority of the pie, we're still talking close to each recipiant getting nearly what was given out for all of CCDev-1. If the business case is like what the CSF preaches, then CCDev-2 should show some flexibility, intent and will for capital investment. Government can't and shouldn't do it alone. Isn't that the main thrust of pro-commercial space extremists? Or is that just talk to get as much money from the government as possible?This is all well and good but frankly, I am interested in one thing. Having the domestic ability to get off planet as early, as often and as economically as possible. Whoever can do it, gets the money.
Quote from: clongton on 04/18/2011 03:47 pmQuote from: rcoppola on 04/18/2011 03:39 pmThe more we dilute what little funds we have, to companies so far from achieving an operational system, the longer we will have no domestic HSF, LEO capability.Which is exactly the point I was making wrt SpaceX. I really like that company and all they have so far accomplished. But it is reasonably well funded and as long as we don't wean them too soon, they will make it on their own, freeing up that funding to go to other promising companies who would otherwise fall just over the cutoff line.Agreed.Ok, so just curious. SpaceX gets enough to begin in earnest their LAS, which results in another benefit of also allowing them to have propulsive landing capability down the road. Of the remaining participants, which 2 would you say should receive the remaining funds...?
Quote from: rcoppola on 04/18/2011 03:39 pmThe more we dilute what little funds we have, to companies so far from achieving an operational system, the longer we will have no domestic HSF, LEO capability.Which is exactly the point I was making wrt SpaceX. I really like that company and all they have so far accomplished. But it is reasonably well funded and as long as we don't wean them too soon, they will make it on their own, freeing up that funding to go to other promising companies who would otherwise fall just over the cutoff line.
The more we dilute what little funds we have, to companies so far from achieving an operational system, the longer we will have no domestic HSF, LEO capability.
1. Boeing2. SpaceX3. Orbital4. SNC5. ATKThese will be the main winners.
My money's on Spacex (Dragon), Boeing (CST-100), ATK (Liberty) (Like Chris said you just can't count them out) and Sierra Nevada (Dreamchaser).
Me too, albeit I think ULA should be in the list too, since both CST and Dreamchaser need a human rated Atlas-V. (unless you want launch them all on F9, which gives you little redundancy.)The emergency detection system shouldn't be to expensive when compared to the other entries.
I'm surprised very few are saying anything about Orbital.
Quote from: rcoppola on 04/18/2011 03:55 pmQuote from: clongton on 04/18/2011 03:47 pmQuote from: rcoppola on 04/18/2011 03:39 pmThe more we dilute what little funds we have, to companies so far from achieving an operational system, the longer we will have no domestic HSF, LEO capability.Which is exactly the point I was making wrt SpaceX. I really like that company and all they have so far accomplished. But it is reasonably well funded and as long as we don't wean them too soon, they will make it on their own, freeing up that funding to go to other promising companies who would otherwise fall just over the cutoff line.Agreed.Ok, so just curious. SpaceX gets enough to begin in earnest their LAS, which results in another benefit of also allowing them to have propulsive landing capability down the road. Of the remaining participants, which 2 would you say should receive the remaining funds...?I'd actually prefer to see 4 total with the remaining 3 being:Sierra Nevada: DreamChaserBoeing: CST-100USA: to fly Commercial Shuttle until 2017
Quote from: OV-106 on 04/18/2011 04:22 pmI'm surprised very few are saying anything about Orbital. The price tag of the Orbital space plane scares me.
• USA (Commercial STS) - does not seem to meet the criteria of 10x better safety than STS, also seem to be basically asking for money to develop a business plan.
Can Falcon 9 lift the Dream Chaser?
• Paragon (advanced ECLSS hardware). $10mOnly if one of the three spacecraft are going to use it.
Quote from: yg1968 on 04/18/2011 04:23 pmQuote from: OV-106 on 04/18/2011 04:22 pmI'm surprised very few are saying anything about Orbital. The price tag of the Orbital space plane scares me. I was curious, it seems to me that the longer someone has been around, the larger the price tag is. Is there enough data to plot this or anything? Or to find exemptions to this? Its just something that has stuck out to me from time to time, but I haven't really looked to see if its all that consistent.
Quote from: MikeAtkinson on 04/18/2011 04:24 pm • Paragon (advanced ECLSS hardware). $10mOnly if one of the three spacecraft are going to use it.There is also a proposal to place Paragon's ECLSS hardware on the ISS, as an R&D exercise for future BEO spacecraft. The rationale is that Paragon's "simple" hardware will be far more stable than the failure-prone complicated ECLSS systems that NASA designed.So, even if they aren't utilised in CCDev spacecraft, it is still worth investing in them.
Quote from: Chris Bergin on 04/18/2011 03:27 pm… and it's pretty much been proven on the 5-seg static fires that it's even less than what was recalculated to be small vibrations for a few seconds late in first stage.Add in the mitigation and TO is not even an issue at all.Chris I don't want to go off topic here but please allow me this response and then I'll get off it. I believe one of the data points returned by the Ares-IX flight was that in free-flight configuration the TO's were different than the ground-based static fire of the same configuration. It was believed the difference is caused by the constraints of being fastened to a test stand but that was never definitively determined, leaving the issue unresolved from a safety pov. If that issue has been satisfactorily resolved then I am unaware of it and will gladly retract my previous statement.
… and it's pretty much been proven on the 5-seg static fires that it's even less than what was recalculated to be small vibrations for a few seconds late in first stage.Add in the mitigation and TO is not even an issue at all.
