LIVE: CCDev-2 Awards and Decision Discussion - April 18

[rcoppola]

I have a potentially very bad idea...but hey, it's been a long day.
Seems like Orion will be the only design which uses the throw away Pull LAS and all the inefficiencies and costs that implies. But if Orion can be designed as it was intended as a BEO spacecraft, couldn't we do away with the LAS, launch it unmanned and then send up the DreamChaser, Dragon or CST to dock with it and the EDS, load the crew, some additional supplies and off you go?

Oh boy their are so many holes in that...

Swiss Cheese style 

Thank you for that. A good laugh after a long day..

[vt_hokie]

Boeing has a flight-tested "reusable runway landing shuttle" right now.  I'm curious as to why the X-37B couldn't be adapted for crew.

It was not designed for people, and you cannot reverse engineer that capacity in.  X-37 is not for crew.

But Boeing dos have a reusable manned spacecraft right now, too bad it did not receive any CCDEV funding.

Boeing did propose an X-37 based transport back in the OSP days:

http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2003/q2/nr_030418s.html

[pathfinder_01]

I have a potentially very bad idea...but hey, it's been a long day.
Seems like Orion will be the only design which uses the throw away Pull LAS and all the inefficiencies and costs that implies. But if Orion can be designed as it was intended as a BEO spacecraft, couldn't we do away with the LAS, launch it unmanned and then send up the DreamChaser, Dragon or CST to dock with it and the EDS, load the crew, some additional supplies and off you go?

Oh boy their are so many holes in that...

I think there is a thread on this already. In theory if Orion was lifted unmanned to the ISS(or another station) you could then use the crew tranports to both exchange ISS crew and provide a crew for Orion. A BEO crew for Orion is 2-4. The LEO tranports all hold 7. The ISS only needs 3-4 people. That leaves 2-3 seats for Orion. 

[Robotbeat]

Who would do recovery and refurbishment and operations of CST-100?

That is for Boeing to determine

Is it likely for United Space Alliance to get any of this?

Up to Boeing

It appears Boeing has decided something like that:
http://boeing.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=1710
"Boeing [NYSE: BA] has been selected for the second round of NASA’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program. Under a $92.3 million CCDev-2 contract, the company will further mitigate program risk and mature the system design of its Crew Space Transportation (CST)-100 spacecraft.
...
Most of the work will be located at Boeing sites at Kennedy Space Center, Fla.; Houston; Huntington Beach, Calif.; and Huntsville, Ala. Key suppliers include Bigelow Aerospace, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, Airborne Systems, ILC Dover, Spincraft, United Space Alliance and the ARES Corporation."



That's at least some good news for the folks at USA, even though their CSTS proposal was not selected.

[KEdward5]

Here's my article on it all:

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/04/four-companies-win-nasas-ccdev-2-awards/

That's a very good one stop article. I also forgot all about the 2007 article about ULA and Dream Chaser you linked up!

[Chris Bergin]

Here's my article on it all:

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/04/four-companies-win-nasas-ccdev-2-awards/

That's a very good one stop article. I also forgot all about the 2007 article about ULA and Dream Chaser you linked up!

Thanking you!

[Ronsmytheiii]

Here's my article on it all:

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/04/four-companies-win-nasas-ccdev-2-awards/

That's a very good one stop article. I also forgot all about the 2007 article about ULA and Dream Chaser you linked up!

Thanking you!

Chris even has an article from way back in 2005:

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2005/11/spacedev-banking-on-dream-chaser/

Then again, was the image used on the latest article of Dream chaser on Atlas V from the space act agreement?

[Robotbeat]

Here's my article on it all:

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/04/four-companies-win-nasas-ccdev-2-awards/

That's a very good one stop article. I also forgot all about the 2007 article about ULA and Dream Chaser you linked up!

Thanking you!

Yes, good article!

[DARPA-86]

Boeing has a flight-tested "reusable runway landing shuttle" right now.  I'm curious as to why the X-37B couldn't be adapted for crew.

It was not designed for people, and you cannot reverse engineer that capacity in.  X-37 is not for crew.

But Boeing dos have a reusable manned spacecraft right now, too bad it did not receive any CCDEV funding.

Boeing did propose an X-37 based transport back in the OSP days:

http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2003/q2/nr_030418s.html

Good job on finding the old press release!  It mentions $ 45 million award for a 16 month next stage of development phase.

There was limited funds available under this round of CCDev but with the maturation of systems and techniques under X-37B if they had $ 90 million a year for the next 3-5 years makes you wonder if they could bring something to furition?

Probably Boeing made the business decision to advance CST-100 as their entrant into the race because the end product already has one major partner/customer in Bieglow.

[punder]

Boeing has a flight-tested "reusable runway landing shuttle" right now.  I'm curious as to why the X-37B couldn't be adapted for crew.

It was not designed for people, and you cannot reverse engineer that capacity in.  X-37 is not for crew.

But Boeing dos have a reusable manned spacecraft right now, too bad it did not receive any CCDEV funding.

Boeing did propose an X-37 based transport back in the OSP days:

http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2003/q2/nr_030418s.html

Good job on finding the old press release!  It mentions $ 45 million award for a 16 month next stage of development phase.

There was limited funds available under this round of CCDev but with the maturation of systems and techniques under X-37B if they had $ 90 million a year for the next 3-5 years makes you wonder if they could bring something to furition?

Probably Boeing made the business decision to advance CST-100 as their entrant into the race because the end product already has one major partner/customer in Bieglow.

I dunno, if you have already flown (twice) a reusable winged spacecraft that can carry a payload into orbit, stay on-orbit for several months, maneuver in orbit, and land autonomously, you de facto have a pretty huge head start, even if you have to scale up the vehicle and add some life support.  (And I think the X-37B is actually a scaled-up version of a previous design, no?)

[MP99]

Obviously no spacecraft provided wants it.

Proof?  Data?  Tangible evidence that nobody would fly anything on Liberty?  Or just more anti-ATK arm-waving?

From page 16:
http://procurement.ksc.nasa.gov/documents/SelectionStatement-Final_Signed.pdf
"However, a significant weakness [with ATK's proposal] was the lack of a linkage to any spacecraft. ATK did not have any commitments, Memoranda of Understanding, or any partnership details from any spacecraft developer, nor did any spacecraft developer include the Liberty vehicle in their baseline CTS configurations."

To be fair, NASA has been in a black-out for some time with regards to CCDev-2 and Liberty was a relatively late entry.  So, in other words, the story may be different today.  As I said, the ball is in ATK's court now but I think people need to throttle back on being anti-ATK or make broad assumptions like above. 

In addition, Liberty rated very high on the Source Selection criteria.  In fact so did Orbital.  So as long as people are wanting to "brag" about what they posted in the other thread, look at the top 5 in the source selection and look at my list. 

Perhaps of more relevance, the paragraph following the page 16 extract above:-

Also, ATK did not provide sufficient details to assess launch vehicle environments on their proposed upper stage or at the crewed spacecraft interface. These environments include areas like coupled loads, staging environments and abort scenarios. Although ATK provided a solid technical approach, their details on environments did not provide me with enough confidence in accelerating this launch vehicle for use with a variety of different crewed spacecraft.

Assumption: ATK doesn't have those figures to provide, either to NASA or to any s/c developers.

I suspect this is sufficient reason for s/c developers to at least avoid Liberty until those figures become available.

cheers, Martin

[Downix]

If Liberty is dead, and I think it would be more accurate to say it "ain't looking great", then that also dooms the Ares I ML - several hundred million dollars worth. UNLESS something can be done with past Block 0 (that goes on a Shuttle ML) SLS.

ULA proposed using it for manned Atlas launches.

[Jim]

I dunno, if you have already flown (twice) a reusable winged spacecraft that can carry a payload into orbit, stay on-orbit for several months, maneuver in orbit, and land autonomously, you de facto have a pretty huge head start, even if you have to scale up the vehicle and add some life support.  (And I think the X-37B is actually a scaled-up version of a previous design, no?)

No and no.

It was not designed to be manned

[mike robel]

X-40 was the "sub-scale" test bed Boeing used in developing the X-37.

[Chris Bergin]

Here's my article on it all:

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/04/four-companies-win-nasas-ccdev-2-awards/

That's a very good one stop article. I also forgot all about the 2007 article about ULA and Dream Chaser you linked up!

Thanking you!

Chris even has an article from way back in 2005:

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2005/11/spacedev-banking-on-dream-chaser/

Then again, was the image used on the latest article of Dream chaser on Atlas V from the space act agreement?

Oh yeah! And as far as images, the one on the Atlas V on the pad is from the SAA. The images used in the 2007 article was from a ULA presentation.

Here's my article on it all:

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/04/four-companies-win-nasas-ccdev-2-awards/

That's a very good one stop article. I also forgot all about the 2007 article about ULA and Dream Chaser you linked up!

Thanking you!

Yes, good article!

Thanks Chris

[M_Puckett]

Sh#t just got real!

Bezos announcess fully-reusable TSTO!

http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=28803

[Namechange User]

Who would do recovery and refurbishment and operations of CST-100?

That is for Boeing to determine

Is it likely for United Space Alliance to get any of this?

Up to Boeing

It appears Boeing has decided something like that:
http://boeing.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=1710
"Boeing [NYSE: BA] has been selected for the second round of NASA’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program. Under a $92.3 million CCDev-2 contract, the company will further mitigate program risk and mature the system design of its Crew Space Transportation (CST)-100 spacecraft.
...
Most of the work will be located at Boeing sites at Kennedy Space Center, Fla.; Houston; Huntington Beach, Calif.; and Huntsville, Ala. Key suppliers include Bigelow Aerospace, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, Airborne Systems, ILC Dover, Spincraft, United Space Alliance and the ARES Corporation."



That's at least some good news for the folks at USA, even though their CSTS proposal was not selected.

USA is working with Boeing on the CST-100.  USA was the lead on the CSTS but by no means the only company involved. 

USA is also working with SNC on the DreamChaser as well as a number of other companies and concepts.

[Namechange User]

Obviously no spacecraft provided wants it.

Proof?  Data?  Tangible evidence that nobody would fly anything on Liberty?  Or just more anti-ATK arm-waving?

From page 16:
http://procurement.ksc.nasa.gov/documents/SelectionStatement-Final_Signed.pdf
"However, a significant weakness [with ATK's proposal] was the lack of a linkage to any spacecraft. ATK did not have any commitments, Memoranda of Understanding, or any partnership details from any spacecraft developer, nor did any spacecraft developer include the Liberty vehicle in their baseline CTS configurations."

To be fair, NASA has been in a black-out for some time with regards to CCDev-2 and Liberty was a relatively late entry.  So, in other words, the story may be different today.  As I said, the ball is in ATK's court now but I think people need to throttle back on being anti-ATK or make broad assumptions like above. 

In addition, Liberty rated very high on the Source Selection criteria.  In fact so did Orbital.  So as long as people are wanting to "brag" about what they posted in the other thread, look at the top 5 in the source selection and look at my list. 

Perhaps of more relevance, the paragraph following the page 16 extract above:-

Also, ATK did not provide sufficient details to assess launch vehicle environments on their proposed upper stage or at the crewed spacecraft interface. These environments include areas like coupled loads, staging environments and abort scenarios. Although ATK provided a solid technical approach, their details on environments did not provide me with enough confidence in accelerating this launch vehicle for use with a variety of different crewed spacecraft.

Assumption: ATK doesn't have those figures to provide, either to NASA or to any s/c developers.

I suspect this is sufficient reason for s/c developers to at least avoid Liberty until those figures become available.

cheers, Martin

If I'm being honest, that paragraph you quote sounds like an "out" to me and justification looking for a reason. 

Liberty is essentially a very-near Ares I, that NASA insisted was the best rocket ever.  NASA obviously invested quite a bit of money in that design and claimed to have a handle on what it believed the loads to be in order to design Orion (even though it was obviously being jerked around).  So, "not knowing" or not having "sufficient details" sounds strange to me. 

[Namechange User]

Sh#t just got real!

Bezos announcess fully-reusable TSTO!

http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=28803

Not really.  See the "patent" he requested. 

[Jim]

Ariane core is not the same as A1US