Bigelow Aerospace Update Thread (2)

[beancounter]

I may be wrong, but I seem to recollect that the funding for commercial crew has been reduced in the past.   I think the following is pretty much correct:
2010  $50 million - primarily research funding provided to 5 companies.
2011  $500 million requested, $270 million received.
2012  $850 million requested, $406 million received.

The above funding reductions translate directly to schedule slip.  Congress knows this and despite the shuttle's impending retirement, saw fit to cut the funding despite the requirement to rely on the Russians who now are charging something in the order of $63 million for seats.

It would have been interesting to see what results would have been achieved with full funding as requested.

Note that the crew systems above would / could have been adapted to suit Bigelow therefore it is fair to say that his plans - and he always stated that he was reliant on an externally provided crew transportation system - have also been delayed.

[A_M_Swallow]

I suspect that Bigelow hoped to use the Falcon 5 and its capsule for trips to Sundancer spacestations.  Now the company is having to wait for the Falcon 9 and Dragon capsule.  The extra passengers need a bigger spacestation such as the BA330.

[beancounter]

I suspect that Bigelow hoped to use the Falcon 5 and its capsule for trips to Sundancer spacestations.  Now the company is having to wait for the Falcon 9 and Dragon capsule.  The extra passengers need a bigger spacestation such as the BA330.

Bigelow always had to wait for a crew transportation system.  This was never something that he was going to fund nor did he ever say that he was.  It's just taking lots longer than he anticipated for several reasons.  Funding's not the least of these but there's also been the length of time for NASA to get cracking on accepting that Cx was a failure and that the shuttle was going to retire.  Then they had to convince Congress to provide some funding for commercial crew. 
These things always take longer and cost more.
Even now I expect the latest request to be halved. 

[MrTim]

I may be wrong, but I seem to recollect that the funding for commercial crew has been reduced in the past.   I think the following is pretty much correct:
2010  $50 million - primarily research funding provided to 5 companies.
2011  $500 million requested, $270 million received.
2012  $850 million requested, $406 million received.

The above funding reductions translate directly to schedule slip. {snip}

Where's the "funding reduction" 

Sorry, but $50million -> $270million -> $406million is a rather sharp rise in spending in only 3 years. I'm really not trying to be a jerk here; I simply grew tired of political manipulations years ago and I now try to nudge others into not being manipulated and hoodwinked by political people. When Constellation advocates complained about funding reductions, they at least had a fig-leaf in that both the administration which administers and the congress which funds had both agreed to the program and a general funding line. In this case, however, the administration's proposals for commercial crew funding were in direct contradiction to a bi-partisan congressional mandate i.e. the bigger numbers you cited were never promised. The reason this is important is that "the political class" frequently manipulates the general public (and their core supporters) with such gimmicks and the public needs to train itself to see-through the fog.

If this administration had ever intended to support "commercial" manned spaceflight to the degree those big number suggest, it would have proposed those numbers in addition to the money needed for the Senate's SLS baby. It would have then gone-on to fight for the increase; remember that this administration has nearly tripled the annual borrowing of Bush43 and has gone-to-bat for all the non-NASA pork (in other words, they are hardly bashful about demanding money for everything up to, and including, shrimp on treadmills). Ignore everything any politician says about his priorities and just look at where he spends his political capital and your tax dollars.

[ChefPat]

If you understand Bigelow's goals, then you can understand what he is doing.

Really? So you & you alone of all the people on NASA Spaceflight (including a former Bigelow employee) understands Bigelows goals & plans.
How about you provide your proof of this assertion?

[MP99]

What this illustrates is that BA was not really a commercial venture, but rather a wannabe NASA contractor. All that talk of commercial space platforms was just marketing, to create an image of a commercial venture to make it easier for that NASA contract to appear commercial.

All this is IMHO, of course.

While I agree with some of your earlier statements, I disagree on this point.  This speaks more to the fact that the transports development is stalled, and recent economic downturns have strangled Bigelow's cash flow.  Bigelow does not have the cash to launch prototypes like Galaxy, so this is his only way to stay relevant.
Believe me, the last thing RTB wants is NASA in his sandbox.  This will be a steep learning curve for Bigelow Aerospace.  Government contracts come with accountability and a level of insight that he is not used to.
RTB did not want BEAM when it was first proposed, he had to be persuaded of it value.  BEAM was championed by the NASA engineers who believe in inflatables.

RTB desparately wants a commercial customer, but will settle for NASA work.  18MM (if they deliver anything) will be a good cash infusion.

ISTM SpaceX got a lot of NASA know-how as part of COTS. I wonder the extent to which their commercial customers stick with them because F9 is relatively new, but they think the NASA input might result in greater reliability in the end than would have happened otherwise?

That "steep learning curve" for BA similarly sounds like it might be really good for them in the long term. Otherwise, do they really have the discipline to build space stations off their own bat?

Might true commercial customers be more willing to buy in once BA have achieved approval from NASA to dock to ISS?

cheers, Martin

[Robotbeat]

I may be wrong, but I seem to recollect that the funding for commercial crew has been reduced in the past.   I think the following is pretty much correct:
2010  $50 million - primarily research funding provided to 5 companies.
2011  $500 million requested, $270 million received.
2012  $850 million requested, $406 million received.

The above funding reductions translate directly to schedule slip. {snip}

Where's the "funding reduction" 

Sorry, but $50million -> $270million -> $406million is a rather sharp rise in spending in only 3 years. I'm really not trying to be a jerk here; I simply grew tired of political manipulations years ago and I now try to nudge others into not being manipulated and hoodwinked by political people. When Constellation advocates complained about funding reductions, they at least had a fig-leaf in that both the administration which administers and the congress which funds had both agreed to the program and a general funding line. In this case, however, the administration's proposals for commercial crew funding were in direct contradiction to a bi-partisan congressional mandate i.e. the bigger numbers you cited were never promised. The reason this is important is that "the political class" frequently manipulates the general public (and their core supporters) with such gimmicks and the public needs to train itself to see-through the fog.

If this administration had ever intended to support "commercial" manned spaceflight to the degree those big number suggest, it would have proposed those numbers in addition to the money needed for the Senate's SLS baby. It would have then gone-on to fight for the increase; remember that this administration has nearly tripled the annual borrowing of Bush43 and has gone-to-bat for all the non-NASA pork (in other words, they are hardly bashful about demanding money for everything up to, and including, shrimp on treadmills). Ignore everything any politician says about his priorities and just look at where he spends his political capital and your tax dollars.

Because it costs a lot to do this. If commercial crew gets less funding than requested, it will take longer, obviously.

[joek]

Unfortunately, buying Soyuz seats was and is not practice for a Bigelow platform; the reality is that entire Soyuzes would have to be dedicated for a Bigelow mission, and at no time in the last 15 years have entire Soyuzes been available for Bigelow. Therefore, the premise that Bigelow was closer to commercial passenger access 15 years ago than today is flawed.

Bigelow appears to have thought otherwise; from Exclusive: Rules Set for $50 Million 'America's Space Prize', Space.com, Nov 2004

"Two years ago I felt comfortable because of conversations that we had with the Russians that we could buy all the Soyuz [spacecraft] we want. In the last two years things have changed dramatically," Bigelow said. NASA's desperate need for the Soyuz following the Columbia accident, Bigelow said, has led to the United States government to pay what no private sector company can afford to pay.

[RanulfC]

What this illustrates is that BA was not really a commercial venture, but rather a wannabe NASA contractor. All that talk of commercial space platforms was just marketing, to create an image of a commercial venture to make it easier for that NASA contract to appear commercial.

All this is IMHO, of course.

While I agree with some of your earlier statements, I disagree on this point.  This speaks more to the fact that the transports development is stalled, and recent economic downturns have strangled Bigelow's cash flow.  Bigelow does not have the cash to launch prototypes like Galaxy, so this is his only way to stay relevant.
Believe me, the last thing RTB wants is NASA in his sandbox.  This will be a steep learning curve for Bigelow Aerospace.  Government contracts come with accountability and a level of insight that he is not used to.
RTB did not want BEAM when it was first proposed, he had to be persuaded of it value.  BEAM was championed by the NASA engineers who believe in inflatables.

RTB desparately wants a commercial customer, but will settle for NASA work.  18MM (if they deliver anything) will be a good cash infusion.

A couple of data points are in order here.

First, the afore-mentioned TransHAB bid of ~1999, before your time. Clearly, Bob Bigelow was interested in a large NASA contract right off the bat.

WHAT "TransHab" bid? TransHab was a "NASA" project from strart to finish. the "finish" being when it was line item cancled and documentation archived (it was ordered destroyed IIRC) because a certain Congress-critter felt it was "threatening" to be usable for Lunar or Mars missions and he felt it was NOT applicable to HIS stated goals for NASA which did NOT include any of that "BEO-Nonsense"

The TransHab data AND a good portion of the NASA folks that worked on it were then obtained/hired by Bigelow in order to design and build a version of TransHab for use in a commercial space station. The only thing Bigelow had to "do" with TransHab was saving it from a political trash-canning.

Secondly, you probably noticed that Bob often invited NASA personnel to his facility to show them his mockups; that is called "marketing". And he hired Mike Gold in DC to help with that effort.

He invited a LOT of folks to see the Mock-Ups, and part of Mike Gold's "job" was to shop the idea around to various foriegn governments via contacts in DC. You're quite right it IS called "marketing" and probably the biggest problem with the idea is that no one can find any evidence that anyone OTHER than NASA was interested in the first place.
(But then again NASA wasn't "allowed" to be "officially" interested either until very recently)

If I had to bet, I would bet that 90% of BA marketing was aimed at NASA, with the remaining 10% being low level efforts to find commercial or other customers.

You'd probably lose that bet though because it was clear that NASA was not (really "could not") be "interested" in a major contract and that even getting the interest of any of the other ISS partners was going to be difficult at best because of the political restriction on TransHab work.

Most every line of inquiry came down to the same basic question, "How would the customer get to the station" and it's a question Bigelow was unable to answer despite a number of efforts.

Last note: there is an implied NASA requirement for pressurized volume for BEO missions that BA could meet. No other qualified customer really has a requirement for large amounts of pressurized volume.

No there have been a couple of cases made for non-government, non-ISS (specifically) need for on-orbit pressurized space. There are a number of companies and process that would much rather have a different "place" to do on-orbit work in microgravity than the ISS due to a high number of experiment/process ruining incidents on-board. Dragon-Lab is aimed at meeting the needs of some of these, but there is also a lot of industrial interest in man-visited rather than man-tended larger areas for more extensive work. (The 'funny' thing is you are hearing more about this at "small-sat" type events because there is pressure to move anything larger than "small-sat" size experiments to the ISS, even though the fact that it is manned is a major factor in NOT directing those experiments there!)

There is also commercial space tourism though that's pretty far down on the list. The studies have shown that given a "choice" people would much PREFER to go to a "non-government, non-ISS" station for a great variety of reasons.

Likewise for BA.  Lack of suitable transport to his potential habitats has stalled his efforts.

This begs the question as to WHEN did it ever appear that there would be suitable transport any time soon for BA? What is different now than when BA started?  If the answer is: things are actually looking better now for commercial transport than back in 1998, isn't that an indication that the current "stall" isn't really the problem for commercial operations?

Back when there was the possibility Bigelow could buy Soyuz seats without having to compete with NASA.

Unfortunately, buying Soyuz seats was and is not practice for a Bigelow platform; the reality is that entire Soyuzes would have to be dedicated for a Bigelow mission, and at no time in the last 15 years have entire Soyuzes been available for Bigelow. Therefore, the premise that Bigelow was closer to commercial passenger access 15 years ago than today is flawed.

15 years ago the Russians were MUCH more willing to discuss selling seats on Soyuz because we had the Shuttles up and running and they were only a "secondary" provider for access. That has changed drastically in the mean time. 15 years ago they discussed building MORE Soyuz capsules and launching "dedicated" commercial flights, that is not longer even a consideration.

I am sure that I will get many responses to my premise, but it would be very interesting to see how many responses do not contain actual information.

Like yours? I mean this information is AVAILABLE and easy to access, but you seem to be making your responses up on the fly to match your argument...

The perfect example would be:

Bigelow appears to have thought otherwise; from Exclusive: Rules Set for $50 Million 'America's Space Prize', Space.com, Nov 2004

"Two years ago I felt comfortable because of conversations that we had with the Russians that we could buy all the Soyuz [spacecraft] we want. In the last two years things have changed dramatically," Bigelow said. NASA's desperate need for the Soyuz following the Columbia accident, Bigelow said, has led to the United States government to pay what no private sector company can afford to pay.

It was the stated fact and purpose of the "American Space Prize" to fund an American PRIVATE space access vehicle. It was after that failed to get any serious contenders that Bigelow began scalling back his operations because it was pretty clear that "commercial" access wasn't going to be quick or easy. After that he began to shop around to the various aerospace companies seemingly with the hope of helping along an actual "commercial" access vehicle, but he still avoided attaching his operations to a government funded vehicle. (The closest he came was "backing" LM's "Orion-Light" as a possible commercial vehicle when it looked like Orion would be cancled with the rest of the Constellation system. When it wasn't and Orion was put back to work, Orion-Light went away and Bigelow went back to looking)

Note that "I" had/have a lot of issues with the entire ASP and the way it was laid out. Under the strict interpretation of the rules Space-X would not qualify and neither would SNC due to the monies they've gotten from NASA, and while Space-X MIGHT have "qualifed" back then it was pretty clear they were going to have to get SOME NASA contracts or funding to develop the Falcon-9.

He seems to be resigned to having to deal with a launcher that is somewhat "supported-or-developed" by government funding rather than a "strict" commercial vehicle which is what he originally wanted but I don't see that he's going to have a choice in the matter.

Randy

[sanman]

Here's a news article I found, if it's not already been posted:

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/space/stories/nasa-deal-may-put-inflatable-private-module-on-space-station

[ChefPat]

Here's a news article I found, if it's not already been posted:

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/space/stories/nasa-deal-may-put-inflatable-private-module-on-space-station

That's confirmation that SpaceX will be transporting BEAM up to the station.

[Danderman]

If you understand Bigelow's goals, then you can understand what he is doing.

Really? So you & you alone of all the people on NASA Spaceflight (including a former Bigelow employee) understands Bigelows goals & plans.
How about you provide your proof of this assertion?

Given that I was just about the only one who maintained through the years that what Bigelow was really about was securing NASA contracts, rather than operating a commercial space platform, actual reality would be the best proof.

Note that I am not saying that Bigelow would not like to operate a commercial platform, but the market isn't there for it at current price points. NASA is the only qualified customer for BA at this time, and for the foreseeable future. I can't tell you about the unforseeable future.

BTW, I have been interacting with BA since before the company actually existed. I go back to the days when they were in the "Funtastic" building, or whatever the building with the bubble in front was called.  Back when everyone HAD to use Macs for computers.

[JMS]

That's confirmation that SpaceX will be transporting BEAM up to the station.

"Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) or Orbital Sciences Corp."

[SpacexULA]

That's confirmation that SpaceX will be transporting BEAM up to the station.

"Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) or Orbital Sciences Corp."

Orbital would have to do a new spacecraft to carry BEAM to ISS, likely something based off the STAR platform and Cygnus.  Would love to see them do it.

So if SpaceX takes BEAM to ISS we get to see an extended trunk Dragon at ISS.

If Orbital takes BEAM to ISS, we get to see what will effectively be a ISS rated tug for delivering module sized objects to ISS.

I love it when we get Win-Win-Win Situations

[ChefPat]

If you understand Bigelow's goals, then you can understand what he is doing.

Really? So you & you alone of all the people on NASA Spaceflight (including a former Bigelow employee) understands Bigelows goals & plans.
How about you provide your proof of this assertion?

Given that I was just about the only one who maintained through the years that what Bigelow was really about was securing NASA contracts, rather than operating a commercial space platform, actual reality would be the best proof.

Note that I am not saying that Bigelow would not like to operate a commercial platform, but the market isn't there for it at current price points. NASA is the only qualified customer for BA at this time, and for the foreseeable future. I can't tell you about the unforseeable future.

BTW, I have been interacting with BA since before the company actually existed. I go back to the days when they were in the "Funtastic" building, or whatever the building with the bubble in front was called.  Back when everyone HAD to use Macs for computers.

In other words, you got nothin & you're just poting opinion & claiming it's fact.

[Danderman]

If you understand Bigelow's goals, then you can understand what he is doing.

Really? So you & you alone of all the people on NASA Spaceflight (including a former Bigelow employee) understands Bigelows goals & plans.
How about you provide your proof of this assertion?

Given that I was just about the only one who maintained through the years that what Bigelow was really about was securing NASA contracts, rather than operating a commercial space platform, actual reality would be the best proof.

Note that I am not saying that Bigelow would not like to operate a commercial platform, but the market isn't there for it at current price points. NASA is the only qualified customer for BA at this time, and for the foreseeable future. I can't tell you about the unforseeable future.

BTW, I have been interacting with BA since before the company actually existed. I go back to the days when they were in the "Funtastic" building, or whatever the building with the bubble in front was called.  Back when everyone HAD to use Macs for computers.

In other words, you got nothin & you're just poting opinion & claiming it's fact.

My opinion is that Bigelow is seeking NASA contracts. The facts are that Bigelow just obtained a NASA contract.

[sanman]

Orbital would have to do a new spacecraft to carry BEAM to ISS, likely something based off the STAR platform and Cygnus.  Would love to see them do it.

So if SpaceX takes BEAM to ISS we get to see an extended trunk Dragon at ISS.

If Orbital takes BEAM to ISS, we get to see what will effectively be a ISS rated tug for delivering module sized objects to ISS.

I love it when we get Win-Win-Win Situations

So are you saying that either SpaceX or OSC would have to field something new in order to fulfill this delivery? In which case, how do they know it will work? I thought everything visiting ISS has to be pre-tested in advance, so as not to endanger the station. (Like what we saw on the very first Dragon mission to ISS, doing all those flybys, etc)

[SpacexULA]

My opinion is that Bigelow is seeking NASA contracts. The facts are that Bigelow just obtained a NASA contract.

Thought this was an Update thread, not a Discussion thread. 

Chris the prior Bigelow thread was ended at 68, can we end this one and do a more serious update and discussion thread for Bigelow now that they have a real contract?

[Chris Bergin]

I'll do a short article and start a thread with it.

[Chris Bergin]

Thread 3:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=30850.0

Latest article:
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2013/01/expanding-on-bigelows-inflatable-module-iss/