CCDev to CCiCAP to CCtCAP Discussion Thread

[brokndodge]

Does anyone have a link to the Fox Business News interview with Elon Musk? I've only been able to find the first 7 minutes of the interview:  http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/3790635789001/elon-musk-on-the-next-step-for-spacex-nevada-gigafactory/#sp=show-clips

[Brovane]

I don't really understand the anti-Boeing negativity, and I really like Dream Chaster.

CST-100 is a sound design that can do the job it was designed for. That's whats needed. Maybe I am not jaded enough, but I am excited about any human carrying spacecraft.

I think maybe it's at a higher level that I have a problem, and this is just a symptom of NASA's current mission.  We have no less than three separate manned vehicles under development now, and not a single one will be pushing the envelope in terms of technology or truly making spaceflight more routine.  Gone are the days of visionary projects like NASP and VentureStar.  Ill conceived as they may have been, they had the goal of pushing boundaries and advancing the state of the art. 

Of the three vehicles that I'll likely live to see fly in my lifetime, only the SpaceX Dragon gives me any level of excitement and optimism over its potential to evolve and play a part in opening up the frontier.

What is going to make spaceflight routine is launch vehicles not the actual spacecraft.  The DragonV2 Capsule paired with a Falcon9R has the greatest chance of making spaceflight routine.  I don't know about you but for me having a Falcon 9 1st stage coming back down and landing would be pushing boundaries. 

[brokndodge]

What would make F9 v1.1 a proven vehicle?  Would it be 10 flight 20 flights 30 flights?

One flight more than however many they've flown at that point in time, it appears.

Yeah isn't it amazing how the bar always keeps shifting when SpaceX has another success. 

Oh, please. You can't seriously be telling me F9 v1.1 and Atlas are near the same level of reliability and maturity. One has 49 launches under its belt, the other has 7. So far, F9 is off to a good start, but it's not the strength of the SpaceX CCtCAP proposal. The strength is the Dragon and its flight heritage. A variant of the vehicle that will become Dragon V2 has already flown several times, whereas the competition has flown their proposed vehicle exactly zero times.

Just as NASA is likely to view F9 as the more riskier of the two vehicles, it's likely to view Dragon as less risky than other proposals. Doesn't mean these SpaceX-fanboi-like, knee-jerk reactions are in order just because someone dared to say F9 v1.1 has not yet proven itself to be the most reliable vehicle this side of the known universe.

Technically, since Atlas V will be getting new engines for CCtCap then it [new man rated Altas V] has not yet flown even once. 

[Brovane]

Oh, please. You can't seriously be telling me F9 v1.1 and Atlas are near the same level of reliability and maturity. One has 49 launches under its belt, the other has 7. So far, F9 is off to a good start, but it's not the strength of the SpaceX CCtCAP proposal. The strength is the Dragon and its flight heritage. A variant of the vehicle that will become Dragon V2 has already flown several times, whereas the competition has flown their proposed vehicle exactly zero times.

Just as NASA is likely to view F9 as the more riskier of the two vehicles, it's likely to view Dragon as less risky than other proposals. Doesn't mean these SpaceX-fanboi-like, knee-jerk reactions are in order just because someone dared to say F9 v1.1 has not yet proven itself to be the most reliable vehicle this side of the known universe.

No but both the Atlas-V and Falcon 9v1.1 both meet the reliability criteria that NASA was looking for, even if the Atlas-V has a longer history.  You are also leaving out a huge strength for the Falcon 9 versus the Atlas-V, cost.  What is a complete launch cost for the Atlas-V?  I have seen figures of around $200+ Million and the rocket still needs to be human rated.  The Falcon 9v1.1 has a launch cost of 61.2 Million.  This is what I believe the most significant factor in the difference in pricing we are seeing between Boeing and SpaceX.   

[ugordan]

Technically, since Atlas V will be getting new engines for CCtCap then it [new man rated Altas V] has not yet flown even once. 

If you're talking about the dual-engine Centaur, you do have a point. Although, one could argue that would be reintroducing a configuration that already existed on an earlier Atlas and for purposes of crew safety and criticality of abort (due to atmospheric flight), the boost stage is more critical. As far as I know, the Atlas boost stage will be the same as before.

[ugordan]

You are also leaving out a huge strength for the Falcon 9 versus the Atlas-V, cost. 

Yes, but as NASA likes to say, "safety first" so cost would be a secondary consideration in their mind. IMHO, at least. In any case, the original point I was making is about LV reliability statistics.

[yg1968]

I give the odds of at least one of them succeeding as being higher than the odds of Bigelow ever getting a space station built for them to go to...

~Jon

The odds of at least one of SpaceX or Boeing succeeding at this point (maybe later but succeeding) are extremely high.  You effectively said Bigelow is not a sure bet.  Which doesn't exactly seem like going out on a limb to me...

I was trying to be nice. Bigelow has a long way to go before they have either the technology or the engineering organization capable of doing what he wants to do. They might make it, but I only give them a little higher odds than I do SNC for making Dreamchaser work without a CCtCap award.

~Jon

Bigelow's habitats seems to be part of NASA's forward plans. DC isn't part of NASA's forward plans unless it wins a CRS2 contract.

[yg1968]

You are also leaving out a huge strength for the Falcon 9 versus the Atlas-V, cost. 

Yes, but as NASA likes to say, "safety first" so cost would be a secondary consideration in their mind. IMHO, at least. In any case, the original point I was making is about LV reliability statistics.

Price was actually ranked before safety according to the selection criteria in the RFP. But safety is a precondition to certification.

[ChrisWilson68]

I have trouble getting excited over reestablishing the routine access to LEO that I grew up with in the 1980's and 1990's, except with smaller craft and fewer people. That seems to be the extent of the ambition of the CST-100. Progress is doing things that haven't been done before, like propulsive landing and rapid reusability. That's not to say that new is automatically better, but it's definitely more satisfying.

Was the Model T not progress?  There were lots of cars before the Model T, but they didn't make much of an impact.  The Model T changed the world because it was cheap enough to scale up.

I'm excited by commercial crew because it's all about moving toward a Model T.

[seanpg71]

I don't really understand the anti-Boeing negativity, and I really like Dream Chaster.

CST-100 is a sound design that can do the job it was designed for. That's whats needed. Maybe I am not jaded enough, but I am excited about any human carrying spacecraft.
...

I work in Higher Ed IT.  Occasionally we have to do an RFP for something like a pay-for-print system or a ticketing system.

We'd expect bids on those from various companies that create those sorts of software packages and market them to other similar institutions, with some added costs for the specific support model or any customizations that we'd want.

This situation feels a bit like if Boeing responding to our RFP and saying "Yeah - We'd be happy to write you a ticketing system to your specs, we make custom software all the time and have great people. - Granted, it'll cost us twice as much but that's just because you haven't paid us to start work yet."

Their proposed solution could be quite nice, and they may indeed be quite skilled at writing custom software and Boeing sure is a big name.  But the goal of our RFP was to find some cheap commercial solution we could buy into.  Not to just create expensive one-off custom software.

This Commercial Crew award was never going to be a totally off-the-shelf, because there isn't an existing market.  But Boeing seems especially uninterested in having any sort of goal with CST-100 at all other than just building a one-off design for the government and making money.  And if that's the direction we wanted to go with this, we should have just given them a cost plus contract to design a capsule for us years ago instead of messing around with various programs to spur commercial growth.

[ChrisWilson68]

I think the biggest loser in all of this is ULA.  NASA doing a very deep investigation into Falcon 9 and certifying it to fly NASA astronauts makes any claim that Falcon 9 isn't reliable enough for national security payloads look so silly that it's untennable.

And once Falcon 9 is considered reliable enough for national security payloads, it's not long before Falcon Heavy also has to be considered reliable enough, given the commonality between the two.

If NASA is booking flights for astronauts on Falcon 9 starting in 2017, what justification is there for the Air Force to say it's not safe enough for any launch after 2017?

The CCtCap award killed ULA.

[Zed_Noir]

Technically, since Atlas V will be getting new engines for CCtCap then it [new man rated Altas V] has not yet flown even once. 

If you're talking about the dual-engine Centaur, you do have a point. Although, one could argue that would be reintroducing a configuration that already existed on an earlier Atlas and for purposes of crew safety and criticality of abort (due to atmospheric flight), the boost stage is more critical. As far as I know, the Atlas boost stage will be the same as before.

In order to achieve LEO, the Atlas upper stage have to work.

AFAIK, all Atlas V have fly only with the SEC version Centaur. The plumbing, avionics and actuators are totally different than the older DEC versions. So we really don't know how it will perform until the first DEC goes up. 

By the way SpaceX have hot-tested 50 Merlin engine in actual flown missions this year. Just how many RD-180 have flown in total?

[brokndodge]

Technically, since Atlas V will be getting new engines for CCtCap then it [new man rated Altas V] has not yet flown even once. 

If you're talking about the dual-engine Centaur, you do have a point. Although, one could argue that would be reintroducing a configuration that already existed on an earlier Atlas and for purposes of crew safety and criticality of abort (due to atmospheric flight), the boost stage is more critical. As far as I know, the Atlas boost stage will be the same as before.

I was referring to the RD-180.  The article linked to below [1] indicates that the new BE-4 engine is intended to replace the RD-180.  While it doesn't specifically state so.  Due to the vague information from that article I went looking for the actual press release [2].  "The BE-4 is a liquid oxygen, liquefied natural gas (LNG) rocket engine that delivers 550,000-lbf of thrust at sea level. Two BE-4s will power each ULA booster, providing 1,100,000-lbf thrust at liftoff."  There isn't specific mention of first stage or second stage.  Still too vague to determine exactly what this new engine is being built for. 

Edit: Found the real poop on this new engine in a FAQ [3] from the press release.

Q. Does the BE-4 replace the RD-180 engine that is imported through RD AMROSS?
A. The BE-4 is not a direct replacement for the RD-180 that powers ULA’s Atlas V rocket, however two
BE-4s are expected to provide the engine thrust for the next generation ULA vehicles. The details
related to ULA’s next generation vehicles – which will maintain the key heritage components of ULA’s
Atlas and Delta rockets that provide world class mission assurance and reliability – will be announced at
a later date.

[1] http://www.cnet.com/news/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-to-develop-rocket-engine-for-boeing-and-lockheed-martin/
[2] http://www.blueorigin.com/media/press_release/united-launch-alliance-and-blue-origin-announce-partnership-to-develop-new
[3] https://d1ljm9hc65qhyd.cloudfront.net/press-releases/2014-09-17/ULA-Blue-Origin-FAQ.pdf

[jongoff]

I give the odds of at least one of them succeeding as being higher than the odds of Bigelow ever getting a space station built for them to go to...

~Jon

The odds of at least one of SpaceX or Boeing succeeding at this point (maybe later but succeeding) are extremely high.  You effectively said Bigelow is not a sure bet.  Which doesn't exactly seem like going out on a limb to me...

I was trying to be nice. Bigelow has a long way to go before they have either the technology or the engineering organization capable of doing what he wants to do. They might make it, but I only give them a little higher odds than I do SNC for making Dreamchaser work without a CCtCap award.

~Jon

Bigelow's habitats seems to be part of NASA's forward plans. DC isn't part of NASA's forward plans unless it wins a CRS2 contract.

No, inflatable structures are part of their notional forward plans. Bigelow isn't the only developer in this field that does inflatable habitats. There's also ILC Dover and Thin Red Line Aerospace. I still stand behind my original statement. I think they're both long-shots, but at least SNC has demonstrated it has a solid engineering culture with a team with extensive experience building flight hardware. Bigelow lost most of its flight hardware team after Genesis 1 and 2. They're rebuilding it with BEAM, but we haven't seen yet if the underlying engineering culture issues there have been solved. I hope he does, because SpaceX, Boeing, and others like SNC could all use additional, non-ISS destinations. I'm just not holding my breath and wouldn't be surprised if someone else beat them to the punch at the rate things have been going.

~Jon

[vt_hokie]

...This Commercial Crew award was never going to be a totally off-the-shelf, because there isn't an existing market.  But Boeing seems especially uninterested in having any sort of goal with CST-100 at all other than just building a one-off design for the government and making money.  And if that's the direction we wanted to go with this, we should have just given them a cost plus contract to design a capsule for us years ago instead of messing around with various programs to spur commercial growth.

I nominate this for post of the day!  I have to ask, if this was the inevitable outcome, what was the point of funding DC at all with our tax dollars, if it provided no incentive for Boeing to streamline and cut costs?

[abaddon]

I nominate this for post of the day!  I have to ask, if this was the inevitable outcome, what was the point of funding DC at all with our tax dollars, if it provided no incentive for Boeing to streamline and cut costs?

What if Boeing and SpaceX had flubbed on their CCiCAP commitments?  What if SNC had done even better than they did with CCiCAP?  You're making a lot of assumptions based on what we know now, as opposed to what they knew then.

[Rocket Science]

...This Commercial Crew award was never going to be a totally off-the-shelf, because there isn't an existing market.  But Boeing seems especially uninterested in having any sort of goal with CST-100 at all other than just building a one-off design for the government and making money.  And if that's the direction we wanted to go with this, we should have just given them a cost plus contract to design a capsule for us years ago instead of messing around with various programs to spur commercial growth.

I nominate this for post of the day!  I have to ask, if this was the inevitable outcome, what was the point of funding DC at all with our tax dollars, if it provided no incentive for Boeing to streamline and cut costs?

I glad he agreed with me...

[robertross]

...This Commercial Crew award was never going to be a totally off-the-shelf, because there isn't an existing market.  But Boeing seems especially uninterested in having any sort of goal with CST-100 at all other than just building a one-off design for the government and making money.  And if that's the direction we wanted to go with this, we should have just given them a cost plus contract to design a capsule for us years ago instead of messing around with various programs to spur commercial growth.

I nominate this for post of the day!  I have to ask, if this was the inevitable outcome, what was the point of funding DC at all with our tax dollars, if it provided no incentive for Boeing to streamline and cut costs?

You know, that actually makes a lot of sense.

But we had to play the political card and see this through in this manner, I suppose. make people 'think' that the process had changed for a different outcome.

[Jim]

Boeing, its supporters in Congress and independent analysts were all surprised by the outcome, because in recent days, the Chicago-based company seemed to have given up hope of winning.

Who says Boeing had given up hope of winning this contract or that Boeing, its supporters in Congress and independent analysts were all surprised by the outcome?

[Jim]

.  I don't know about you but for me having a Falcon 9 1st stage coming back down and landing would be pushing boundaries.

Meaningless if it can't be reused