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#180
by
Chris Bergin
on 11 Apr, 2013 01:05
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I concur. There's absolutely no chance at all the ISS will be splashed in 2020.
Anyone using that argument as the concern is being silly.
We generally just called them "congressmen" and women.
Chuckles. But can any of us imagine a scenario where commercial crew was finally on line and - let's say - two years later they then deorbited the ISS? There's silly and there's crazy.
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#181
by
Go4TLI
on 11 Apr, 2013 01:30
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No, NASA is paying for DDT&E on three semi-commercial craft. Operations is something different.
If there are no other customers, NASA still pays all that overhead that is required to keep these vehicles and their support offices (Logistics, flight support, ground support, engineering, etc) viable.
How it is presented is an accounting trick. One can pay "per unit" prices if one wants but all that program overhead to keep the program viable plus some sort of profit for the company will be baked in. Otherwise there is no business case.
I'm a little confused, are you claiming that Falcon 9 and Atlas V don't have non-NASA customers?
You are confused. I'm talking about the spacecraft, not the launch vehicle. They are different things completely
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#182
by
QuantumG
on 11 Apr, 2013 01:34
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Chuckles. But can any of us imagine a scenario where commercial crew was finally on line and - let's say - two years later they then deorbited the ISS? There's silly and there's crazy.
I honestly can't imagine deorbiting the ISS.. but then, I'm not a politician. They can make up great reasons for doing crazy things. People keep asking where the money is going to come from to build payloads for SLS if NASA's budget doesn't get a plus up... The Griffin Answer may be the only one.
Now, remember the point of me bringing up this silly argument: commercial crew is supposed to be
primarily about servicing ISS and secondarily (at best) about seeding a new industry for human spaceflight. I think that's backwards, both in truth and in deeds. The administration is supporting commercial crew because the hope is that someday, in the hopefully not too distant future, people will be able to seriously say that NASA need never again develop their own human space transportation system. There will be an industry they can just buy seats from instead.
I remember the administration actually floating that idea to Congress and getting shot down, don't you? So now they have to pretend it's all about servicing ISS and not about getting NASA out of the transportation business. They suck at pretending, so I'm surprised anyone is buying it.
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#183
by
Go4TLI
on 11 Apr, 2013 01:37
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Lobo,
A couple of things:
You could not be more wrong on the cost per flight of STS. The average yearly budget for the entire program was 3 billion. You can't spend more than 300 percent of your yearly budget.
Also with respect to Orion was not designed by MSFC. It is not even a MSFC project. I think some of the LockMart people will take issue with your statement that NASA just handed them a completed and detailed design and said "build this for me underlings". There are many other things wrong with your statements that flow from this misunderstanding.
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#184
by
Go4TLI
on 11 Apr, 2013 01:46
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QG,
Your analogy is flawed. The US govt buys all kinds of military aircraft, notably for cargo. A C-17, C-5 and C-130 is not a 747 which many commercial companies use for cargo only as well as other airframes.
Different requirements and missions lead to different designs. For a company to build a commercial deep space craft, there needs to be a business case that allows for development of said vehicle that justify the expense and a market that allows those development costs to be made up in a reasonable time with continued profit over the course of the program. This and only this would allow NASA to truly "purchase seats".
I think thus far this is not evident for LEO ops let alone beyond LEO.
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#185
by
QuantumG
on 11 Apr, 2013 01:57
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QG,
Your analogy is flawed.
Sorry, what analogy?
The US govt buys all kinds of military aircraft, notably for cargo. A C-17, C-5 and C-130 is not a 747 which many commercial companies use for cargo only as well as other airframes.
Boeing designs and builds those vehicles. The air force doesn't do anything like Orion or SLS because there's an industry they can go to for whatever it is they want.
Different requirements and missions lead to different designs.
Yep, and all you need to do is give the requirements to industry and select the best bid.
For a company to build a commercial deep space craft, there needs to be a business case that allows for development of said vehicle that justify the expense and a market that allows those development costs to be made up in a reasonable time with continued profit over the course of the program.
Okay, in your example, who's the commercial customer for special military transport planes? There isn't necessarily one, and yet the air force doesn't feel the need to become all NASA-like with in-house design teams and facilities.
This and only this would allow NASA to truly "purchase seats".
Oh, I guess this is the "analogy" you were talking about. That's not an analogy,
that's what NASA actually does on Soyuz.
I think thus far this is not evident for LEO ops let alone beyond LEO.
One day "soon", it might be for LEO, and then NASA will have a bunch of contractors they can go to for beyond LEO who actually fly humans in space.
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#186
by
RocketmanUS
on 11 Apr, 2013 03:03
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I concur. There's absolutely no chance at all the ISS will be splashed in 2020.
Anyone using that argument as the concern is being silly.
We generally just called them "congressmen" and women.
Chuckles. But can any of us imagine a scenario where commercial crew was finally on line and - let's say - two years later they then deorbited the ISS? There's silly and there's crazy.
ISS will someday be out of service and have to be removed.
Commercial crew is for America to be able to send crew to LEO.
It could be to
1 ) a space station
2 ) Hubble service, ect.
3 ) LEO way station for BLEO
4 ) other?
The crazy is in not having LEO crew commercial access.
The U.S. government is just reducing the financial risks in getting the LEO commercial taxi's.
Right now if the U.S. lowers it's investment dollars then commercial will just have to increase it's funding if it wants to see their taxi in service soon.
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#187
by
watermod
on 11 Apr, 2013 03:11
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Okay, in your example, who's the commercial customer for special military transport planes? There isn't necessarily one,
ah ah... lots.
One example is a friend who does major construction in remote parts of Alaska.... he quite often needs the services of ex-mil special transport planes.
Another contracts transport air services needed in remote and dangerous locations running a gamut from international orgs to PMCs to construction contractors. He provides all sorts of transport mostly with craft normally in military domain. There are lots of businesses and business plans that don't fit into most folks worldview. Most with good earning potential. Many quite legal.
Remember, before the drug subs and such in the 70s and 80s the favorite craft of drug smugglers was the C-47 and the land and sea from Columbia to the Southern USA was littered with these crashed or abandoned ex-military transports. So illegal use is likely too for spacecraft.
There were rumors once... better not said..One should not assume that reuse with "interesting" biz-plans will not occur in space. To do so would be to deny millenniums of human behavior.
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#188
by
QuantumG
on 11 Apr, 2013 03:13
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Commercial crew is for America to be able to send crew to LEO.
It could be to
1 ) a space station
2 ) Hubble service, ect.
3 ) LEO way station for BLEO
4 ) other?
We're not talking about what makes sense.. we're talking about what NASA is telling Congress, and what they're saying is that
commercial crew is for servicing ISS. If you take their statements as truthful, and you have a minimum amount of common sense (which some might argue some in Congress actually do) then you might rightfully be confused as to how the program makes
any sense.
I agree with you that it makes a lot of sense to have commercial providers for LEO access and that sensible beyond LEO exploration would begin with astronauts riding up to LEO in a commercial seat, but that's
never been sold to Congress.
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#189
by
RocketmanUS
on 11 Apr, 2013 03:20
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Commercial crew is for America to be able to send crew to LEO.
It could be to
1 ) a space station
2 ) Hubble service, ect.
3 ) LEO way station for BLEO
4 ) other?
We're not talking about what makes sense.. we're talking about what NASA is telling Congress, and what they're saying is that commercial crew is for servicing ISS. If you take their statements as truthful, and you have a minimum amount of common sense (which some might argue some in Congress actually do) then you might rightfully be confused as to how the program makes any sense.
I agree with you that it makes a lot of sense to have commercial providers for LEO access and that sensible beyond LEO exploration would begin with astronauts riding up to LEO in a commercial seat, but that's never been sold to Congress.
So it really doesn't matter what Congress believes they are funding it for as long as they fund it. Just tell each Congressman what he or she wants to hear ( ISS, Commercial LEO, funding in their district ).
Still a lot of money needed to get anyone of the three to their first crew flight ( private or government funded ).
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#190
by
mr. mark
on 11 Apr, 2013 03:31
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SpaceX already has a foreign contractor agreement for international clients with Bigelow Aerospace. It was publicized and is common knowledge. I doubt that any Senator or House member would understand the NASA agreement to mean single operations only.
http://www.spacex.com/press.php?page=20120510
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#191
by
QuantumG
on 11 Apr, 2013 03:38
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SpaceX already has a foreign contractor agreement for the Asia sphere with Bigelow Aerospace. It was publicized and is common knowledge. I doubt that any Senator or House member would understand the NASA agreement to mean single operations only.
I guarantee you that few have any idea that it exists. If anyone from NASA mentions it in some upcoming hearing I'll be surprised. The last time I heard Rohrabacher mention Bigelow, he couldn't even remember the name and referred to them as "that company in Texas that wants to do space stations". I guess Nevada is kinda like Texas.
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#192
by
QuantumG
on 11 Apr, 2013 05:59
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I think it's more like a building and we think poorly of people who let buildings fall into such disrepair that it's simply better to demolish them and start over.
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#193
by
deltaV
on 11 Apr, 2013 06:08
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I at least would have no problem with splashing the ISS if a specific major maintenance issue totals it. I would object however to splashing it at a predetermined date because the warranty has expired and issues are likely in the future (but haven't yet materialized). The only exceptions would be failures that would risk killing the astronauts before they finish evacuating (e.g. a major pressure vessel failure) or if frequent repairs are interfering with station utilization even more than construction was. I worry that NASA may prematurely abandon the ISS to avoid the embarrassment of the ISS failing unexpectedly rather than a real need to do so.
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#194
by
neilh
on 11 Apr, 2013 06:57
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No, NASA is paying for DDT&E on three semi-commercial craft. Operations is something different.
If there are no other customers, NASA still pays all that overhead that is required to keep these vehicles and their support offices (Logistics, flight support, ground support, engineering, etc) viable.
How it is presented is an accounting trick. One can pay "per unit" prices if one wants but all that program overhead to keep the program viable plus some sort of profit for the company will be baked in. Otherwise there is no business case.
I'm a little confused, are you claiming that Falcon 9 and Atlas V don't have non-NASA customers?
You are confused. I'm talking about the spacecraft, not the launch vehicle. They are different things completely
I thought you were talking about the cost components of commercial crew missions?
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#195
by
deltaV
on 11 Apr, 2013 07:05
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Likewise, the trigger for the US government (not just NASA) deciding to end ISS will most likely come when the cost of maintaining the station rises to the level that the government simply decides there are higher priorities for spending its budget. I doubt that date can be predicted now with any certainty, but that doesn't mean we can pretend it's not going to happen.
If the ISS end date can't be predicted why do NASA HSF plans often include a specific end date for the ISS rather than decision guidelines and a guesstimate probability distribution over resulting end dates?
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#196
by
Robotbeat
on 11 Apr, 2013 08:22
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Likewise, the trigger for the US government (not just NASA) deciding to end ISS will most likely come when the cost of maintaining the station rises to the level that the government simply decides there are higher priorities for spending its budget. I doubt that date can be predicted now with any certainty, but that doesn't mean we can pretend it's not going to happen.
If the ISS end date can't be predicted why do NASA HSF plans often include a specific end date for the ISS rather than decision guidelines and a guesstimate probability distribution over resulting end dates?
Because people like certainty, even when it's illusory.
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#197
by
Ben the Space Brit
on 11 Apr, 2013 09:37
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Likewise, the trigger for the US government (not just NASA) deciding to end ISS will most likely come when the cost of maintaining the station rises to the level that the government simply decides there are higher priorities for spending its budget. I doubt that date can be predicted now with any certainty, but that doesn't mean we can pretend it's not going to happen.
If the ISS end date can't be predicted why do NASA HSF plans often include a specific end date for the ISS rather than decision guidelines and a guesstimate probability distribution over resulting end dates?
Because people like certainty, even when it's illusory.
More importantly because, up until recently, the ISS EOL date has been justified backwards from "We want it gone by this date so we can use the budget elsewhere". The actual length of time they can stretch out its life wasn't really a consideration until CxP was scrapped.
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#198
by
Go4TLI
on 11 Apr, 2013 17:19
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No, NASA is paying for DDT&E on three semi-commercial craft. Operations is something different.
If there are no other customers, NASA still pays all that overhead that is required to keep these vehicles and their support offices (Logistics, flight support, ground support, engineering, etc) viable.
How it is presented is an accounting trick. One can pay "per unit" prices if one wants but all that program overhead to keep the program viable plus some sort of profit for the company will be baked in. Otherwise there is no business case.
I'm a little confused, are you claiming that Falcon 9 and Atlas V don't have non-NASA customers?
You are confused. I'm talking about the spacecraft, not the launch vehicle. They are different things completely
I thought you were talking about the cost components of commercial crew missions?
In reference to the actual spacecraft and how that element is sustained and kept viable. It is true that total cost will obviously need to factor in the cost of the launch vehicle(s)
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#199
by
veedriver22
on 11 Apr, 2013 17:21
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The ISS is modular. Why wouldn't you replace the modules as necessary instead of throwing it all out.