NASA’s Commercial Crew Catch 22 as another $424m heads to Russia

[Chris Bergin]

Challenged myself with this one. Avoided a rehash of the presser and went at it with how it's all been translated to me.

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2013/04/nasas-commercial-catch-22-424m-to-russia/

Dip my toe into the political, which is as far as I'll go. This is mainly about the mess.

Really hope this comes across as balanced.

[joek]

Thanks very much for shining some light on this.  Well balanced and well told with no discernible color (we can only wish that all journalists were as circumspect and balanced); don't think anyone would dispute the facts or conclusions.  Two nits:

Since the retirement of the Space Shuttle fleet, NASA astronauts have been launched to the ISS on Russian Soyuz vehicles, a requirement that ensures the continuation of a US presence on a Station that was mainly funded and constructed by the United States.

NASA astronauts have been flying on Soyuz (and NASA has been paying for seats) for much longer than since Shuttle's retirement.  Maybe more accurate to say "Since the retirement of the Space Shuttle fleet, NASA astronauts have been launched to the ISS exclusively on Russian Soyuz vehicles ..."

The shortfall is “only” in the hundreds of millions of dollars per year, which is ironically about the same amount of money that is being sent to Roscosmos for the purchase of seats on the Soyuz – a scenario that has been once again extended to June, 2017 – in order to cover the slip in the Commercial Crew Program’s Full Operational Capability (FOC) date.

Comparison is a bit squishy as CCP funding issues are today; the Roscosmos money is 2016-2017.  Would be good to have some insight into how the Roscosmos money impacts short- and long-term funding profiles, although I doubt anyone can provide a credible answer.

Somewhat related question... This deal provides for return through mid 2017, presumably of NASA crew launched in late 2016 or early 2017.  If USCV-1 flight won't occur until late 2017 or early 2018, that would appear to be a 6+ month gap in crew rotation.  Will that be covered under a late CCP certification phase II flight?  Or what?

Again, thanks; much appreciated.

[Chris Bergin]

Thanks very much! And your notes are good discussion points for the thread (there will be lots of differing opinions on the overview).

[Lar]

I thought it was just the right tone. The facts speak for themselves without need of further comment.

Nevertheless I will comment

Congress is about as bad at managing NASA as NASA is at passing laws. Sadly, NASA knows it lacks lawmaking ability and does not try, but the converse is not true...

[RocketmanUS]

Bolden: Sequester will force us to renegotiate the CRS contracts
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=31802.msg1046159#new

http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/asd_04_29_2013_p04-01-574140.xml

Are we learning YET!?
NASA's budget keeps getting lowered and inflation keeps going up.
The pattern here is the U.S. government ( NASA ) is being taken out of human space flight.

As far as Orion/SLS to ISS it is not over sized, it is over priced compared to a commercial crew launch.

Aside from that, what I had understood was the commercial crew companies were to have a commercial business plan outside of NASA and ISS for the commercial crew taxi's. With a two to four or more years delay how would this possibly effect that business plan and who they were to have as non NASA customers?

Note: the world needs more than one LEO taxi and from more than one nation.

How much more funds will be sent to Russia ( supply runs again )?
The more jobs sent outsie the U.S. the less funds that are returned to the U.S. piggy bank  !

Good article Chris Bergin.
I wouldn't worry about being balanced. ( you did a good job of reporting )
Congress has not done that in how long!
I don't think they even know what a balanced budget means  .

[yg1968]

The $424M is for 6 seats. This means $70.7M per seat. The price has gone up again. Commercial crew should be competitive with those prices.

[Lars_J]

A good article, Chris. Sometimes the facts are just the facts, and in this case they are depressing. It is not a (lack of) technology that his holding commercial crew back, it is funding and politics.

[wkann]

Nicely done Chris. This issue is just unbelievable, let the space monopoly continue. First we had to transition Shuttle to CCP, now it's Soyuz to CCP. This Commercial Crew program is beginning to reminds me of Constellation. They both started strong will big dreams and funding levels- A few years later, Constellation was starved of funding and the program fell years behind schedule and was canceled. I have a bad feeling that the Commercial Crew Program is following in Constellations footsteps. (Thats a path that we CAN'T let happen.)

Sadly, Washington will continue to choke the Commercial Crew Program of funds, and the Orion and SLS duel will end up launching the next ISS crew from US Soil. If Orion does end up visiting ISS in a few years, why even continue funding CCP, when all that money could just speed up SLS/ Orion development?

I'm a big fan of the Commerical Crew Program, but it seems that Washington only wants SLS. CCP gets big cutbacks, but SLS/Orion barley gets any. (politics and spaceflight don't mix)

[john smith 19]

They both started strong will big dreams and funding levels- A few years later, Constellation was starved of funding and the program fell years behind schedule and was canceled.

What?

I have a bad feeling that the Commercial Crew Program is following in Constellations footsteps. (Thats a path that we CAN'T let happen.)

I'd point out the same people who pushed for SLS were the ones who cut funding on CCP. If you want to change their minds you'd better write to your elected representative.

Sadly, Washington will continue to choke the Commercial Crew Program of funds, and the Orion and SLS duel will end up launching the next ISS crew from US Soil.

You have a somewhat optimistic idea of the SLS timetable.

If Orion does end up visiting ISS in a few years, why even continue funding CCP,

Because for less than $5Bn those companies have got 2 new LV's into operations, Human rated 2 LVs and are in the process of building 3 reuseable spacecraft in less than a decade. A point you might like to make when you write to your elected representatives.

when all that money could just speed up SLS/ Orion development?

When did CxP start? The original was (IIRC) about 2001 but the revised version was from 2004. So for 9 years they have managed to launch 1 rocket with a dummy 5 segment and a boilerplate 2nd stage.
At a cost of how much? $11B? $12Bn?

Note that money would simply not be spent on NASA.

I'm a big fan of the Commerical Crew Program,

You hide it very well.

but it seems that Washington only wants SLS. CCP gets big cutbacks, but SLS/Orion barley gets any. (politics and spaceflight don't mix)

Actually IIRC there is language in the current funding that prevents any cuts in one being transferred as additional funds to the other.

However because SLS is a monolithic programme a few % cuts will still leave it a huge lump. In contrast fairly small cuts in the 3 vehicles budgets will grossly delay their roll out.

Spacex are claiming they will be ready to put a Spacex crew to ISS bv 2015. Were the full to be provided by the Legislature (both Houses) I would expect either or both of CTS and Dream Chaser to be flying 1-2 years earlier than currently predicted.

[clongton]

Really nice article Chris; very balanced on the whole with matter-of-fact reporting - nicely done.

But you know my feelings. This whole situation did not have to happen. There was an alternative which was authorized by the President that Mr. Bolden did not pursue, for reasons I won’t go into here. From a technical pov, Orion *could* have made its first crewed flight to ISS before the final Shuttle launch, leaving little to no HSF “gap” but politically that was not to be. Mr. Bolden may rightly bemoan the funding constraints on CCP but he cannot so easily dismiss his personal culpability in all of this schedule slipping. It was not just a matter of insufficient funding, which is completely true, much to the utter shame of the Congress, but also to his personal almost 2 years of foot-dragging. President Obama signed the Space Authorization Act on October 11, 2010, which would have built and flown Orion on a different HLV, far quicker and for far less money, using then-existing infrastructure and personnel. But for reasons that are beyond the scope of this thread, except for the real reasons for the schedule slippages, that did not happen, and that can be laid directly at the feet of Mr. Bolden.

Looking to the future, we are now paying $70 million dollars a seat for rides to the ISS on the Russian Soyuz. Under the current schedule, CCP will not make its first operational flight until 6 months after the newly extended contract with the Russians expires. And that is only if Congress fully funds the effort. I am not optimistic of that happening, so early in 2017 I fully expect another extension to the contract to be sought at an even larger inflated price per seat. It wasn’t so long ago that that the price was “only” $40 million a seat. So I wonder what the final price will actually be once CCP makes its first operation flight, which I highly doubt will be on the current schedule. Given the fiscal history of the Congress of late, I don’t think that will happen for an additional 18 to 24 months past the current IMS, or sometime in the 2019-2020 timeframe.

[edkyle99]

This is an epic failure, all around.  A national embarrassment.  If NASA were a professional sports team, the manager would have been fired long ago.

 - Ed Kyle

[Hodapp]

This is an epic failure, all around.  A national embarrassment.  If NASA were a professional sports team, the manager would have been fired long ago.

 - Ed Kyle

I agree.
But as a nation...nobody really cares...just yesterday a national poll shows that 42% of americans do not even know that Obamacare is law!!!!
This is the nation that we have decided to build...nobody cares about anything enough to fight for anything...they just let things happen and just blame everyone else but themselves, and do nothing about it but whine!
Okay...I've desended to the dark side for a moment...back to being an optimist!  Go SLS...and commercial crew!

[jnc]

This is the nation that we have decided to build...nobody cares about anything enough to fight for anything...they just let things happen and just blame everyone else but themselves, and do nothing about it but whine!

But, but, but... it's the job of government to take care of everyone! So clearly it's appropriate to merely complain when they are not doing the job perfectly! [/sarcasm]

Noel

[Prober]

This is an epic failure, all around.  A national embarrassment.  If NASA were a professional sports team, the manager would have been fired long ago.

 - Ed Kyle

Well said Ed, I agree 100%.   New management would be brought into any "commercial" firm by a board of directors.
 

[Prober]

The $424M is for 6 seats. This means $70.7M per seat. The price has gone up again. Commercial crew should be competitive with those prices.

So the question becomes, how do we fix this mess?  IMHO a rethink of the whole program is in order.
 
Idea: float the same contract, and pick the US based service to do the job at that same price.

[Chris Bergin]

Thanks for the nice words, chaps. Not looking for backslaps, just making sure the article is balanced.

And I have to agree with Ed, as much I understand there's no magic wand for this, especially now.

[deltaV]

It's a catch-22 for the country but not for Senator Shelby. Sending $400M to Russia doesn't hurt Alabama much. Sending (part of) $400M to Hawthorne, on the other hand, is a threat to MSFC. In the next 2-3 years SpaceX is likely to fly Falcon Heavy, send people to LEO, and maybe even demonstrate first stage reuse. If SpaceX also test-fires a largish methane engine they'd be in a good position to announce an SLS-class vehicle and offer to save NASA a billion dollars a year if they replace SLS with it. The more Senator Shelby can speed SLS and slow SpaceX the greater the chance that SLS would survive this.

[notsorandom]

Really nice article Chris; very balanced on the whole with matter-of-fact reporting - nicely done.

But you know my feelings. This whole situation did not have to happen. There was an alternative which was authorized by the President that Mr. Bolden did not pursue, for reasons I won’t go into here. From a technical pov, Orion *could* have made its first crewed flight to ISS before the final Shuttle launch, leaving little to no HSF “gap” but politically that was not to be. Mr. Bolden may rightly bemoan the funding constraints on CCP but he cannot so easily dismiss his personal culpability in all of this schedule slipping. It was not just a matter of insufficient funding, which is completely true, much to the utter shame of the Congress, but also to his personal almost 2 years of foot-dragging. President Obama signed the Space Authorization Act on October 11, 2010, which would have built and flown Orion on a different HLV, far quicker and for far less money, using then-existing infrastructure and personnel. But for reasons that are beyond the scope of this thread, except for the real reasons for the schedule slippages, that did not happen, and that can be laid directly at the feet of Mr. Bolden.

Looking to the future, we are now paying $70 million dollars a seat for rides to the ISS on the Russian Soyuz. Under the current schedule, CCP will not make its first operational flight until 6 months after the newly extended contract with the Russians expires. And that is only if Congress fully funds the effort. I am not optimistic of that happening, so early in 2017 I fully expect another extension to the contract to be sought at an even larger inflated price per seat. It wasn’t so long ago that that the price was “only” $40 million a seat. So I wonder what the final price will actually be once CCP makes its first operation flight, which I highly doubt will be on the current schedule. Given the fiscal history of the Congress of late, I don’t think that will happen for an additional 18 to 24 months past the current IMS, or sometime in the 2019-2020 timeframe.

The option you speak of as well as the Space Shuttle needed to die so that commercial crew could live. That was more of a priority than closing the gap. If we had the Shuttle or a smaller less costly HLV sending Orion and cargo to the ISS by the middle of the decade then commercial crew would have died in congress. Imagine those senators and representatives who are already skeptical of commercial crew asking why should we spend any money on commercial crew and cargo when NASA already has a perfectly good solution? The situation we are in was created artificially first by Administrator Griffin to force the Ares rockets and then by the current administration to force commercial crew.

[Lars_J]

The $424M is for 6 seats. This means $70.7M per seat. The price has gone up again. Commercial crew should be competitive with those prices.

So the question becomes, how do we fix this mess?  IMHO a rethink of the whole program is in order.
 
Idea: float the same contract, and pick the US based service to do the job at that same price.

The best way to get out of this mess may be for one of the CC contractors (like SpaceX) to take their design the final distance on their own dime. Once one of them do fly a crewed orbital test flight, this farcical nightmare will be over, and Congress will no longer be able to keep their heads in the sand - legally.

I agree with others that the main goal of SLS/Orion backers in Congress is to impose delays on CC through funding until Orion flies first, thus "negating the need for CC". Their panic is growing, because if CC flies first - Orion could be heading to the chopping block.

[Jim]

This is an epic failure, all around.  A national embarrassment.  If NASA were a professional sports team, the manager would have been fired long ago.

 - Ed Kyle

Actually, it isn't the managers fault, it is the owners (congress and president) and they are dictating to the manager what they want and can run the team to the ground if they so desire.