Frustration grows as lawmakers continue to penny pinch commercial crew

[newpylong]

Actually that was unfair of me. I'd recalled CxP as starting 2001 and it started 2004.

Off again. CxP introduction in Nov 2005, Orion development began soon therafter....

[Occupymars]

I can not help but think once the CCDEV vehicles are operational SA will be offering packages for free flight packages on said vehicles, at some price.

Governments that's where the big buck's are! Just look at what ESA contributes to the Iss program in exchange for their one crew member a year. Basically an ATV and Ariane 5 that's over 500 million for a crew member. They could rent there own space station off of Bigelow for that kind of money. But yeah a free flight for tom cruise or something would be great advertisement for Bigelow 

just realized you meant "free flight" and not a "free cost flight"

[john smith 19]

just realized you meant "free flight" and not a "free cost flight"

I think a no cost flight for Tom Cruise would be a little too generous.

I could see Virgin Galactic being interested in this. I think they'd especially like the Dream Chaser with its whole land on a runway return, but really anything that goes full orbital would get their attention. Obviously for them more seat == more paying passengers.

Virgin has proved pretty comfortable buying in the enabling technology behind their products in the past. While they might prefer some upgrade of WK2/SS2 to reach orbit one day I think they are very pragmatic and know this would sell at the right price and launch rate.

A vehicle that did not use NASA facilities or NASA crew would also be completely off NASA rules and come under FAA rules, allowing the non crew members to be "spaceflight participants" not astronauts, and hence no 8 month training period in Russia (or Houston).

[JohnFornaro]

Of course, "ALL the commercial crew providers have potential business beyond NASA, including Boeing".  Boeing, for example, has the incredibly reliable 787, which carries millions.  Boeing also build satellites, right?  None of the commercial crew providers have other actual business launching humans into space, to the ISS or anywhere else.  As to "potential" clients, there's tons of 'em.  They could data mine this site and find plenty of "potential business".

Yeah, "the USG can look forward to continuing to hand Russia at least another $400m/yr for the foreseeable future", but with a little bit of luck in the foreseeable future that shows serious signs of changing.  Given, naturally, a NASA HSF component, which is hoped for, but not guaranteed in law.  That we can tell.

Point being, there's only one private entity claiming that they can successfully land a complete "biosphere" for four people on Mars with a capital outlay of $6B.  Ignoring the few dissenters, and agreeing with the vast majority of believers, when (not if) that commercial provider flies, it will only provide four seats.

Technically, that company would, as a fair nit, be considered as a *cough* commercial *cough* provider.

Larger point:  I think CNYMike is more or less correct when he suggests that most "govmercial" (TM) crew rockets would probably stop development should NASA not have a human spaceflight component that is not served by the Russians.

[JohnFornaro]

Actually that was unfair of me. I'd recalled CxP as starting 2001 and it started 2004.

Off again. CxP introduction in Nov 2005, Orion development began soon therafter....

Clearly, John Smith's point is a complete fail:

Assuming it flies in 2017 that will have only taken 13 years to build a scaled up Apollo capsule...

The capsule will certainly fly in only twelve years of development, and will probably cost hundreds of dollars less than the completely unaffordable lunar lander, keeping the USA well in the lead in HSF.

My apologies.

Apology accepted.

[newpylong]

Another swing for Fornaro, only a single this time though.

[R7]

Point being, there's only one private entity claiming that they can successfully land a complete "biosphere" for four people on Mars with a capital outlay of $6B.  Ignoring the few dissenters, and agreeing with the vast majority of believers, when (not if) that commercial provider flies, it will only provide four seats.

Hey, this stellar success will provide figmercial need for four seats every two years!

[Rocket Science]

I’m going to throw my hypothesis out there again... The reason that giving the Russians millions of dollars without seemingly raising an eyebrow, is the cost of keeping them onboard with the ISS program. I sense it is some backchannel agreement in foreign aid or welfare for Roscosmos in keeping their engineers employed as it was when ISS was being planned.

The bluster we here in Committee about hitching rides from the Russians is only lip service and I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone pushing for shifting the funds towards the Commercial Crew program in order to accelerate it...

[john smith 19]

Larger point:  I think CNYMike is more or less correct when he suggests that most "govmercial" (TM) crew rockets would probably stop development should NASA not have a human spaceflight component that is not served by the Russians.

That's a fair point. However NASA does have such a requirement and Chris has dropped hints that it will continue past 2020.

That being the case it seems that either NASA has not pressed it's case well enough to the Legislature that this is a good investment in the US space economy, not the Russian (which it is) or that indeed the Legislature has some other reason for a) Paying the Russians b) Not encouraging US based providers.

I prefer not to speculate what reasons these might be.   

But as a non American, most of whose knowledge of your political system has been gained to figure out how and why NASA gets funded in the way it is,  I find this "strategy" just bonkers. 
 

[JohnFornaro]

Larger point:  I think CNYMike is more or less correct when he suggests that most "govmercial" (TM) crew rockets would probably stop development should NASA not have a human spaceflight component that is not served by the Russians.

That's a fair point. However NASA does have such a requirement and Chris has dropped hints that it will continue past 2020.

That being the case it seems that either NASA has not pressed it's case well enough to the Legislature that this is a good investment in the US space economy, not the Russian (which it is) or that indeed the Legislature has some other reason for a) Paying the Russians b) Not encouraging US based providers.

I point out that 2028 has been floated about as an end date for ISS.  Importantly, and completely lost to officialdom, is that there are good reasons to park ISS and turn it into a tourist site, run by a concession.  Perhaps by 2028, there will actually be private flights for tourists.

However, all the talk about govmercial crew flights having broad "markets" depends on insanely nuanced parsing.  The only market for the short term is NASA.  I don't have a problem with that principle.

I do have a problem with the cost of the capsule redux being so pricey and late. 

If it can be accepted for discussion purposes, that $12B would be the cost for a lunar lander, then it can also be accepted that a martian lander which must deal with twice the gravity and an atmo to boot, would cost $24B.

That aside to get back to the $12B or more capsule.  Lawmakers are frustrated because the work is not being accomplished, the costing is dishonest, and the prioritization misplaced.

I cannot for the life of me understand their animosity towards govmercial crew.

[JohnFornaro]

I’m going to throw my hypothesis out there again... The reason that giving the Russians millions of dollars without seemingly raising an eyebrow, is the cost of keeping them onboard with the ISS program. I sense it is some backchannel agreement in foreign aid or welfare for Roscosmos in keeping their engineers employed as it was when ISS was being planned.

The bluster we here in Committee about hitching rides from the Russians is only lip service and I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone pushing for shifting the funds towards the Commercial Crew program in order to accelerate it...

It's not a bad hypothesis at all, and shure seems anecdotally confirmed.  We literally could not keep ISS flying ourselves.  I keep floating my hypothesis that incompetence alone is not the problem; it is willful and deliberate "incompetence".

[RocketmanUS]

Are you using that "if we cancel SLS and Orion all that spare money will allow NASA to spend it on commercial and such" wishing on a star example?

It's more likely that money will leave NASA for good via all those lawmakers who you know would react badly. It'd be even more ironic of the removed money ended up getting spent as "international aid" in some backwards country where they burn American flags as their national past time.

Oh, if there's any money left over from paying up all the SLS/Orion contracts and making all those highly skilled American workers redundant before funding a skills program that shows them how to flip burgers in their new career at a Burger King...

With all due respect, Chris, this is a bit of a fear-mongering argument. The NASA budget has remained fairly constant over the last couple of decades (inflation adjusted) STS was cancelled, the budget remained. CxP was cancelled, the budget remained. *If* SLS is cancelled, most of the budget will remain.

The representatives won't simply give up and vote the money to other districts - they depend on being able to provide work to their districts. The trick will simply (or not so simply) be to find ways to apply new NASA projects to the centers and work forces - and the representatives will support whatever to make that happen. Easier said than done, of course.

If JWST, SLS, and or Orion were to be canceled it would be important to merge most or all of those assets ( people and infrastructure ) into existing and or new programs. Minimize the possible cancellation costs were possible. So to best put these resources to the crewed BLEO exploration program. Might be possible to transfer some of the Orion assets to the CST-100 commercial program.
 

[Rocket Science]

I’m going to throw my hypothesis out there again... The reason that giving the Russians millions of dollars without seemingly raising an eyebrow, is the cost of keeping them onboard with the ISS program. I sense it is some backchannel agreement in foreign aid or welfare for Roscosmos in keeping their engineers employed as it was when ISS was being planned.

The bluster we here in Committee about hitching rides from the Russians is only lip service and I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone pushing for shifting the funds towards the Commercial Crew program in order to accelerate it...

It's not a bad hypothesis at all, and shure seems anecdotally confirmed.  We literally could not keep ISS flying ourselves.  I keep floating my hypothesis that incompetence alone is not the problem; it is willful and deliberate "incompetence".

IIRC the Russians have stated that they are pretty much done with ISS after 2020 and they want to explore the Moon and Mars....

[Robotbeat]

I’m going to throw my hypothesis out there again... The reason that giving the Russians millions of dollars without seemingly raising an eyebrow, is the cost of keeping them onboard with the ISS program. I sense it is some backchannel agreement in foreign aid or welfare for Roscosmos in keeping their engineers employed as it was when ISS was being planned.

The bluster we here in Committee about hitching rides from the Russians is only lip service and I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone pushing for shifting the funds towards the Commercial Crew program in order to accelerate it...

It's not a bad hypothesis at all, and shure seems anecdotally confirmed.  We literally could not keep ISS flying ourselves.  I keep floating my hypothesis that incompetence alone is not the problem; it is willful and deliberate "incompetence".

IIRC the Russians have stated that they are pretty much done with ISS after 2020 and they want to explore the Moon and Mars....

I doubt it will actually happen. The Russians won't abandon ISS until it's ready to be deorbited. And unless there's a major accident, we simply WON'T be deorbiting it until well after 2020.

[Rocket Science]

I’m going to throw my hypothesis out there again... The reason that giving the Russians millions of dollars without seemingly raising an eyebrow, is the cost of keeping them onboard with the ISS program. I sense it is some backchannel agreement in foreign aid or welfare for Roscosmos in keeping their engineers employed as it was when ISS was being planned.

The bluster we here in Committee about hitching rides from the Russians is only lip service and I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone pushing for shifting the funds towards the Commercial Crew program in order to accelerate it...

It's not a bad hypothesis at all, and shure seems anecdotally confirmed.  We literally could not keep ISS flying ourselves.  I keep floating my hypothesis that incompetence alone is not the problem; it is willful and deliberate "incompetence".

IIRC the Russians have stated that they are pretty much done with ISS after 2020 and they want to explore the Moon and Mars....

I doubt it will actually happen. The Russians won't abandon ISS until it's ready to be deorbited. And unless there's a major accident, we simply WON'T be deorbiting it until well after 2020.

I would doubt it as well as long as the “gravy train” keeps leaving the station or rather keeps going to it...

[Lobo]

I'm saying that to first order the model that the per Orion cost stays the same is more accurate than the model that the per orion cost decreases as 1/N.  Of the $800 million estimate of a single Orion per year, I'm sure that a sizable fraction is fixed overhead and its contribution to per Orion costs does decrease as 1/N.  How much is fixed overhead is really in the details.  Some large human spaceflight programs in the past have had huge fixed overhead because their budgets also had the responsibility to keep entire clusters of NASA centers open year around.  But I'm willing to bet that if the $800 million quote was generated by a specific auditing/ cost estimation process, then the assumption of parking center operating budgets in the small print or other such shenanigans is not being taken when coming up with the $800M number. Consequently, I believe that the fraction of the $800 million budget for an Orion that is fixed overhead is going to be in the minority compared to the actual man hours/ wages and materials and parts cost of a new Orion.

If accurate, that's certainly depressing.  I didn't realize Orion was made out of solid Platinum?
;-)

What was the annual and/or per unit cost of the Apollo CSM in today's dollars compared to Orion?  If significantly cheaper, why?

[Rocket Science]

I'm saying that to first order the model that the per Orion cost stays the same is more accurate than the model that the per orion cost decreases as 1/N.  Of the $800 million estimate of a single Orion per year, I'm sure that a sizable fraction is fixed overhead and its contribution to per Orion costs does decrease as 1/N.  How much is fixed overhead is really in the details.  Some large human spaceflight programs in the past have had huge fixed overhead because their budgets also had the responsibility to keep entire clusters of NASA centers open year around.  But I'm willing to bet that if the $800 million quote was generated by a specific auditing/ cost estimation process, then the assumption of parking center operating budgets in the small print or other such shenanigans is not being taken when coming up with the $800M number. Consequently, I believe that the fraction of the $800 million budget for an Orion that is fixed overhead is going to be in the minority compared to the actual man hours/ wages and materials and parts cost of a new Orion.

If accurate, that's certainly depressing.  I didn't realize Orion was made out of solid Platinum?
;-)

What was the annual and/or per unit cost of the Apollo CSM in today's dollars compared to Orion?  If significantly cheaper, why?

Platinum? Perhaps the much more rarer “unobtanium”... 

[beancounter]

I'm saying that to first order the model that the per Orion cost stays the same is more accurate than the model that the per orion cost decreases as 1/N.  Of the $800 million estimate of a single Orion per year, I'm sure that a sizable fraction is fixed overhead and its contribution to per Orion costs does decrease as 1/N.  How much is fixed overhead is really in the details.  Some large human spaceflight programs in the past have had huge fixed overhead because their budgets also had the responsibility to keep entire clusters of NASA centers open year around.  But I'm willing to bet that if the $800 million quote was generated by a specific auditing/ cost estimation process, then the assumption of parking center operating budgets in the small print or other such shenanigans is not being taken when coming up with the $800M number. Consequently, I believe that the fraction of the $800 million budget for an Orion that is fixed overhead is going to be in the minority compared to the actual man hours/ wages and materials and parts cost of a new Orion.

If accurate, that's certainly depressing.  I didn't realize Orion was made out of solid Platinum?
;-)

What was the annual and/or per unit cost of the Apollo CSM in today's dollars compared to Orion?  If significantly cheaper, why?

Platinum? Perhaps the much more rarer “unobtanium”... 

'Yes but space is easy.  There's nothing there.  It's vacuum.'  Forget the rest but went along the lines of 'Down there, that's, what? 20,000 tons per square inch!'  Forgive the numbers.

The important point is that space is 'easy'.  Why is it taking so long??  And costing so much!!

[CNYMike]

.... However, all the talk about govmercial crew flights having broad "markets" depends on insanely nuanced parsing.  The only market for the short term is NASA.  I don't have a problem with that principle.....

And neither do I.  But I have the impression some backers of "govmerncial" crew are exaggerating the powers and reach of the private sector.  It comes back to the amount of risk; that's why raising private capital for HSF has been so difficult.  If it was that easy, we would have done it already.

[Lobo]

I'm saying that to first order the model that the per Orion cost stays the same is more accurate than the model that the per orion cost decreases as 1/N.  Of the $800 million estimate of a single Orion per year, I'm sure that a sizable fraction is fixed overhead and its contribution to per Orion costs does decrease as 1/N.  How much is fixed overhead is really in the details.  Some large human spaceflight programs in the past have had huge fixed overhead because their budgets also had the responsibility to keep entire clusters of NASA centers open year around.  But I'm willing to bet that if the $800 million quote was generated by a specific auditing/ cost estimation process, then the assumption of parking center operating budgets in the small print or other such shenanigans is not being taken when coming up with the $800M number. Consequently, I believe that the fraction of the $800 million budget for an Orion that is fixed overhead is going to be in the minority compared to the actual man hours/ wages and materials and parts cost of a new Orion.

If accurate, that's certainly depressing.  I didn't realize Orion was made out of solid Platinum?
;-)

What was the annual and/or per unit cost of the Apollo CSM in today's dollars compared to Orion?  If significantly cheaper, why?

Platinum? Perhaps the much more rarer “unobtanium”... 

Gold pressed Latinum?