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#160
by
yg1968
on 27 Jan, 2015 13:49
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#161
by
yg1968
on 27 Jan, 2015 14:02
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It says here
http://news.yahoo.com/boeing-first-carry-us-astronauts-space-201613955.html
that "Commercial Crew Program Manager Kathy Lueders said at a press conference in Houston, Texas that Boeing would be the first to make two contracted missions to carry NASA astronauts, since it has completed two milestones so far, and SpaceX just one".
- Ed Kyle
She never said that. That isn't a direct quote and it is incorrect.
AP fumble?
What she said on review of the "tape" was something like Boeing will be first because of the differences in lead time and the need to start having commercial crew services in late 2017 early 2018. Gwynne Shotwell sort of nodded when Kathy made this statement. It can only mean that Boeing plans to be ready before SpaceX plans to be ready, or that NASA expects Boeing to be ready before SpaceX is ready, PR aside. They should be ready first, because they are getting more funding.
Kathy also noted, when she started answering the "who's first" question, that the providers were only guaranteed a minimum of two crew missions, and as many as six. This makes me wonder if NASA isn't really planning to have a primary carrier (CST-100) with a well-tested, but less-flown backup (Dragon 2).
- Ed Kyle
Fumble is the right word. Her quote is at 35:20 of the archived video. Being first to have authority to proceed (ATP) doesn't mean that you will fly the mission first. She is referring to the post-certification missions. There is a minimum of two and a maximum of six post-certifications missions for each provider (per the final RFP).
When asked later if NASA had any intentions of choosing only one commercial crew provider, she said that NASA would like to maintain two providers. So my guess is that both companies will get six post-certification missions each. So there won't be a primary and a secondary company. So it will be similar to cargo where SpaceX and Orbital are equals.
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#162
by
abaddon
on 27 Jan, 2015 14:49
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Someone needs to question this claim. 3 USOS crews members are averagomg 40 hours total right now. 1 additional person doubling that total means that 4th person will spend almost no time doing the maintenance, repair, and trouble-shooting tasks that dominate their days today. When you subtract wake-up, exercise, and sleep prep that 4th crew member will have to spend almost all their awake time doing science which is hard to believe given years of actual experience with the ISS.
Not sure I understand the doubt. Unless adding a crew member increases maintenance, repair, trouble-shooting, etc, the added time is free from those concerns. I would imagine the 4th crew member would also participate in these tasks, so in reality you are adding ~40 hours a week across all four crew members or ~10 hours a week of "productive" time.
Do you anticipate that maintenance type work will increase when adding the 4th crew member? Or maybe there is just a steady increase in maintenance type work that has been occurring over time, and this estimate is optimistically ignoring?
I understand the need to put a good face on this so the taxpayer (those who pay any attention at all) feel its worth it, but this doesn't seem unreasonable to me, can you explain why you find this dubious?
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#163
by
abaddon
on 27 Jan, 2015 14:55
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The only thing I can think of is there's been serious developmental or reliability issues with the SuperDracos. Good enough for launch abort but not good enough for landing.
Or:
1 - SD's took longer to develop than expected (we know this).
2 - There is no longer time to certify for land landing (they told us this).
I'm not sure why the conspiracy theories about bait-and-switches and hypothetical development or reliability issues. I also don't know how you could possibly think that a problem that was serious enough for landing (which doesn't require full thrust, and has parachute backup) would not also impact launch abort (which does require full thrust, and has no backup).
(Everyone) can we please stick to facts and not throw in uninformed speculation?
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#164
by
yg1968
on 27 Jan, 2015 17:05
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What will be interesting to see is if they will still fire the SD thrusters for water landing in order to test the system for land landing. My guess is that they won't but I hope that I am wrong.
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#165
by
vt_hokie
on 27 Jan, 2015 17:27
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2. Gwynne quite clearly said that the Dragon's normal landing mode will be in water, she never said a thing about parachute onto land and use LAS to cushion it.
WTF? This is like the most disappointing bait and switch ever.
Why did they waste years working on the SuperDracos?
The only thing I can think of is there's been serious developmental or reliability issues with the SuperDracos. Good enough for launch abort but not good enough for landing.
I thought it has been acknowledged and well known all along that the initial NASA missions would see parachute splashdowns.
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#166
by
newpylong
on 27 Jan, 2015 17:31
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It was - this is not a surprise at all.
If anything, blame the fan club for up talking propulsive landings, SpaceX said water at first.
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#167
by
kirghizstan
on 27 Jan, 2015 17:34
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2. Gwynne quite clearly said that the Dragon's normal landing mode will be in water, she never said a thing about parachute onto land and use LAS to cushion it.
WTF? This is like the most disappointing bait and switch ever.
Why did they waste years working on the SuperDracos?
The only thing I can think of is there's been serious developmental or reliability issues with the SuperDracos. Good enough for launch abort but not good enough for landing.
I thought it has been acknowledged and well known all along that the initial NASA missions would see parachute splashdowns.
Completely agree and it follows SpaceX's typical incremental approach. Not making the Dragon2's initial flights dependent on perfecting landing on earth under rocket power reduces your schedule risk on unproven/untested techniques.
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#168
by
yg1968
on 27 Jan, 2015 18:01
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It was - this is not a surprise at all.
If anything, blame the fan club for up talking propulsive landings, SpaceX said water at first.
They have gone back and forth on this. At the Dragon 2 unveiling, SpaceX said that they would do land landings from the outset. Reisman said the same thing at the FISO conference. Now it's back to splashdowns with parachutes.
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#169
by
woods170
on 27 Jan, 2015 18:01
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The only thing I can think of is there's been serious developmental or reliability issues with the SuperDracos. Good enough for launch abort but not good enough for landing.
Or:
1 - SD's took longer to develop than expected (we know this).
2 - There is no longer time to certify for land landing (they told us this).
I'm not sure why the conspiracy theories about bait-and-switches and hypothetical development or reliability issues. I also don't know how you could possibly think that a problem that was serious enough for landing (which doesn't require full thrust, and has parachute backup) would not also impact launch abort (which does require full thrust, and has no backup).
(Everyone) can we please stick to facts and not throw in uninformed speculation?
IMO, Dragon 2 will initially land on water because that's the only proven method for Dragon right now.
The CCiCAP parachute test was added as a confidence test for the revised parachute layout of Dragon 2. That test proved that it worked.
Parachute landing on land, aided by SuperDraco braking (as reported by Chris last year:
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2014/08/dragon-v2-rely-parachutes-landing/) would basically require the DragonFly program to conclude before 2017. It was already noted that DragonFly is not expected to start until late 2015 at the earliest. That would give SpaceX not a lot of time to iron the quircks out of propulsive or propulsive-assisted landings.
IMO, we might eventually see propulsive-assist and eventually fully propulsive landings being certified under a CCtCAP extension. But that will probably be well beyond 2017.
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#170
by
Lars-J
on 27 Jan, 2015 18:47
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IMO, Dragon 2 will initially land on water because that's the only proven method for Dragon right now.
The CCiCAP parachute test was added as a confidence test for the revised parachute layout of Dragon 2. That test proved that it worked.
More than just a confidence test. It was a test of the parachute deployment for an abort situation (note it demonstrated parachute deployment from a spinning Dragon), which will always be in water - no matter what.
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#171
by
gongora
on 27 Jan, 2015 19:43
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It was - this is not a surprise at all.
If anything, blame the fan club for up talking propulsive landings, SpaceX said water at first.
They have gone back and forth on this. At the Dragon 2 unveiling, SpaceX said that they would do land landings from the outset. Reisman said the same thing at the FISO conference. Now it's back to splashdowns with parachutes.
Reisman said chutes in his FISO conference.
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#172
by
didacticus
on 27 Jan, 2015 20:13
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I am really surprised that none of the coverage over these announcements has questioned the $58M per seat number. I thought SpaceX fans in particular would pounce on NASA only giving an average cost, given the fact that SpaceX and Boeing have such vastly different contract costs.
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#173
by
yg1968
on 27 Jan, 2015 20:21
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It was - this is not a surprise at all.
If anything, blame the fan club for up talking propulsive landings, SpaceX said water at first.
They have gone back and forth on this. At the Dragon 2 unveiling, SpaceX said that they would do land landings from the outset. Reisman said the same thing at the FISO conference. Now it's back to splashdowns with parachutes.
Reisman said chutes in his FISO conference.
I agree that he said chutes but landing on land with these (not water).
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#174
by
yg1968
on 27 Jan, 2015 20:28
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I am really surprised that none of the coverage over these announcements has questioned the $58M per seat number. I thought SpaceX fans in particular would pounce on NASA only giving an average cost, given the fact that SpaceX and Boeing have such vastly different contract costs.
Someone asked for the breakdown for each company but Lueders refused to answer. She said that the price per seat of $58M took into account cargo capability (in other words, you must subtract the price of cargo in order to obtain the price per seat). Gwynne that the price of a Dragon2 is not much more than cargo Dragon and Boeing said that their price per seat is less than Soyuz. I am guessing that Boeing is close to $70M and SpaceX is close to $45M.
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#175
by
QuantumG
on 27 Jan, 2015 22:48
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It was - this is not a surprise at all.
If anything, blame the fan club for up talking propulsive landings, SpaceX said water at first.
They have gone back and forth on this. At the Dragon 2 unveiling, SpaceX said that they would do land landings from the outset. Reisman said the same thing at the FISO conference. Now it's back to splashdowns with parachutes.
Reisman said chutes in his FISO conference.
I agree that he said chutes but landing on land with these (not water).
Indeed, chutes to land landings with shock absorbers.
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#176
by
ChrisWilson68
on 28 Jan, 2015 08:06
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Lueders: Crew science will double to 80 hours a week. Shortest downmass handover time ever.
Someone needs to question this claim. 3 USOS crews members are averagomg 40 hours total right now. 1 additional person doubling that total means that 4th person will spend almost no time doing the maintenance, repair, and trouble-shooting tasks that dominate their days today. When you subtract wake-up, exercise, and sleep prep that 4th crew member will have to spend almost all their awake time doing science which is hard to believe given years of actual experience with the ISS.
I think the disconnect here is that you seem to be assuming the 40 hours is per crew member. It's not. The current 40 hours of science is total, by all the crew members, per week. So all the additional crew member has to add is 40 hours a week to make the total go to 80.
Thanks for the several responses and I fully understand the 4th crew member won't do all the science and that the current output is between the 3 crew members. My point is that stating flat out that science will double with the current systems having 3 more years of wear and tear and carrying a increased load (CO2 removal and the bathroom especially come to mind) seems wishful at best.
It's not at all clear that we should expect more maintenance to be required on ISS over time. Yes, increased age might tend to make parts fail more often. But on the other hand the ISS is a prototype system. Over time they are learning about things that were designed poorly and improving their processes to compensate. Learning could well mean that over time they need less and less time each week for maintenance.
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#177
by
ChrisWilson68
on 28 Jan, 2015 08:19
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This makes me wonder if NASA isn't really planning to have a primary carrier (CST-100) with a well-tested, but less-flown backup (Dragon 2).
The only ways in which CST-100 had an advantage over Dragon in the source selection document had to do with NASA worrying about development schedule risk. Once NASA has certified both CST-100 and Dragon to carry crew to ISS, there's no legitimate reason to give one company more of the business than the other except price. So Dragon will only be less-flown if it's more expensive. I doubt even you, Ed, think a Dragon flight on Falcon 9 will be more expensive than a CST-100 flight on Atlas V.
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#178
by
DGH
on 28 Jan, 2015 09:34
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This makes me wonder if NASA isn't really planning to have a primary carrier (CST-100) with a well-tested, but less-flown backup (Dragon 2).
The only ways in which CST-100 had an advantage over Dragon in the source selection document had to do with NASA worrying about development schedule risk. Once NASA has certified both CST-100 and Dragon to carry crew to ISS, there's no legitimate reason to give one company more of the business than the other except price. So Dragon will only be less-flown if it's more expensive. I doubt even you, Ed, think a Dragon flight on Falcon 9 will be more expensive than a CST-100 flight on Atlas V.
As I read the selection document CST-100 had an advantage in three categories:
1) Land Landing
2) More crew
3) More cargo
IMO based on the selection document:
With 4 crew Dragon wins hands down.
With 7 crew CST-100 wins hands down.
Warning we need more data to say this with any certainty.
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#179
by
jak Kennedy
on 28 Jan, 2015 10:58
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It was - this is not a surprise at all.
If anything, blame the fan club for up talking propulsive landings, SpaceX said water at first.
They have gone back and forth on this. At the Dragon 2 unveiling, SpaceX said that they would do land landings from the outset. Reisman said the same thing at the FISO conference. Now it's back to splashdowns with parachutes.
Is it possible that that the first uncrewed Dragon could use a fully propulsive landing. The second crewed flight if the parachutes fail would still have the super draco backups.