Place your bets for CRS2

[Llian Rhydderch]

I voted Dragon & CST-100. My reason for picking these two is the commercial crew program will pay for much of their fixed costs so if their bids match their costs they should win on price. Of course they may choose to use their cost advantage in additional profit rather than increased win chances so without seeing the bids it's very hard to tell who will win.

Your point about fixed costs, bid price, and profit is a beautiful thing, deltaV.  It gives the other competitors an opportunity to make price competitive bids, on products for which they believe that they have other market opportunities for. 

It begins to make the "market" for space flight services--distorted for decades by national governments picking favored players and assuring a commercial profit--start to operate a bit more like a free market, where would-be suppliers necessarily have skin in the game and face real entrepreneurial uncertainty.  Profits are not certain.  Get to work:  deliver more product with a greater set of functionality at lower cost, and you get farther in the market competition.  Slack off: deliver less at a higher price and you'll earn losses, which will encourage the capital and human resources a firm is currently using to be freed up for others who can use them to better effect.  Lovely to see!

[davey142]

My Picks :

1. Dragon - proven, cheap.

2. CST-100 - similarities with crew version should reduce cargo costs. In addition, more Atlas V flights could reduce per-core costs too.

Cygnus - well, just too expensive, and Orbital ATK blew it on the reliability front.

[subzero788]

Cygnus and Dragon.


I think it's going to be too hard for new entrants to compete risk wise and price wise with the incumbents.

[meekGee]

I chose Dragon & Jupiter.  Dragon is proven, the low cost leader, and has downmass capability.  Cygnus was substantially more expensive, had a terrible LOM which the Government paid many Millions to clean up, has no downmass capability, and they need to re-certify their launch vehicle (a vehicle with no other customers).  DreamChaser-Cargo is a kludge IMHO compared to crew DreamChaser.  Boeing's CST-100 would be the second choice, except Lockheed's Jupiter has a cargo port & incredible flexibility to support a range of exciting new missions.

I'm quoting this post since I'm too lazy to type exactly the same thing again.

[llanitedave]

I voted Dragon & CST-100. My reason for picking these two is the commercial crew program will pay for much of their fixed costs so if their bids match their costs they should win on price. Of course they may choose to use their cost advantage in additional profit rather than increased win chances so without seeing the bids it's very hard to tell who will win.

I voted that way as well, based more on a gut feeling than anything I can verbally defend.  But your argument is a big part of that gut feeling.  In addition, there's so much talk about the importance of launch vehicle redundancy, seems to me that there would be an interest in having downmass redundancy as well.

[Political Hack Wannabe]

I am curious - for those posting "something else" - what do you think that will be?

[Rocket Science]

Dragon and DC Cargo... One obvious and one longshot to balance things out...

[MikeAtkinson]

I am curious - for those posting "something else" - what do you think that will be?

Although I chose Dragon and Cygnus, I don't think they will be the same Dragon and Cygnus which were bid for the original CRS. A review of CRS2 requirements shows that neither Dragon or Cygnus or a combination of them meets those requirements except at an absolute minimum level with 4 Dragon and 1 extended Cygnus per year.

Dragon first flew in 2010 and has been docking with ISS since 2012, it would be unlike SpaceX to not improve upon the current cargo Dragon in some way. Dragon has been volume limited with F9 v1.1, even with a reusable first stage, it will be even more volume limited with F9 v1.2 (or whatever it will be called).

Elon likes common designs and I suspect he is not pleased with having different crew and cargo versions of Dragon, it also can't escaped his attention that bulky low value objects make up the majority of the ISS (and any private or follow-on station) upmass and an even larger proportion of the disposal downmass.

SpaceX have many options, including but not limited to adding Dragon 2 features like super Dracos for land landing, increasing the capsule size and having a presurised trunk. FH could potentially launch very large cargo carriers, with a Dragon then acting as tug.

Cygnus has already moved to an extended version, launching on Atlas or F9 would allow a super-extended version to be used. If truly launcher neutral it could take advantage of low F9 prices without adding to launcher unavailability risk.

[HIP2BSQRE]

Everyone seems to thinks there will be a capsule/space plane in the mix.  The only other question is there a large cargo spacecraft in the mix?


Down mass:

CST-100
Dragon
DC

Large cargo:

Jupiter
Cygnus

Now remember NASA does not want more than 4-5 flights per year.  For arguments sake let's assume SpaceX gets 2 flights per year due to price and experience.  What other companies pick up at least 1/2 flights per year?  I think that NASA is going to pick not two companies but at least three.  NASA wants more cargo up and down and also wants redundancy.

[HIP2BSQRE]

This is how I see it playing out:

DOWN MASS

CST-100 X 1
Dragon   X2
DC       

Yes I know DC is one getting the coal again.

LARGE CARGO

Jupiter X1



Please remember there is little money for development - so any development is going to raise your total cost. 

DOWNMASS

DC is competing with SpaceX and Boeing who either have a spacecraft flying or NASA paying for a large portion of their spacecraft development via commercial crew.

LARGE CARGO - BULK

This one is more tricky. 

LM favor - BIG aerospace company and has the financial and technical expertise to pull it off. Remember NASA is paying for delivery.  You do not deliver - then at the end NASA loses some money but not all.  So I see NASA hedging its bet.  If LM is late in development - it can call up SpaceX or Boeing for another flight to mitigate the development risk.

ATKOrbital -BIG aerospace company.  Things in favor -has experience with ISS operations been there-done that.

[dror]

I am curious - for those posting "something else" - what do you think that will be?

Answer:

Interested parties list has been posted:

Aerojet Rocketdyne
Aerospace
Arrow
Astrium
ATDL
ATK
Barrios
Blue Origin
Boeing
Draper Lab
Kistler SS
L-3 Cincinnati
Lockheed Martin
Orbital
Paragon Space Development Corporation
SAS
SNC
SpaceX
Teledyne Brown
United Launch Alliance
UTAS

http://procurement.jsc.nasa.gov/crs2/

[Comga]

Dragon would seem to be a shoe-in. It's only 29 months until SpX-15, the last of the newly added CRS-1 flights with the only US vehicle currently operational, but...

We shouldn't underestimate the power of the "majors" to capture business.
Never underestimate NASA's penchant for tweaking things until they break like Pegasus XL. Orbital "needed" to up the payload by 10% and had a failure with the modified system after two successes. NASA could say that Dragon "needs" some increase in volume that exceeds SpaceX's abity to get it within the existing OML.
(My opinion is the Cargo DreamChaser shows a serious increase in complexity with adding the new module to increase volume which pushes it into a fairing which needs the folding fins.  I hope Dragon isn't pushed to an add-on module.)
Funny things happen in proposals and negotiations. Orbital could offer NASA a bargain and only charge them 60% if their rocket explodes.
Lockheed could spread the cost and risk by getting Jupiter's development funded in parallel for other purposes like ISS reboost and deorbit if and when the Russians attempt to go their own way.

[Rocket Science]

If NASA doesn’t select DC for cargo we will know that they overhyped the importance that the Shuttle played in low g entry for both the astronauts and investigators experiment requirements...

[rcoppola]

CRS 2 is extremely interesting:

(What I think will happen and why, not necessarily what I think personally should happen.)

With 2 Crewed vehicles coming on-line, Dragon & CST, NASA will be increasing the permanent crew size. Some have mentioned the possibility of temporary, shorter personnel visits for conducting experiments so the crew size could fluctuate accordingly. (We'll see about the short term science stays, NASA doesn't seem to either be willing or able to accommodate that flexibility right now.)

Increased crew and science means not only an incremental increased need of supplies BUT an increase of down-mass.

SpaceX is clearly mixing and matching their current Cargo Dragon and future Crewed Dragon in an efficient preparation for Pad and Inflight Aborts. This informs that they may very well have a good handle on porting over both the larger Trunk and propulsive landing to the current cargo version with berthing mech. (don't want to derail anything so I'll stop there.)

So Dragon, IMO,  is a shoe-in because it's very likely they will not only be the cheapest but also do an increase for unpressurized up-mass, propulsive landing and subsequent re-use.

Because of the added crew and subsequent additional scientific pace of experiments, I think NASA will chose to have 2 vehicles capable of down-mass returns. And the logical choice for me is the CST which can leverage all the facilities and personnel from their crew program. However, Crew capability timing must not be put at risk and CST still has not actually flown yet but there is well-placed faith in Boeing.

Also both CST and Dragon with only 4 crew can bring up and back additional limited cargo as well.

So having these two systems handle both pure cargo and crew/cargo feels right. But what about trash disposal?

With more crew and more science comes more trash and Cygnus already exists, so I think they'll keep Enhanced Cygnus in the loop for both additional bulk up-mass and disposal but with lesser flights.

Dragon, CST & Cygnus.

DC and Jupiter are very interesting but feel too complicated for this contract. They are both almost worth it for their future use cases alone but I don't think this program will be used for that purpose. As much as I think it could be, at least in part.

If I had my way?

Dragon, Jupiter & CST. Regardless, I really think we need 2 cargo vehicles with return capabilities. I think NASA will feel the same way.

[rayleighscatter]

It's really quite interesting and honestly a bit harder to make guesses at. It seems that in terms of upmass that from greatest to least is Jupiter, Dreamchaser, Cygnus, Dragon, CST. The two most capable in terms of combined up (and DC in terms of returned) are also the two "paper" proposals. Dragon and CST are the two crew options and have a big leg up but are also both below average in upmass.

This really seems like it will hinge much more heavily on what metrics NASA uses and how it weighs them. Price? Volume? Incumbency? Risk? Other? I think nearly any provider could find a field where it places in the top 2 right now so we'll have to wait and see how NASA made their choices. (And the cynic in me thinks this also makes it much easier for NASA to tailor their selection criteria to preferred options)

[TrevorMonty]

LV redundancy comes into play.

Dragon because it works and F9.

Jupiter for greater payload.

DC for redundant down mass.

Having two out of three flying on ultra reliable Atlas shouldn't be an issue. Plus NGLV will reduce launch costs, whether it is passed onto NASA is another story.