Also, nothing is preventing Boeing from ending up with Falcon as its launcher after the "test" phase is complete.
NASA’s comment to me about today’s explosive IG report on the commercial crew program.
Today the abort motors where tested on the Dragon2 and appears to of been successful. The report talks about flaps over the super draco motors which is speculated to be to keep out salt water. Only during the abort will these flaps do anything. EM expects to perform the in flight abort in 4-6 weeks, I assume these flaps will come into play then, but this dragon2 wont be used again for crew but only for cargo, does this mean the cargo version of dragon2 will also have the super draco motors? or does it mean SpaceX might be planning to reuse the Dragon2 for none NASA commercial passengers?
Quote from: brainbit on 11/14/2019 10:39 pmToday the abort motors where tested on the Dragon2 and appears to of been successful. The report talks about flaps over the super draco motors which is speculated to be to keep out salt water. Only during the abort will these flaps do anything. EM expects to perform the in flight abort in 4-6 weeks, I assume these flaps will come into play then, but this dragon2 wont be used again for crew but only for cargo, does this mean the cargo version of dragon2 will also have the super draco motors? or does it mean SpaceX might be planning to reuse the Dragon2 for none NASA commercial passengers? The cargo version of Dragon 2 is not a reused crew capsule and it doesn't have SuperDraco engines.
Hard to explain large price difference. LV and expendable service module accounts for some of it, maybe $100m. Starliner should be cheaper to refurbish than Dragon as it lands on land.
Quote from: TrevorMonty on 11/14/2019 10:53 pmHard to explain large price difference. LV and expendable service module accounts for some of it, maybe $100m. Starliner should be cheaper to refurbish than Dragon as it lands on land.The 60% calculation doesn't count costs prior to CCtCap. For instance, for CCiCap, Boeing was paid $460 million and SpaceX was paid $440 million. This reduces the percentage difference if not the difference in absolute terms. It also doesn't factor in money paid by NASA for the dragon program as a whole which would add $278 million in initial development funds before more milestones were added later bringing the total to $398 million for dragon development under the COTS program (again, not captured in dragon development costs under this calculation). Add all that up, and the difference is ~35%. When looking at the 35% difference, we have to remember that NASA is ordering 3-4 dragon flights per year and only 1 CST-100 flight per year. When these contracts were awarded, SpaceX was an incumbent cargo transporation supplier and could have more reasonable assurance that they could share program costs between both cargo and crew.
I wonder what was the cost per seat for the last Space Shuttle flights? Mutiply 90 million per seat $$ times crew of 7 would been 630 million $$per flight . Will the commercial crew flights be that much cheaper than Space Shuttle considering also we lost almost 10 years of our own ability to launch astronauts plus the ability to launch massive payloads also???
Didn't see this posted. Here is Eric Berger's article.https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/11/nasa-report-finds-boeing-seat-prices-are-60-higher-than-spacex/
Quote from: punder on 11/14/2019 08:20 pmDidn't see this posted. Here is Eric Berger's article.https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/11/nasa-report-finds-boeing-seat-prices-are-60-higher-than-spacex/WhoaSo that’s $280M for 4 flights on top of the $4.2B?From where does the $90M per seat come?How does NASA get that price for seats on Dragon?Is this on top of whatever NASA added to Boeing’s contract to “upgrade” OFT-1 to a 3 crew long duration mission?Another question would be how NASA could offer a quarter billion dollar contact to one of two competitors without offering it to the other or going for competition, but that one we can only surmise and be cynical. Remember that these are not cost plus contracts. They are supposed to be “commercial”, although what that means is incredibly vague. It’s EELV all over again, and Boeing knows how to win that game: threaten to drop out (or watch your competitor threaten) because competition drives down prices and get big subsidies to maintain “redundancy”.
Quote from: punder on 11/14/2019 08:20 pmDidn't see this posted. Here is Eric Berger's article.https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/11/nasa-report-finds-boeing-seat-prices-are-60-higher-than-spacex/From where does the $90M per seat come?How does NASA get that price for seats on Dragon?
Average mission price for SpaceX: $215MAverage seat price for SpaceX (assuming 4 seats per flight): $53.75MAverage mission price for Boeing: $351MAverage seat price for Boeing (assuming 4 seats per flight): $87.75M
Quote from: Comga on 11/15/2019 03:00 amQuote from: punder on 11/14/2019 08:20 pmDidn't see this posted. Here is Eric Berger's article.https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/11/nasa-report-finds-boeing-seat-prices-are-60-higher-than-spacex/From where does the $90M per seat come?How does NASA get that price for seats on Dragon?We've known the rough seat price for a while now, see: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=35717.msg1921595#msg1921595QuoteAverage mission price for SpaceX: $215MAverage seat price for SpaceX (assuming 4 seats per flight): $53.75MAverage mission price for Boeing: $351MAverage seat price for Boeing (assuming 4 seats per flight): $87.75M
Quote from: Ike17055 on 11/14/2019 09:28 pmAlso, nothing is preventing Boeing from ending up with Falcon as its launcher after the "test" phase is complete.That would leave Commercial Crew with nothing to fly if Falcon is the only then-approved launcher and it is grounded for some reason.
