Heh! To follow up my own post.

If NewSpace fails to fulfill the challenge, Griffin will still have CEV+CLV (and preserves the industrial base for the HLLV he covets). NASA gets to the Moon (expensive, but successfully).

If SpaceDev or t/Space or whoever do succeed, perhaps CEV is never really used for ISS missions and is modified into a stay-on-orbit heavy vessel that uses light stuff like SpaceDev or t/Space to ferry crew to CEV – – just like small boats ferried crews to sailing frigates at anchor in deep water.

In that case, CEV+CLV development has preserved the HLLV industrial base; gives NASA a vehicle capable of deep space missions AND fills the pork needs which are vital for getting Congress to say okay.

Think mechanical greyhound to get the dogs off and running.

One thing Griffin does not address, at least in this article, is the overlapping roles of CEV and commercial transport providers for servicing the station. If, by the time the CEV enters service around 2012, NASA has already contracted with commercial providers for crew and cargo transport to the station, what does the CEV do: elbow out the commercial transport companies or find another mission to do?

What if CEV+CLV never flies to ISS because SpaceDev and t/Space get there first? Is that bad?

Maybe CEV is like those mechanical rabbits used to start greyhound races. It’s not supposed to win the race, but set a benchmark the private sector can beat, allowing Griffin to go to Congress and say, “Hey look, I can save money with Benson or Gump!”

The most important decision Mike Griffin could make regarding creating a government market at ISS he has already made: the Space Shuttle will be retired in 2010, and the remaining flights will be focused on element assembly, not logistics. That creates an immediate demand, to quote Alan Lindenmoyer the new CCC Program Manager at JSC: We would buy it today if we could.

Now, on 16 November 2005 SpaceDev announces plans to build DreamChaser, an HL-20 derived crew vehicle apparently to be lifted to LEO by Delta IV. Apparently, it will be built with private money seeking profit from tourism (suborbital and orbital) and NASA contracts to ferry crew to ISS on a price per seat basis.

Now, if NASA hgad announcved a government order for a low cost crew lift vehicle and funded the R&D with tax dollars and if that NASA funded vehicle was financially competitive, there isn’t anyway a private investor will fund this project at SpaceDev.

Because CEV is too expensive for routine ISS crew transfer (but necessary for lunar missions) a market niche is created for SpaceDev & t/Space.
Why compete with NASA?

Since CEV+CLV at $400 million per launch CANNOT compete with commercial Earth-to-LEO systems either for tourism or ISS crew transfer, this leaves an open playing field for private sector players to compete with each other.

Genuis!

— Donald

This point cannot be over-emphasized, IMHO.

By the way, I close my eyes and I can hear Jim Muncy saying this, in his own voice.

Then we need to do what it takes from a PR/Marketing standpoint to drive the point home that they’re not the same thing. For all of Burt’s bluster it does create a very sharp distinction in people’s minds between what he is doing and what NASA does. They can’t exactly verbalize it, but they know there’s a difference and that one could potentially be way more important than the other.

Donald is correct about my Spacelab/SpaceHAB point. During the development of the Shuttle, the European Space Agency funded development of the Spacelab, a research facility that could be carried inside the payload bay. As per agreement, NASA bought a second module from Europe. Each agency used their module for several research missions during the 1980s and early 1990s.

Flash forward to around 1990. SpaceHAB, a private company founded by Bob Citron in Seattle in the 1980s, secures an agreement from NASA to buy a Commercial Middeck Augmentation Module service. NASA did not initially want to buy such a service, since it had the Spacelab. But given pressure from policymakers, and that the CEO of Spacelab (at this time) was a former NASA Administrator and the COO was a former Shuttle official, NASA did commit to acquire the service and SpaceHAB completed their first module.

Once that module flew, its capabilities were so much better, and cheaper to support, than the ESA-developed Spacelab, that by the mid-late 1990s no more Spacelab missions were planned.

The lesson here is twofold: 1) It is incredibly hard for NASA to buy something commercially, because there are always entrenched interests, even if those interests are hurting themselves by holding onto the status quo. 2) It has to work, and work better, and be cheaper, and be proven to do so… and you have to keep fighting to make sure that common sense metrics like price/schedule/utility actually do determine whether NASA keeps buying.

As to the other issue, NASA may indeed use the CEV as a “Crew Rescue Vehicle” for ISS. It will also certainly use the CEV to do test missions in low Earth orbit, just as Apollo 7 and 9 preceded Apollos 8 and 10/11… I also assume that HLLV will fly to orbit earlier than the first scheduled lunar return in 2018.

The irony of your statement about HLLV is this: if NASA uses CEV+CLV to service station, NASA cannot afford HLLV development during the 2012-2016/17/18 timeframe. So NASA has a choice: use a capsule to keep going around in circles in LEO, or use a capsule to go to the Moon. I suspect most folks in NASA will prefer the latter.

But again, that’s an issue for 2010 and beyond. Today we have to make sure we actually get the opportunity Griffin is trying to provide. It is NOT a given that Congress will support this two-track strategy. And we will certainly need to help NASA succeed in partnering with us. My argument is that it will be easier for us to “win” these battles if we are not simultaneously beating the crap out of Griffin/NASA for the mainline government transportation architecture.

– Jim

— Donald

?

Please explain.

This is why I have said for four months now that the NewSpace community needs to focus on ensuring that Griffin really can deliver this market opportunity to us, and on our delivering for NASA, and not get distracted with fights over CEV/CLV/HLLV.

You miss the following point: if all that stuff flops, Congress and the public may disdain funding
alt.space projects as well. When you say, “manned space,” Congress and the US public paint with a very broad mental brush.

Jim Muncy, I agree with you one-hundred percent. The alt.space crowd has always been too focused on NASA’s perceived failings and not enough on their own. They have markets now (tourists, potentially the Space Station, plus all the traditional ones inadequate though they are; SpaceX even has several contracts). Now is the time to stop complaining, execute, and let NASA dig their own hole.

If they can’t execute, they can complain about NASA until hell freezes over without ever getting a single contract.

— Donald