What I have an issue with is: cancelling the manned launch capability prior to it being commercially implimented. Granted, Constellation/Ares have serious issues, but fix it, don’t trash the whole program until you have something in its place. Lets do research for new and cheaper, faster, safer technology, but let us not trash what we already have – impliment a parallel R&D program. Additional point: It is the programatic process that needs to be streamlined – it currently is too beaurocratic.

Two main explanations:

1. Ares/Constellation has significantly different mission requirements than SpaceX including safety. Different missions, different requirements, different solutions to meet those requirements. You can argue whether the requirements were good or bad, (haven’t seen much of that on this forum) and then whether the derived architecture was the correct one for those requirements (lots of arm-chair engineers here doing that with no idea about the former).

2. Program execution and management decision making. NASA as an organization failed this one miserably. Example: The Orion PDR generated >4500 RIDS from >500 NASA oversight reviewers who attended. That is absolutely insane. Both should have been an order of magnitude lower but NASA Management couldn’t control the program. Lockheed had to spend engineers time (and money) dispositioning each and every RID. How many reviewers do you think ELON had at his Falcon 9 or Dragon PDR? As for the selection of the ARES I design, enough said …

In part correct, especially the subsidizing of foreign launchers by their respective Govt’s. You also need to look at the requirements DoD imposed as part of their “assured access to space” policy as these drove reliability and flexibility costs. Also, as the primary EELV customer, they hold the standing option of bumping any commercial satellite launch for a USG asset. This makes it difficult to sell an EELV commercially as those users have relatively small launch windows (a few months) given how they schedule replacements and plan their capital expenditures and thus don’t appreciate repeated launch slips.

These ’splashers’ fail to realise the real value of the ISS: primarily an orbital testbed to deliver the technologies for a third (fourth?) generation: “piloted complex.” This time one capable of operating outside of the magnetosphere! There are many other activities that an ISS ‘Base camp can support and lastly but not leastly the ISS remains an international symbol of cooperation that continues to confound the unilaterallist Vision of Record!

I agree. The greatest value of “orbital piloted platforms” like the ISS and Bigelow modules is that they can be used as testbeds for future manned nuclear powered plasma rocket propelled interplanetary spaceships.

“And, what was stopping NASA from also using technology previously developed by NASA and achieving the same cost savings? ”

Believe it or not it always was the intent and direction on Constellation to do exactly that. Pretty sad.

Oh well…

Everyone uses technologies previously developed by others. SpaceX didn’t start by reinventing stone tools and working up from there.

And, what was stopping NASA from also using technology previously developed by NASA and achieving the same cost savings? Why was the incremental cost of Cx so enormous? The answer is bad management, broken culture, and a fundamental blindness to delivering actual value for the money.

Ridiculous statement. The correct comparison would be what NASA would cost today for the same vehicle SpaceX is providing. If you want to normalize cost.

“how do you explain Musk and SpaceX being able to do what they have done for the money that they have done it…and 10 billion spent on Ares/Constellation with what is has done?”

…by using technology already developed by NASA. SpaceX did not start from scratch by any means; and by using yesterdays technology. So, add to their cost the R&D that went before them and compare again.

You can thank ITAR for a lot of it. Government-subsidized competition from Europe and Russia for the rest.

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Both of those issues were already known when the EELVs were initially priced. Much more important was that the actual demand for launch services worldwide never came close to the projections on which initial EELV pricing was based. The Decatur plant was sized for 40 EELV boosters a year (heavy counts as three). Some years that has been an order of magnitude excess capacity. It is a game that has been played and lost before. Remember the 60 missions a year the shuttle was supposed to fly? Again, an order of magnitude too high. I hope SpaceX can turn a profit selling a quarter or fewer vehicles than current projections show, because that is where demand usually ends up.

You can’t build a cheap rocket unless you sell a whole lot of them, and you can’t sell a whole lot of them unless they are cheap. Have we finally found a way to break out of that Catch-22? I have my doubts.

byeman wrote @ June 14th, 2010 at 10:46 am

Incorrect, look at the NASA Launch Service Contract. ULA, OSC and Spacex provide NASA a catalog of FFP launch services for each year. At those, prices, NASA pays for insight (not oversight) into the contractors processes.

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LSP doesn’t cover human spaceflight.