“My mistake. We’re discussing cargo flights here…”

No worries.

The thing with the Shuttle SRB refurbishment though, is that NASA was doing that because they thought it would be less expensive, so it was a cost assumption, not safety. Of course no one ever went back to check that cost assumption, and ATK didn’t mind having NASA pay them extra, so that just reinforces the point that government isn’t that good at doing things in a low-cost way.

For reusing spacecraft, NASA could insist on new spacecraft for both cargo and crew, but the difference in price will be so big, and the safety considerations pretty much non-existent, that NASA will gladly go along with reusability. Everyone has already been conditioned to reusability anyways, since there were only five Shuttles built for space travel.

Regarding what NASA will or won’t tell commercial service providers, NASA has already proved that they won’t be overbearing with the new spacecraft development, so I doubt that will change with the service plans for reusing them.

Elon Musk is interviewed in the L.A. Times (via Clark Lindsey at NewSpace Watch) and he had this that caught my eye:

L.A. Times: Shouldn’t government be doing projects like this [going to Mars]?

Elon Musk: Government isn’t that good at rapid advancement of technology. It tends to be better at funding basic research. To have things take off, you’ve got to have commercial companies do it. The government was good at getting the basics of the Internet going, but it languished. Commercial companies took a hand around 1995, and then it accelerated. We need something like that in space.

I think this is the best analogy I’ve heard for what we need to do if we want to expand our presence into space. NASA can’t do it on $17.5B per year, and if we want a space economy the government can’t be the sole source of funding.

Even though only some of the companies trying to do things in space will ultimately be successful, that is no different than any other segment of our economy, like restaurants or manufacturing. In the NASA COTS program, SpaceX succeeded, RpK failed, and it looks like Orbital Sciences will ultimately succeed – two out of three ain’t bad.

So when I see Bigelow Aerospace funded internally and spending money on proving out their products and services, and I see countries signing MOU’s when they don’t have to (they could wait until Bigelow was further developed), that shows me that non-traditional space economies are starting to emerge. Too early to know which will eventually succeed, but none will succeed until each one tries – as the old saying goes, you’ll never hit a home run if you don’t swing the bat.

The two test craft are hardly meaningless. The first one proved the material will hold up. The second one:

Genesis II
“In February 2011, Bigelow reported that the vehicle had “performed flawlessly in terms of pressure maintenance and thermal control-environmental containment”

You sound as moronic as DCSCA who believes labs should be producing results before they are built.

You say Bigelow should be producing revenue before his factory is completed, before the prototypes are done testing, before there is even a domestic transport system in place to deliver customers to a future facility, which his business is PREDICATED ON. gawd…

I guess what he should have did was forget testing all together .. just launch one – ready or not – and let it sit there in space .. unattended…

Go earn a 1/2 billion dollars and put YOUR money were your mouth is, since you are such a financial guru with a deep understanding how “natural” markets work it should be no problem

Pretty easy to sit in a nickel seat in the peanut gallery and lob your crap never having did it yourself.

It isn’t your money. Why are you always about the hate?

“All meaningless, since the two prototypes are very tenuous and partial in nature, being quite sub-scale and lacking most of the needed equipment.”

In other words, prototypes for testing out their product and features.

So now you are against testing, and against anyone making prototypes before fielding full-up systems? As pathfinder_01 pointed out, that’s one of the reasons why the Shuttle failed in it’s goals, which you used as an example of something not to do.

So make up your mind – test, not test? Fly prototypes, or don’t fly prototypes?

You are like a backseat driver that has severe dementia (i.e. can’t remember the last thing they yelled out). You also appear to be against entrepreneurs trying to create new businesses, which means you are against the thing that would stop the other thing you are against (government money being spent on human exploration). The arguments in your mind must be spectacular…

Bottom line, you are all hysteria and no facts. Until that changes I think we’re done.

none of NASA’s precious astronauts will ever be subjected to the unknown hazards of a used car^H^H^Hcapsule.

My mistake. We’re discussing cargo flights here, so “precious astronauts” are involved only if the capsule smashes a hole in ISS. The specific argument I was making won’t come up until Commercial Crew.

The true test of whether NASA fully embraces commer-cial reusable spacecraft is when the next CRS contract comes up for bid. SpaceX will have a small fleet of once-used Dragons that they can bid for the contract (maybe just bid a few designated for CRS flights), and I have no doubt that NASA will decide that they will be safe.

No doubt? That sounds like the basis for a bet. I can easily imagine whoever is negotiating the contract for NASA deciding to cover his/her ass by insisting on “the way we’ve always done it”. Safety Ãœber Alles, and none of NASA’s precious astronauts will ever be subjected to the unknown hazards of a used car^H^H^Hcapsule. Alternatively, NASA might accept reusing Dragons in the same way they reused SRB’s—by demanding such a degree of disassembly, inspection, certification, and rebuilding that a new Dragon would actually be cheaper.

The problem is cometary impact, not asteroid impact.

You need to get current. And bringing you current is not my job.

It is also not my job to discuss DOD assets with you.
Nor is it my job to discuss with you the history of DOD interest.
Nor it is my job to discuss with you the history of DOE interest.

However, I can spare a few key strokes this morning as I get my body and brain working to point out to you that DOD has no experience with deep space navigation, while NASA is operating DAWN around an asteroid right now.

Aside from that, NASA’s SMD has a report due shortly which I’m sure will make fascinating reading. After all, its their job.

However he has launched two prototype inflatable stations, built a factory, signed agreements with two companies for crew transportation services, and has signed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU’s) with seven nations. Oh, and he has a significant amount of money.

All meaningless, since the two prototypes are very tenuous and partial in nature, being quite sub-scale and lacking most of the needed equipment. And since all the UFO hunter has done on these projects is spend that money; he hasn’t made any significant amounts of it back. The MOUs and agreements are mere bits and pixels: practically no actual money has changed hands. In other words, it’s pure marketing hype which succeeds in gulling only the acolytes of the cult.

In over ten years of pursuing this quixotic attempt to privatize the most grandiose of NASA’s economic fantasies, Bigelow hasn’t made any significant commercial revenues, much less profits. He makes more money from UFO hunting. His organization has practically folded in the towel on these balloon space station efforts, laying off workforce and pursuing instead what you always have to pursue when you yearn to achieve NASA’s commercially preposterous visions, namely NASA (sub-)contracts. Yet the cult of the heavenly pilgrims continues to obsesss over these hallucinations of “private space stations” as if Bigelow is the next coming of Christ, because he’s all you’ve got to keep these addled fantasies alive. God forbid that the path to the future could lie in actual space commerce and those disturbing machines that work quite well without a single bit of help from your beloved astronauts.

“In other words, I show a disturbing lack of conformance to the dogmatic hallucinations of the astronaut cult.”

Only your psychologist would know for sure. All I know is that you lack understanding of simple business principles.

“This from a sect which invokes a UFO hunter with no significant space commerce revenues as their chief authority on the future of space commerce, while ignoring the many businessmen and businesses actually doing billions of dollars of real space commerce with real private customers.”

If Bigelow was only showing slideshows to people, then maybe you could invoke the image of a dreamer.

However he has launched two prototype inflatable stations, built a factory, signed agreements with two companies for crew transportation services, and has signed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU’s) with seven nations. Oh, and he has a significant amount of money.

Bigelow may not ultimately succeed, but he has a pretty straightforward business plan, and he certainly has more going for him than most new businesses.

If you think back, SpaceX didn’t get a launch contract until they were 3 years old, and no one in the launch business took them seriously. They too had a pretty straightforward business plan, and they still do. And that business plan includes launching whatever payloads customers want to pay them to stick on top of their rockets.

Bigelow has money, and if he wants to pay SpaceX to launch people to his stations, why shouldn’t SpaceX take their money?

That’s the thing Googaw, you don’t understand business.