Comments on: A European wildcard for EELV competition

By: vulture4

vulture4 — Mon, 17 Mar 2014 17:48:37 +0000

Good point. Maybe SpaceX could bid on ESA launches.

By: Neil Shipley

Neil Shipley — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 01:48:50 +0000

Generally speaking, I’m in favour of opening up the competition. I’m sure Elon wouldn’t object provided that it works both ways.

By: Neil Shipley

Neil Shipley — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 01:47:02 +0000

Yep. I would love to see the respective $/kg to orbit. But your last point is the most telling. Dragon provides both up and down mass capability. What’s that worth to NASA and ISS?

By: red

red — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 00:55:59 +0000

“Arianespace officials had recently also noted that they believed that Ariane 5 launches of Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) spacecraft offered a more cost-effective approach for delivering cargo to the International Space Station than SpaceX does under its current Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA.”

As Donald mentioned, this is a lame comparison (the linked article compares $/kg) because Dragon returns cargo.

It also doesn’t take into account that Dragon (and Cygnus) make more frequent trips which allows more opportunities for delivery of high-priority, last-minute cargo.

It also doesn’t take into account that the Orbital and SpaceX presumably needed to price their CRS bids to make back the skin-in-the-game money from the COTS phase (at least for the portions of CRS capabilities that wouldn’t have alternate markets). Now (e.g. for CRS-2) their inflation-adjusted bids would likely be lower.

Also, both SpaceX and Orbital are enhancing their systems compared to their initial capabilities. Now (e.g. for CRS-2) their bids would not need to take into account the initial lesser capabilities of their systems, so their proposals should be cheaper or offer more service. They would also not have to repeat the expense of adding these capabilities, again likely lowering their bids.

However, Antares/Cygnus include lots of foreign components. It would be interesting to see if Arianespace can come up with a CRS-2 proposal that meets the percentage of U.S.-produced value in the product that is required in the contract, as Antares/Cygnus did.

By: Rand Simberg

Rand Simberg — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 19:43:10 +0000

US government payloads â€œshall be launched on vehicles manufactured in the United Statesâ€

If a NASA astronaut is a “US government payload,” that would make the Soyuz flights illegal.

By: Donald F. Robertson

Donald F. Robertson — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 17:37:59 +0000

While I am all for increased competition, this should only be allowed if SpaceX, et al, are allowed full access to the European market with a comparable “Europeanized” version of the Falcon-9. The United States is all too willing to open its market to others without insisting on reciprical access.

A good example of this are the government-funded all electric satellites being developed in Europe to complete with Boeing’s commercially-developed invention. This follows development of two European government-funded small comsats to compete with Orbital Science’s commercially-developed smallsat. (Truth in advertising: I am a shareholder in OSC.) These developments are not something the United States should tolerate.

As discussed before, Comparing the ATV to Dragon is rediculous, since the latter is a two-way transport. A more fair comparison would be with OSC’s Cygness.

— Donald

By: amightywind

amightywind — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 17:24:42 +0000

Let me get this right. You barter with NASA for a place on the ISS with the ATV. Once your astronauts are safely established, then you want to get paid for a service that we have already bought? You really must think we are suckers.