Comments on: Crimea crisis becomes new argument for commercial crew funding

By: Hiram

Hiram — Tue, 18 Mar 2014 01:41:17 +0000

“Just look at this latest move by the Inspiration Mars people: they now fully concede the need for government partipation & involvement.”

Nope. Inspiration Mars just fully concedes that they can’t raise the money they need to pull it off themselves. They are also smart (inspired?) enough to realize they have an ace in the hole with the feds. It’s a *deadline* that the SLS advocates desperately, desperately need to keep their project afloat. 2021 or bust. Elon doesn’t need a deadline, so Inspiration Mars finds him an unlikely target. Commercial space is ideally based on sound business propositions, and flinging two people around Mars is not anywhere close to being one of those.

By: Chris Castro

Chris Castro — Tue, 18 Mar 2014 01:19:47 +0000

@Coastal Ron;….The Commercial Crew program is a big, laughable joke—–a solution for nothing! The Commercial “providers” are little more than a gargantuan money drain, in which to toss away billions of precious federal government cash—–and in the end, America will gain nothing! I say go ahead and delay Commercial Space——-astronautic flight is way too fraught with risk & danger to be entrusted soley to the private sector. Just look at this latest move by the Inspiration Mars people: they now fully concede the need for government partipation & involvement. Private entities could never raise the necessary capital, with which to carry out a manned deep space flight.

Further, having had the Space Shuttle continue flying, for longer, would’ve solved plenty of problems. Large cargo runs, even at a reduced flight rate, would’ve kept the holding-out operation going with the ISS—–that is until we got to the smart crossroad of terminating it. Orion would NOT have “needed a place to go”. Until the Skylab was launched in 1973, did the Apollo CSM have “no place to go”? Of course not: Apollo flew a short list of LEO missions in order to test capabilities for its higher Lunar purpose. So too, would Orion. But of course, as a minor diversion, some temporary target vehicle docking run could have been worked out into the flight manifest. Much like how China does not appear to intend a re-doing of the ISS, on their way to cislunar space. Certainly some unmanned version of the Orion could have served as a second cargo-lifting vehicle, for a hypothetically extended ISS, anyway. So some sort of cargo-ferrying system would’ve been put into effect, even without the Commercial boys.

By: Rand Simberg

Rand Simberg — Mon, 17 Mar 2014 18:32:04 +0000

The White House should ask NASA what the probability of loss of crew is on Falcon 9.1/Dragon without a launch abort system. Seems like it would be a useful number to have if you're deciding how important it is to end dependence on the Russians. Also, they need to accelerate the new docking system.

By: Coastal Ron

Coastal Ron — Mon, 17 Mar 2014 17:17:32 +0000

Chris Castro said:

“Yes indeed, extending the Space Shuttle by say, another two, three or four years more than they did, wouldâ€™ve done us a lot of good!”

Good for what? Since the Shuttle can only stay in space for two weeks, and can’t perform the lifeboat function that the Soyuz does, the Shuttle would not have been any help in this situation. NONE.

And since NASA’s budget would likely have remained flat, no doubt it would have slowed EVEN FURTHER the Commercial Crew program that is the solution for this situation.

As to what else the Shuttle would have done, other than taking joy rides there was nothing else left for it to lift to the ISS. And since it would have flown so infrequently, it would have been a poor choice for doing cargo runs, as the current Commercial Cargo system provides much more frequent supplies and replenishment, and if something important is needed it can go up in just a few months on the next cargo run.

Face it, it was time for the Shuttle program to end, and too expensive and limited to keep going.

By: Chris Castro

Chris Castro — Mon, 17 Mar 2014 09:08:11 +0000

@Almightywind,…..We don’t agree on much, normally, but I will concur with some of what you said, in your opening statement on this discussion thread. Yes indeed, extending the Space Shuttle by say, another two, three or four years more than they did, would’ve done us a lot of good! It would have been real easy to do, plus we’d have had the longer borrowed time-span to have reconsidered the hasty decision to scrap away all of the Shuttle industrial production lines & facilities—–and we could’ve reversed course, during any of those extra years that the winged orbiter still flew. Relations with Russia were bound to hit sour times, eventually! How we, as a supposed space super-power, could’ve let ourselves get trapped into a Russian module-launch dependency for our astronauts is one of those hugely bizarre turns in history!!
But our government was naive & deluded into thinking that Russia would never turn into a cold-war opponent again, and so we made this stupid move——deliberately shutting down our own manned launch capabilities, just to fall into a foreign-country dependence, for Lord-knows-how-long. Now we futiley wait to see if for-profit commercial entities can rise to the occasion, and rescue us, with some new man-rated vehicle——but they won’t!!
Once the early Shuttle-termination decision became inevitable, we should have focussed fully on building the [eventually Lunar-capable] Orion, AND focussed on building the smaller rocket that would carry it to mere LEO——-this could’ve been either an Ares 1 or another such lighter type of launcher. (It could’ve been a new Shuttle-derived rocket or some already existing one, of which man-rating would not have been difficult). Hence Orion & some small-sized rocket, as the intermediate game plan, and voila!—–we could have been back in the manned launch business. Constructing the Ares 5 & designing the Altair lunar lander, of course, might’ve taken a bit more time, to come to fruition, in this alternate time-line scenario, but at least you’d’ve had an independent American manned space-launch capability way sooner, than the quagmire that’s happening now!
I still believe that a Heavy-Lift rocket should be built in conjunction with a manned Lunar program; AND that the ISS is a very wasteful & distracting extravagance that should be de-orbited as soon as feasible! The ISS should be dumped into the Pacific Ocean by 2020!

By: Neil Shipley

Neil Shipley — Mon, 17 Mar 2014 06:03:44 +0000

Also looks like a fair replacement for the RD-180 if need be.

By: Andrew Swallow

Andrew Swallow — Sat, 15 Mar 2014 18:47:52 +0000

Fully funding the development of 3 CCDev manned systems can be described to the general public as betting on all 3 horses in a 3 horse race. Providing someone finishes the United States wins its own transport to the ISS.

As COTS showed there is a big risk that at least one firm will fail. Sod’s law says that if the government picks one that is the firm that will fall.

By: Mader Levap

Mader Levap — Sat, 15 Mar 2014 13:50:57 +0000

almightywind uses nonsequitur! It is not effective at all.

By: Mader Levap

Mader Levap — Sat, 15 Mar 2014 13:49:25 +0000

Well, I must admit he is onto something – reality has a little leftist bias, after all.

By: Vladislaw

Vladislaw — Sat, 15 Mar 2014 07:18:00 +0000

There is a two year stockpile on engines, the Airforce has the option of slowing down those launches, utilize other launch providers, in the short term, cancel some of the flights. So there is nothing russia could do today that would effect tomorrow with the Atlas V launching military.

Russia could cancel (claim a launch “problem”) for rides to the ISS today and that WOULD effect tomorrow. Faster we get domestic service the better.