Malmesbury opinionated

The Shelby stuff is rooted in the anti-CC FUD being sold by certain parties. the song goes like this :

– Real Space â„¢ can only be done with proctological level of involvement from NASA.
– CC is therefore unsafe
– in addition SpaceX can’t really be that cheap. So what is really happening is that Bolden and company are really stealing money from SLS and Orion and passing it to Musk.

That is not Real Space that is NASA.

Engineering saying from Fast, Good and Cheap pick any two.

When he sent NASA racing to the Moon President Kennedy picked Fast and Good (very difficult). The traditional managerial way of doing something fast is to hire more people. Difficult requires lots of cleaver people organised in a Task culture.

Fast and Difficult = more * lots = half a million people
Whose wages are very expensive.

SpaceX chose Cheap and Slow. It employs about 4000 people.

Commercial Crew is several people to the ISS. The closest to that is Gemini.

NASA was operational in 1958. (Although Kennedy’s speech in 1961 may be a better start date)
Gemini was manned in 1965.
1965 – 1958 + 1 = 8 years

SpaceX was formed in 2002.
Manned Dragon to ISS in 2016 (estimated).
2016 – 2002 + 1 = 15 years.

So SpaceX is taking near twice as long as NASA. Methods of getting to the ISS already exist where as NASA had to invent everything. That is why it is cheaper.

Neither of these limitations applies to the upcoming Falcon Heavy. I quite agree with you about the utility of LEO space stations as assembly points for Moon mission hardware. Now that Bigelow has emerged from hibernation mode, I don’t think we have more than three years to wait before his first manned hab is up. There are all sorts of architectures possible for even quite plush return-to-the-Moon missions, but SLS is not only not on the critical path for any of them, it’s not on the path at all. It’s off in the weeds somewhere.

Spacestations are about to be come sufficiently cheap that they can be used for a single mission. (However it is trivial to reuse them by restocking the consumables.)

IMHO Within the next president’s term NASA could land 6 tonne payloads on the Moon. This would allow a tiny ascent cabin of about 1.5 – 2 tonnes.

Since many Senators have cars that weight more than a ton the astronauts will have to use something like the Space Exploration Vehicle (SEV) as a mobile home.

Providing it can fly by 2017 there is work for a 70 tonne payload SLS. It can send things to the Moon. Possibly even two legged things. AES has some prototype machines that need space-rating and testing in a vacuum on a solid surface. However if it misses the 2017 date the new president will probably cancel the SLS rather than give it Moon missions.

In the world of politics they are being kept alive by force of will. That force of will is sustained by “facts” that are increasingly divergent from reality. What d you think will happen when Shelby meets reality? An apology? Or scorched earth and blame for everyone else?

* If an investigation is held CC has a defence.
* If a witch hunt is started divert it into a warlock hunt. The warlock doing the price goring whilst the people are tricked into looking the other way.
* If an honest price investigation is held then the large quantity of SLS can be shown. New (smaller) documentation standards and fewer big meeting becomes the solution.

This isn’t about reality, sadly.

It is about a deep seated belief that (a) it can’t be that cheap and (b) the results are rubbish.

This is why the hardcore SLSites state that CC is wasting vast quantities of money on competition – in their hearts they *know* (in the sense of religious conviction) each CC vehicle must be costing billions a year.

Compared to such *knowledge* what value is a certified audit?

Even with only one customer, if there are multiple potential suppliers, then there is a market. It is, also, presumptuous to suggest that there is no private market for human crew launch services. Robert Bigelow, for one, would beg to differ. So, contra Mr. Fornaro, there is plenty that is commercial about Commercial Crew – pretty much everything, in fact. What is completely non-commercial is a no-bid, sole-source block buy contract like the one ULA recently inveigled the Air Force into granting or a sole-source, no-bid, cost-plus, dead-end boondoggle like SLS.