Not. Some very useful thoughts from Miles O’Brien.
It is a shame how atrociously this has been reported, with all of the nonsensical talk about “ending human spaceflight.” Of course, it’s partly the administration’s fault, by springing it at the last minute. As Miles notes, anyone with their head in the sunlight could see that Constellation (or at least Ares — killing Orion as well was a legitimate surprise) couldn’t survive in the current (or really, any) environment, but it still came as a shock, with an inadequate description of what is to replace it. I hope that this will be rectified in the coming weeks and months.
Great quote, here:
And let’s face it: the mainstream media doesn’t have a clue either. Reporters who know some things about this beat have been unceremoniously dumped by the big papers and networks right and left – and many of them are now…well…webcasting.
So it is the perfect storm: the agency is not sold on the change…the communications plan is non existent…the reporters are not well informed…and the public is disengaged.
I fear this won’t end well for NASA human spaceflight which may have been OSTP’s John Holdren’s plan all along.
Cut human spaceflight to the bare minimum needed to service ISS plus robotic exploration and earth observation.
No, I cannot believe Lori Garver and Charles Bolden intend to “end human spaceflight” but John Holdren? Eh, I am less certain about that.
Bill,
I also expect it will not end well for New Space either. At best they will end up with NASA dictating flight safety requirements for its astronauts, which will likely become the default ones for the industry, both since NASA is the biggest customer, and the FAA AST would not want to seem to care less about the safety of the public then NASA does about its astronauts. This alone may be enough to kill off the New Space industry.
Also, since New Space is now in the Congressional spotlight. If SpaceX or another New Space firm working for NASA has any problem, such as a launch accident, you may be sure their will be Hearings on it. Unlike COTS, which was low level enough to escape the attentions of Congress, there will be Senators and Representatives that will want to question the new Space managers in hearings on what caused the accident, who was at fault, and why do they think they will be able to send astronauts safely to the ISS if their rockets don’t work…
Unfair. Totally!
Demonstrates a lack of understanding the process of developing and testing rockets. Completely!
But if this succeeds New Space will be the HSF game and will have 100% of the attention of members of Congress wishing to make political hay and crusading reporters looking for scandal. The old days of no one caring about what happened at Mojave or at a remote Pacific launch site will be over.
Hopefully Congress will kill President Obama’s new plan so the New Space industry will be able to continue maturing in peace and quiet.. But I wouldn’t bet on it.
At best they will end up with NASA dictating flight safety requirements for its astronauts, which will likely become the default ones for the industry, both since NASA is the biggest customer, and the FAA AST would not want to seem to care less about the safety of the public then NASA does about its astronauts.
NASA is not the biggest customer. Bigelow (and adventure travel companies) will be. NASA is simply the customer with the most money. And if NASA insists on higher levels of safety than other customers, they’ll have to pay for it.
Unless congress or its minions impose safety standards that SpaceX or other commercial space firms cannot meet economically and back it up with law.
That would put NASA back in the catbird seat and break the back of private space.
Rand,
With all due respect, how many commercial human spaceflight customers does Bigelow have at the moment? Bigelow started focusing on “sovereign” (government) customers simply because of the lack of commercial ones.
And how many of Space Adventures customers have booked flights on the Dragon or other domestic commercial HSF providers?
Sorry, but under the new policy, at a Billion dollars a year subsidy, (even if its fixed price for milestones its still a subsidy), plus an unknown price per seat, NASA will be by far the biggest HSF customer, if not the only one, for most of the next decade. So NASA will indeed call the tune on safety standards for orbital commercial human spaceflight by default. And FAA AST will meekly get in line once it happens so it won’t be criticized for being lax on safety even if they are suppose to be in charge of setting standards. Unfair perhaps but it is simply going to be one of the unintended consequences of this new direction if President Obama’s new plan is approved.
As for Sub-Orbital, I am waiting to hear what safety standards DRC will be setting for any purchases NASA makes of sub-orbital HSF, for researchers or astronaut training. Here at least New Space firms like Virgin Galactic still have the opportunity to ignore them by not going after those contracts and sticking to flying only space tourists, but it still puts them, and the FAA AST, in a vulnerable position, legally and from the PR perspective, if there is an accident and their standards are “different”.
I could see the members of Congress now at a future hearing asking the representative from the FAA AST why its OK to have “lower” safety standards for the public then for NASA “test pilots”.
No, I am sorry, I see great risks in making NASA a customer for commercial HSF. It will change the regulatory landscape even if on paper the FAA AST is still in charge of standards. The Camel’s nose (NASA) will be in the tent of space flight safety and you will see that the rest of it will soon follow.
At least when the government started charting airliners for ‘human air travel” (military transport in WWII) the airline safety standards were already in place and so the War Department ignored it as an issue.
With all due respect, how many commercial human spaceflight customers does Bigelow have at the moment? Bigelow started focusing on “sovereign” (government) customers simply because of the lack of commercial ones.
And how many of Space Adventures customers have booked flights on the Dragon or other domestic commercial HSF providers?
When they have services to offer, they’ll have customers. If you mean that NASA will be the “biggest customer” in terms of dollar revenue, well, of course. NASA always overpays (and will have to do so in this case if they want to impose their own unreasonable requirements). But there will be many more non-NASA customers than NASA flights.
I could see the members of Congress now at a future hearing asking the representative from the FAA AST why its OK to have “lower” safety standards for the public then for NASA “test pilots”.
And I can see the representative from AST saying, “…because you haven’t passed legislation enabling us to set spaceflight passenger safety standards. But before you do that, consider that NASA may have unreasonable safety requirements, and if astronauts are not willing to take the same risk as private citizens, perhaps we need new astronauts, or a sufficiently serious reason to send them into space to justify the risk.”
Rand,
Do you honestly think that the when NASA releases its human rating requirements for human orbital flight at the end of this year the FAA AST will ignore them? And spend time and money developing a different standard?
Tom
“No, I cannot believe Lori Garver and Charles Bolden intend to “end human spaceflight” but John Holdren? Eh, I am less certain about that.”
If it makes you feel any better Bill, Holdren will most likely not be in his current job in less than three years.
Rand,
[[[consider that NASA may have unreasonable safety requirements, and if astronauts are not willing to take the same risk as private citizens, perhaps we need new astronauts, or a sufficiently serious reason to send them into space to justify the risk.”]]]
Do you honestly expect a FAA employee to go on the Congressional record that its acceptable to have lower standards of safety for the public then NASA has for its astronauts, who are seen universally as risk takers? And do you expect them to have a job afterward if they do?
Do you honestly think that the when NASA releases its human rating requirements for human orbital flight at the end of this year the FAA AST will ignore them? And spend time and money developing a different standard?
FAA will do whatever the law requires. It regulates spaceflight, not NASA. And it won’t take well to being told how to do it by NASA, particularly given the latter’s track record in human spaceflight safety. You don’t seem to understand government agencies very well.
Rand,
Rand,
FYI, as I know you have been busy with remodeling…
From Administrator’s Bolden’s written statement at the Senate Hearing 2/24/2010
http://commerce.senate.gov/public/?a=Files.Serve&File_id=1155f43d-3b79-4729-a1c5-1f398765f519
[[[NASA plans to allocate this FY 2011 funding via competitive solicitations that support a range of activities such as human-rating existing launch vehicles and developing new crew spacecraft that can ride on multiple launch vehicles. NASA will ensure that all commercial systems meet stringent human-rating and safety requirements before we allow any NASA crew member (including NASA contractors and NASA-sponsored International partners) to travel aboard a commercial vehicle on a NASA mission. Safety is, and always will be, NASA’s first core value.]]]
In the testimony I believe he indicated the standards would be in place by the end of the year. I suspect that will include the standards that DRC will develop for sub-orbital human missions as well since NASA is allocating $75 million towards such missions.
That continues to have nothing to do with AST. If NASA’s requirements prove too onerous for the providers (particularly suborbital) it will be NASA’s loss. There will be plenty of other customers. In fact, right now, AFAIK, AST has no statutory authority to regulate orbital human spaceflight — only suborbital. As far as it’s concerned, people are just another payload, and they have no responsibility to ensure that payloads get to orbit safely.
Rand,
You don’t seem to understand how bureaucracy works. There is no way the FAA will want to be seen as having a standard for public safety that is more lax then NASA’s standards, especially if they NASA’s standard are not seen as being safe enough as you indicate. So the NASA standard may only be the starting point for the FAA standard.
Yes, the FAA AST is responsible for regulating safety and the FAA AST may well demonstrate that by developing a much higher standards then NASA to show they care more about safety then NASA. Yes, they are also responsible for promoting spaceflight, but no member of the agency has been taken to task about not promoting the industry enough. But the FAA has been taken to task by Congress for being too lax on safety in the past. So which way do you think they will ‘error’ on?
When NASA books an airline flight, do they dictate the safety standards? Do they insist that their pilots fly the plane? Do they put safety inspectors in the maintenance shops and out on the flightline?
More to the point, how much control does NASA have over the Russians when an American astronaut is launched on a Soyuz? Does NASA get to levy extra safety requirements on the Russians? If so, does this explain why NASA has to pay a reported $51 million per astronaut carried on a Soyuz compared to about $25 million for a commercial customer?
Sure, NASA has the potential to dictate unreasonable safety requirements. The commercial providers can then turn around and dictate a higher price or simply tell NASA to take a hike.
There is no way the FAA will want to be seen as having a standard for public safety that is more lax then NASA’s standards, especially if they NASA’s standard are not seen as being safe enough as you indicate. So the NASA standard may only be the starting point for the FAA standard.
Let me repeat this: The FAA currently has no statutory authority to set safety standards for spaceflight participants. Its only responsibility with regard to safety is to ensure that the uninvolved are not damaged by the flight. As for comparing its standards, if and when it is given authority to establish them, if I were them, I would say that we will be informed by NASA ideas, incorporate the good ones, and ignore those that are unreasonable, in the interest of promoting the industry, which remains one of AST’s mandates. The fact that NASA has killed astronauts in the past while spending untold billions attempting to prevent it doesn’t mean that their standards should be used as a baseline, except perhaps on Bizarro World. It means they should be suspect.
Sure, NASA has the potential to dictate unreasonable safety requirements. The commercial providers can then turn around and dictate a higher price or simply tell NASA to take a hike.
Sure, but only if there are other customers.
Getting some private destinations up to LEO is therefore a priority, even if this new NASA plan doesn’t seem to acknowledge non-NASA destinations as a priority
PS — The commercial providers already are dictating higher prices in response to onerous or extravagant NASA specifications.
It is called “cost plus” contracting.
Larry,
As I pointed out, the safety standards for the airline industry were already in place when the government started charting airlines to carry military personal during World War II. That is NOT the case with human orbital spaceflight. the FAA AST doesn’t even have the authority yet for orbital, just sub-orbtial, and they have been going with the flow so far since no one else has developed standards for sub-orbital human spacecraft.
As for Soyuz, its was a forced marriage driven by politics, and the lack of NASA input into safety has been an issue, both on Soyuz and Mir, witness the recent case of the separation bolts on Soyuz about a year ago. But since its a foreign government NASA doesn’t have the leverage (again, forced marriage…) like they have with their domestic contractors. And they have even less with Soyuz now that they will be dependent on them. But that doesn’t mean NASA is satisfied with the Soyuz safety, they are just not in a position to do anything about it, especially with the Shuttle being phased out and a launch gap.
Rand,
[[[Let me repeat this: The FAA currently has no statutory authority to set safety standards for spaceflight participants. Its only responsibility with regard to safety is to ensure that the uninvolved are not damaged by the flight.]]]
Which makes the current situation in regards to standards even more dangerous for New Space, since Congress, in its infinite wisdom, may just use the new standards as the basis for any regulation when it gives the FAA AST authority. This is even more likely if NASA has its standards in place by the end of the year and uses then as the basis for biding out commercial crew as Administrator Bolden indicated. Since they are first, and firms are designing vehicles to meet them, they may well become the industry’s by default.
I would suggest that advocates of New Space therefore pay close attention to the new human rating standards for orbital and suborbital flight as NASA develops them to ensure they are reasonable and not just ignore them as being only “NASA” standards.
I would suggest that advocates of New Space therefore pay close attention to the new human rating standards for orbital and suborbital flight as NASA develops them to ensure they are reasonable and not just ignore them as being only “NASA” standards.
I don’t think they need your warning to do that, Tom. But there are two stages to the battle. The first one is what you describe. The second one, and a more winnable fight, is to see that they don’t become de facto law for FAA regulation.
Or de jure, for that matter.
It’s also useful to point out, in fighting off NASA standards, that NASA hasn’t built a vehicle that has met them since Apollo, so it’s unreasonable to expect private industry to do so…
Rand,
NASA unreasonable. Never! 🙂
Tom
The article asks…
So what do people care about when it comes to space?
I would guess the answer is that most people don’t. Even the readers of this blog, atypical in that they do care, each have different opinions and are less than fully supportive of one another and their ideas. Bring those ideas to the public along with the cost and space gets much less support.
I’ve been told, more or less, it’s the economics stupid. Space will happen, like everything else, when it’s profitable. Which is why we have a satellite industry; it’s profitable for the companies launching them to provide a service Earth people will pay for. Space people don’t pay for services… there are no people living mainly in space. Martian people don’t pay for services… ditto. The belters? Pulp fiction from the fifties.
If the only way we settle space is for the settlements to sell stuff back to Earth… goodbye settlements because it’s not likely to happen anytime soon if ever. However, imagine those settlements existed. Now you have people paying for passage back and forth. Those people need resources that others will supply (not all coming from Earth.)
What you’ve read in the history books is wrong, most settlements are not expeditions financed by debt. Overwhelmingly it’s individual people checking out life in the next valley. Are wagon trains some fiction or a historical actuality? Once we establish settlements where people can live and work, others will find their own way there and the space industry can get down to business selling tickets.
Who pays for it? Not the naysayers, that’s for certain. But people with their own resources will one day. It takes no genius to say that if space had something valuable to sell to Earth that would open it up. It takes a bit more vision to see islands of internal economic growth being the real drivers in the centuries ahead. We have worlds to conquer.
I agree with those that think NASA’s new policy may be a step in that direction. At the very least we are no longer wasting money on a really stupid project.
NASA is not the biggest customer. Bigelow (and adventure travel companies) will be.
Tense confusion alert! Let’s get our facts straight about the present point in time and our sense of certainty appropriate for the future. In fact NASA *is* not only the biggest customer it is the only customer of Dragon and Blue Origin and DreamChaser. The Bigelow thing *may be* in the future — or more likely may not.
As Miles notes, anyone with their head in the sunlight could see that Constellation (or at least Ares — killing Orion as well was a legitimate surprise) couldn’t survive in the current (or really, any) environment, but it still came as a shock, with an inadequate description of what is to replace it.
Well once they killed Ares I it made no sense to keep Orion around. I mean, no other actually available rocket can launch the thing.
I was in favor of EELV launched CEV proposals. My gripe with OSP was that it was clearly done backwards. This was implicit in the name. A client should not a priori decide which kind of technical solution the contractor will use. The client should just make a bunch of measurable requirements. Still, they should have demanded a fly off, or at least the construction of a test prototype before choosing anything.
The fact that NASA has killed astronauts in the past while spending untold billions attempting to prevent it doesn’t mean that their standards should be used as a baseline, except perhaps on Bizarro World.
Alas, Bizarro World is indeed the home world of the space program.
Larry JThe commercial providers can then turn around and dictate a higher price
We have a name for that. It’s called government contracting.
or simply tell NASA to take a hike.
Sure, they could switch to a different line of business. For example Boeing could stick to commercial airplanes. But those high prices are awfully tempting.
I wish I could say publicly how much I liked this article…. it was fantastic.
At best they will end up with NASA dictating flight safety requirements for its astronauts, which will likely become the default ones for the industry, both since NASA is the biggest customer, and the FAA AST would not want to seem to care less about the safety of the public then NASA does about its astronauts.
Dryden plans to use the same safety evaluation process they use for NASA aircraft. So, by your logic, NASA must setting the FAA standards for aircraft like the DC-8.
There’s one big logical flaw in your argument. NASA has said they will not be an early adopter for crewed suborbital. They will wait and see how safe the vehicles turn out to be, then decide if they want to fly on them.
Since other people will fly on the vehicles before NASA completes its safety evaluation, it is impossible for the FAA to base its licensing off NASA’s safety evaluation — unless one of those agencies have invented a time machine.
Talking about “new human rating standards for orbital and suborbital flight” shows that you don’t understand the difference between NASA and the N.A.S.A. Can you give us a pointer to Dryden’s current “human rating standards”?
“unless one of those agencies have invented a time machine.”
And who will do that the safety evaluation for that, the National Archives? 🙂 I hope not Los Alamos!
Edward,
Actually it shows you are not keeping up with the news and are lost in ancient history.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1566/1
[[[NASA is also playing a role in promoting commercial suborbital spaceflight. “I do anticipate that one day soon that these [suborbital] vehicles will be safe enough that NASA will pay for hundreds of astronauts and scientists and technology developers to fly into space each and every year,” she said. To ensure that these vehicles are safe enough for NASA, she said the Dryden Flight Research Center would lead the safety assessment of these vehicles, although she didn’t discuss the details of how such assessments would work.]]]
With $15 million in the 2011 budget for suborbital flights I don’t think it will be years before NASA sends astronauts on them, unless of course the sub-orbtial New Space firms pass on the contract due because of the safety assessment DRC will do on them.
But we should know in a year or so after NASA completes its human rating studies and develops its standards.
Yeah, I dunno how many times I’ve said it… but obviously more people need to start helping Space Adventures do their press. At $30M+ a seat, Space Adventures has more customers than they have seats available. If the Russians offered Space Adventures their own Soyuz every year they’d be able to fill it.. that includes full pilot training for at least one of the participants, and if that cost more it wouldn’t be a problem. Space Adventures needs more providers, not just to drive the price down, but to fulfill the demand they already have. Richard Garriott recently did a TED talk where he repeated what I’ve already heard twice: there is work that private astronauts can do on-orbit which will pay for their seat. Pretty soon it will be *profitable* to fly to orbit and do medical and other research.. and that’s at the absurd prices so called “tourists” have paid.
So shut up about this “there’s no market” bullshit. I’m totally sick of hearing NASA employees *lying* that they went searching for a market for commercial crew to orbit and didn’t find one. Where’d they look? Did they call Space Adventures? Did they call Bigelow? And then the politicians repeat the lies….
The market is there. Futron have done the studies. Space Adventures have proved it.
Not that I don’t fear all kinds of nefarious possibilities but not all indicators are bad:
It’s required that NASA evaluate the safety of a flight vehicle for its own personnel. That the aircraft folks of Dryden (you know, the folks who used to fly X-planes.. like the X-15) “won the fight” to do that for suborbitals rather than the Human Spaceflight “establishment” at NASA was a big pointer to reasonable rather than unreasonably complex standards. It says the suborbitals will be treated as high-speed aircraft rather than critical items on which Our National Heroes have ridden to date.
I do fear too much intervention turning embedding unreasonably costly NASA standards into private orbital systems. But that’s not a given, for several reasons that I will get to if I have the energy to get back to this topic..
Well, for one thing, from the way Bigelow was talking on the CSF press call-in after the budget announcement, he sounded a lot surer than in the past that he has those customers – at least to me. (This is something I want to check, and the present topic has reminded me.)
For another, the people on the NASA proposed suborbital program (“CRuSR”) have said that they will not be paying for people to ride on those vehicles for some time (sounds like at least a couple of years to me). By contrast, Alan Stern has said at the recent Boulder suborbital science conference, that by golly, he will have scientists (including himself) flying on the suborbitals well before that. SWRI has already pledged $1million to suborbital flight experiments and sounds like other money sources are lining up.
Then, of course, in parallel there will be the ‘tourist’ flights on the suborbitals. Of course there could be a catastrophe there and overreacting regulation but that was always a possibility.
The point of the preceding two paragraphs is that it looks like there will be at least a year or two of only AST-affected human suborbital flights before NASA needs to put standards for its own precious cargo into practice. That can only increase the plausibility that if AST can do effective standards for non-NASA suborbital human launch and landing, they can competently do so for non-NASA orbital human launch and landing. As to the _orbital phase_ of flight, that’s not defined as in their perview and as George Neild recently noted in DC, brings in all kinds of international issues dating from space law created during Cold War days.
But with any luck AST’s accumulating history with suborbitals will allow it to be a strong voice of reasonableness in consideration of those matters as well.
Now why don’t we all just go back to worrying about the next 3 generations of americans having to pay off the national debt to China? Something minor, you know.
Trent,
[[[So shut up about this “there’s no market” bullshit. I’m totally sick of hearing NASA employees *lying* that they went searching for a market for commercial crew to orbit and didn’t find one.]]]
And yet the Merchant 7 are looking to NASA for subsidies to build their rockets. If the market was large enough to cover the overhead for developing the launch systems they would not need NASA subsidies to build their vehicles.
Keep in mind that just the desire to buy something doesn’t automatically create a market. Its only a potential market until potential revenues of the sum total of people wishing to buy the product and service exceed the cost of providing it.
The problem is not that people don’t want to fly into space, its that there are no providers yet that have succeeded in developing the vehicles to serve the market at a price that will make a profit.
Thomas, your ignorance is showing, SpaceX was started for, and well under way to, making a manned vehicle long before NASA even started the COTS program.. let alone commercial crew. Not to mention the suborbital operators who have done everything to-date without even recognition from NASA. Just last week NASA made it clear that they would not be an early adopter of manned suborbital flights.. they’re letting private spaceflight participants beat that path for them.
If the market was large enough to cover the overhead for developing the launch systems they would not need NASA subsidies to build their vehicles.
This is a non-requiter. Just because a company goes to NASA or anyplace else for that matter for funds does not imply there is no market. Trent has already demonstrated that there is a market (seats are being sold and the need is greater than the sales.) The only way to prove there is no market would be to show he is wrong. As to whether it’s large enough… SpaceX spent what? $100m plus $20m of other investors money. It wouldn’t take too many at $30m a pop to cover that. Of, course dragon would cost some more, but after $120m they are already in the black. So both points are covered, there is a market and it’s large enough.
Non-sequitur, I meant. I see Trent beat me to the cost question.
Trent,
You ignorance of marketing and industry evolution is showing.
You don’t have a “market” just because some consumers have a desire for a product, a latent demand, as it is called. A market requires supplies willing and ABLE to supply the product to those consumers. In short also need to build the rocket to provide the service. Space tourists are still waiting for those rockets.
yes, there have been firms “building” rockets for that market for 30 years. Look at old proposals like the Phoenix, Rotary Rocket, Kistler, etc. There are also a number of firms “building” flying cars to meet the latent demand for them. But to date none have closed their business case and none have succeeded in delivering the product, a commercial crew rocket, to serve that market. Spaceshiptwo is close, but it still has a long test program ahead of it before it goes operation.
Yes, SpaceX was looking at the market at some future date. But the Falcon 9 and Dragon are being driven by NASA’s COTS program, both for cargo and perhaps, if approved, for crew. But to believe that the COTS program will generate a commercial human spacecraft to supply the market is similar to the belief in the 1960’s that the C-5 program for a military airlifter would supply a super airlifter for the commercial cargo market. Have you seen any C-5’s in FedEx colors lately? Or UPS? Of DHL?
To believe that a spacecraft designed to meet NASA’s commercial crew requirements, and safety requires, is a big leap of faith unsupported by economic history. COTS killed RpK dreams, one of the more promising commercial firms for suborbital and then reusable HSF. It will probably do the same for Dragon and the other commercial crew “winners” even if they succeed in fulfilling the contract because the vehicle will just be too expensive for the commercial orbital market.
True commercial market driven industries don’t emerge from the top down of government intervention, they emerge button up from meeting consumer needs. The government buying computers didn’t create the computer industry, commercial customers, first business, then home users, created the computer industry. And the auto industry. And the railroads. The human spaceflight industry will be no different.
Yes, there may be some commercial astronauts on the new vehicles, just as there were commercial astronauts on some of the Shuttle missions. But it won’t be the commercial industry many space advocates count on because government markets are not the same as private ones. That is why the major impact of President’s Obama’s new policy on the emerging New Space industry will be to simply turn it into the New Space Contractor Industry. And as a result space advocates will still be talking about how their is a need to create a commercial space industry years from now when its clear that commercial crew didn’t have the results they believed it would have.
Hopefully then Space Advocates will move beyond their NASA fetish (to use a current buzz world in space policy) and focus on creating the Non-NASA institutions that will actually enable a commercial industry to evolve, institutions like:
A Lunar Development Corporation
A Space Development Bank
A network of State/Regional Space Academies
A Space Solar Power Corporation
But I expect that space advocates need to have their dreams shattered at least one more time by NASA before they will be ready to move beyond NASA and move beyond their NASA fetish.
The good thing about President Obama’s policy, if it survives, is that its giving the New Space Advocates everything they asked for so when it fails to create the commercial HSF industry they dream of they won’t be able to argue it was because NASA didn’t follow their advice.
Ken,
Your cost numbers are way off. SpaceX is receiving around $250 million to build the Falcon 9. That is on top of what Elon invested in it. And the COTS firms (OSC and SpaceX) are looking for another $300 million for COTS “milestones” in the 2011 NASA Budget. And this is only for cargo. The COTS money and competition for Commercial Crew is still in the future.
By the time Falcon 9/Dragon meets NASA requirements you will see seat costs above $30 million per flight. And probably an investment of $700 million to a billion in the Falcon 9/Dragon.
Your cost numbers are way off. SpaceX is receiving around $250 million to build the Falcon 9. That is on top of what Elon invested in it.
Pardon me, but isn’t that money originally not Elon Musk’s money? Ken remains correct.
By the time Falcon 9/Dragon meets NASA requirements you will see seat costs above $30 million per flight.
Citation please?
It’s a charming thought to think that the only thing needed to sell this train wreck is more and better spin. But as our President once said, putting lipstick on a pig does not make it no longer a pig.
My advice would be for the administration to enter into negotiations with Congress to come up with a budget that will be acceptable for all. And start looking for people to blame and fire.
Open Letter from Homer Hickam to Charles Bolden
Thomas,
I don’t know all the SpaceX numbers as of now, but I can tell you where you are wrong. They were profitable after the first $120m. Then they took NASA money to expedite the F9/Dragon, which they would have been a fool not to. Yes, their costs went up. They also found they could charge a lot more than the lower price they fully intended to make a profit on before the government threw there wrench into the works. My worry is not that there isn’t a market, but that another SpaceX type of company will enter the market too late and SpaceX will become another Intel.
By your own definition Thomas there is a market… A market requires supplies willing and ABLE to supply the product to those consumers. The Russians have been willing and able(barely perhaps) to supply that market. SpaceX is within a few years of adding to that supply with Elon already offering trips not just to orbit but around the moon (ok, so he’s a bit too enthusiastic about that one, but he’ll get there.)
You make some good points Thomas and I’m glad your making them, but your C-5 analogy may be stretched a bit in this case. Aircraft manufacturers are a much more robust industry (although the normal consolidation over the past few decades has been worry-some.)
Mark, the train wreck was the rocket they were building and the biggest change seems to be to clear that wreck off the tracks. Employing people in a government job when the private sector does it much better is the other wreck being cleared.
Yes, there’s lots of hand wringing and the government isn’t very inspiring these days (unless you count the inspiration of anti-government sentiment.) If the government takes the money it’s been wasting and funnels it to private companies that may not be the best result but it’s not the worst either.
Actually it shows you are not keeping up with the news and are lost in ancient history.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1566/1
Gee, Tom, since I was there and actually heard the words you only read about on the Internet, calling me “lost in ancient history” is pretty funny.
Keep reading the funny papers and telling us you know everything. We need your comic relief. 🙂
I’m still wondering why you suddenly care so much about companies that you had nothing but contempt for in the (very recent) past.
Just a couple weeks ago, you told us that you didn’t care what NASA or private enterprise did. Both were going to fail, because the Moon was the only place where it was possible to create new industries and your government-owned “Lunar Development Corporation” was the only entity that could do it.
So, why the crocodile tears, now? Why are you whining that private enterprise and NASA aren’t doing what you want, instead of working on your Lunar Development Corporation?
My advice would be for the administration to enter into negotiations with Congress to come up with a budget that will be acceptable for all. And start looking for people to blame and fire.
Just what the Obama Administration needs. Advice from someone who doesn’t think they’re spending enough money. 🙂
At yesterday’s hearings, Dana Rohrabacher had a great line about Republicans who claim to be in favor of small government but only want to increase spending and never cut anything.
Take a bow, Mark. 🙂
Karl,
Yes, not a bad leverage, about $100 million of your money for $278 million of NASA money. But that that is the advantage of being a government contractor and what makes its so addicting, even if it’s a fix price contract. And the current budget is adding another $300 million for new COTS “milestones”.
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/falcon.htm
Cost for development of the Falcon 9 and Dragon cargo capsule at $378 million.
Astronautix is also quoting the Cargo delivery contact
SpaceX is getting 1.6 billion to deliver 20,000 kg of cargo to IS. That works out to 36,363 lb. Since 1 flight of the Dragon delivers 5,500 lbs, that gives a nice round number of $200 million the government is paying for each cargo flight of the Dragon to ISS. You may also get that figure by dividing the 8 flights of the cargo Dragon by the 1.6 billion contract.
Carry capacity of the Dragon is suppose to be 7. So if its $200 million a flight to ISS that works out to around 28.5 million a seat, but I suspect that is a low figure as a human rated Dragon will cost more then a cargo rated one.
Yes, I know Elon is quoting $20 million a seat in this 2009 plea for people to write to Congress for COTS-D
http://www.spacex.com/cotsd.php
That would be equal to $140 million a flight for the Falcon 9/Dragon.
But when the dust of R&D settles you will find it will be closer to my estimate based on the cargo costs. Once you enter NASA sphere costs skyrocket. I know this from the work I did pricing a lunar rover mission with at aerospace majors for a customer some years ago.
The problem is when those costs get locked into the design as was the case with the C-5. This just kills it for commercial customers.
Ken,
Yes, it is very profitable being a government contractor, and having DOD a customer for the Falcon 9 did allow SpaceX to make a profit quickly. But the DOD is also not a commercial customer.
Russian was selling surplus seats in a bid to keep their program alive. the Soyuz was not designed for the market. Its like the old British model 9and government program to “help” industry”) of converting War World bombers into airliners. Now that was a track wreck that really contributed to killing the British airliner manufacturing industry.
We are talking about building healthy sustainable commercial markets, not ones dependent on the fickle finger of fate as represented by Congress and the President.