If Mike Griffin had let Steidle continue, we’d probably have a CEV flying on an Atlas by now, and wouldn’t have to worry about potential extortion attempts like this. Deciding to end Shuttle without focusing on getting a new system in place first was a policy blunder of the highest order. Unless we simply pull out of ISS, the Russians have us over a barrel. They can continue to help Iran develop nukes and missiles with impunity, and they can continue their monopoly by obstructive behavior such as this. Bob Bigelow needs to start getting some facilities up, and NASA needs to accelerate the Boeing and SpaceX activities. Also, while I know this is controversial, I think that they should start crewing Dragon ASAP, and not wait for an abort system. And that’s what we’d be doing, if space were important.
31 thoughts on “The Joys Of International Cooperation”
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Deciding to end Shuttle without focusing on getting a new system in place first was a policy blunder of the highest order.
They did do that, didn’t they, although they chose the wrong launch vehicle (Ares I), the wrong spacecraft (Orion) and the wrong organisation to design the launch vehicle (MSFC).
They can continue to help Iran develop nukes and missiles with impunity
I doubt the availability of a commercial crew vehicle would make any difference to this. Space isn’t important to the Russians either.
I think that they should start crewing Dragon ASAP
Even if they were to decide to kill SLS + MPCV? That seems like the important part, everything else could wait. I’d prefer cancellation and no commercial crew to no cancellation and commercial crew.
Really, how valuable is ISS at two plus decades old for science and exploration?
If most of the ridiculous red tape could be cut, we could have a state of the art station several times the size of ISS, or multiple stations and fuel depots in less than a decade using mostly commercial suppliers such as Bigelow and SpaceX.
However, with the coming budget problems, I think it would be useful to see if some sort of commercial space consortium could be set up. Solves some of the red tape issues, and would probably be run better.
Not a new idea, but a consortium made of up of chip makers, biotech, pharma, aerospace, etc., could supply seed money in exchange for timeshares on the station(s).
[[[Deciding to end Shuttle without focusing on getting a new system in place first was a policy blunder of the highest order.]]]
Yep, this is exactly what I have been saying for years.
New Space advocates may not have liked the Shuttle and may have considered it a failure, but as long as it was flying NASA didn’t have a real excuse to build a replacement, which was why none of the projects to do so got very far, although OSP was promising before it was stopped by the decision to go for a CEV.
Also if the Shuttle had continued in existence it would have allowed OSP could have been allowed to go forward, providing a more practical alternatives. While the true commercial market forces would have moved private HSF forward as well without the danger it now faces of being assimilated by NASA through a thousand tiny changes in specifications (for better safety you know…) into something as practical for commercial service as a C-17 is for commercial air cargo service.
I would have accepted a gap between Shuttle and its replacement, but structured differently:
They should have canceled Shuttle immediately after Columbia, and accelerated the Orbital Space Plane program capsule on an EELV to ISS. Then the “new system development delay” could have been overlayed onto the Return to Flight delay. Coupled with remaining ISS module delivery on EELV using concepts proposed for that, the 15 billion+ that was invested in propping up a dead end system could have been injected into establishing the new supply chain.
Once we have alternatives and Russia loses its monopoly they will not be able to charge as much (assuming we don’t agree to a stupid contract.) It makes perfect sense that they would bring up any objections they can think of. The beauty of free trade is it eliminates this kind of manipulation.
Soon we will have a half a dozen stations in LEO and then the fun begins.
Meh, I see it as a tit for tat. NASA too often acts like it should have a say in what the Russians do with their launch vehicles. Part of this is because NASA has paid a good deal of money for certain launches. However, in that effort, NASA has also demanded (as I have heard they done to commercial developers) some amount of knowledge and control over things like reliability and risk. I’m sure the Russians feel the same way when that happens to them.
It is a shame that NASA leadership, present and future, made it so easy for the Russians to respond this way. However, I doubt this will slow down Dragon much, if at all. If anything, it may lead to more money going to SpaceX to meet the new requirements levied by the International Partners. It sucks as taxpayers, but that’s why many of us want to vote some of idiots out of office (and hopefully find someone that will send some entrenched bureaucrats home too).
I say fill the next COTS Dragon with gourmet foodstuffs and whatever SpaceX thinks the Russians would like. Park it a couple of hundred feet from the ISS and then ask the Russian Cosmonauts if they want to share in the bounty or what?
The Dragon can hang there for weeks, I’m pretty sure, matching the orbit of the ISS with little station keeping. At some point sense will prevail.
P.S. I agree with Leland.
Speaking of Griffin, he’ll be on The Space Show on the 26th.. anyone got questions for him?
Bennett: That leads to the Russians landing on the Dragon, seizing via (oceanic) salvage laws as ‘ship adrift’ (to hell with what the treaties say) and getting something new to copy.
Al, in a universe where Dragon is something you need to copy that might be relevant.. but the reality is that everything SpaceX does is just sensible engineering which any competent team of engineers with a free hand could put together.
Bennett Says:
“I say fill the next COTS Dragon with gourmet foodstuffs and whatever SpaceX thinks the Russians would like.”
Vodka and porn.
What did Japan have to do to show their cargo craft was reliable?
Ya know how the politicians in Congress go on and on about how “unproven” SpaceX is.. I cringe every time I hear them. Well, the Russians have those people too. It’s in their interest to belittle the achievements of the visionaries, so they do.
I’m hoping (but not very hopefully) that this is a mix of overblown reporting and The Russians making NASA squirm a bit for being painful about the start of space tourism.
It may be the beginning of the end of the Russian space program. Who would ride Soyuz when better alternatives become available? The Russian economy, based on high oil prices, isn’t going to develop anything better as long as they already have a capability. China is more likely to surprise us.
“What did Japan have to do to show their cargo craft was reliable?”
It had to not be American human-rated competition, it seems…
“…and The Russians making NASA squirm a bit for being painful about the start of space tourism.”
A monopoly market they may see as potentially slipping away, along with human NASA transport.
Nobody commented on Rand’s penultimate sentence.
Anyone got an estimate of the time of the black zone after liftoff to when commanded engine shutdown of the first stage followed by Dragon separation and parachute deployment becomes feasible? I’m guessing it may be as short as 30 seconds or so, maybe a little less? Based on acceleration of 5Msec^-2 at liftoff. After 30 seconds you’ve got 150Msec^-1 upwards vector at 2250M. Plenty. More in fact as the acceleration has been increasing as fuel is burned off.
Maybe it’s not too bad a calculated risk to ride the Dragon without an escape system.
Dragon without an escape system is… an interesting notion!
NASA would never go for it though… They would never, ever condone a manned launch without an escape system!
Except if they build it, that is. (Shuttle, anyone?)
What’s so hard about an escape system anyway? I hope Mr. Musk isn’t being stubborn like he was on the destruct system.
Pawn, what? Dunno if you heard but SpaceX just won a $75M contract to make the Dragon land under its own power, and the launch escape system will work the same way.
What’s so hard about an escape system anyway? I hope Mr. Musk isn’t being stubborn like he was on the destruct system.
Musk was being stubborn on the destruct system, the Air Force was. Like all comanies, SpaceX had to get approval from Air Force range safety before they could launch from the Cape. Getting that approval took time despite the fact that they were using a proven, off-the-shelf system.
The difficulty with developing a launch escape system is testing it. You need to demonstrate a pad abort (which is relatively cheap) and one or more flight aborts (which get real expensive). SpaceX is going with a new type of escape system that has never been used before but interestingly enough is very similar to what Boeing is building for their CST-100. They intend to be able to perform a soft landing on land at the end of a nominal mission to reduce recovery costs and shorten the time to refurbish the capsule for another flight.
Musk was being stubborn on the destruct system, the Air Force was.
Damned fingers.
Musk wasn’t being stubborn on the destruct system, the Air Force was.
Let’s all keep something in mind here: there is also the risk that people within NASA will screw with the standards for commercial flight by NASA staff, to raise these same “safety concerns” to a destructive level. The Russians are not doing anything that isn’t being thought about somewhere within Old Space here in the USA. The only way to really open up LEO for non-NASA travel is to fly some non-NASA destinations.
SpaceX is going with a new type of escape system that has never been used before but interestingly enough is very similar to what Boeing is building for their CST-100.
My understanding is Boeing is going to use a pusher configuration that is not integral like the SpaceX design. SpaceX will be bringing their complete system back, Boeing will not be.
That may well be true, Ken. I’ve only seen sketchy details about Boeing’s CST-100 capsule, a mockup and a little test hardware. At the Space Symposium, they had a video of a rocket engine test and that may have been their abort motor but I didn’t see any additional info to explain the video.
The info they were handing out states the capsule can be fitted to an Atlas V, a Delta IV or a Falcon 9. This is very smart because it eliminates the need for extensive down-time if they have a booster failure. It also allows the customer to choose which booster they want. Boeing is getting ready to announce which of the boosters they’ll use for the initial flight tests. They have to pick one of them pretty soon to get their capsules on the launch manifest. Odds are it’ll be an Atlas V.
The SpaceX representative said they’re going to use 8 escape rocket motors mounted in pairs around the base of the Dragon. It’s an interesting concept and I look forward to learning more about it.
>>What did Japan have to do to show their cargo craft was reliable?
They had to do Hikoboshi/Orihime, aka ETS VII or Kiku 7
Read up on it, its a fascinating story.
remove the russian portion of the ISS, try to reorient (if we want to) the rest of it to a more useful orbit. There, just doubled the functional habitats in LEO.
Larry, you should talk to some of the people involved. Some of Elon’s folks were battling with the Range for a LONG time and it came down to a scramble the last minute. Elon had a long time (years) to prepare and engage the safety weenies but blew them off as dinosaurs and old school relics as I understand it. I saw some of this myself. A lot of folks outdide of Spacex found this amusing. I’m sure his ex-Boeing ops guys would have counciled him on his attitude if they didn’t know better how it would be taken. I don’t think Mr. Musk has much respect for authority or old guys in general. That can be foolish sometimes, especially when your the new kid on the block.
I just don’t see how this is a good move by the Russians. It’s either too early or too late. Prior to the COTS 1 demonstration flight, they could have raised a ruckus a la Shelby and Hutchison, and helped cut CCDev more. A little bit closer to the actual flight, they could have thrown up regulatory roadblocks that would have cost NASA and SpaceX tens or hundreds of millions. Now, they just supercharge the debate in favor of commercial space. It was American entrepreneurs vs. American ‘proven’ industry. Now every NewSpace advocate can phrase the debate in terms of American entrepreneurs vs. Russian bureaucrats. And the Russians need the NASA resupply missions in the near term almost as much as we do. It just stinks of desperation. I expect about as much to come of this as came of NASA’s attempts to stop Dennis Tito.
The SpaceX representative said they’re going to use 8 escape rocket motors mounted in pairs around the base of the Dragon.
They’ve also strongly suggested that earth isn’t the only planet they could land it on.
“Also, while I know this is controversial, I think that they should start crewing Dragon ASAP, and not wait for an abort system. And that’s what we’d be doing, if space were important.”
Exactly right. I’ve been making the same suggestion myself for over a year, but no one seemed to like the idea. My reasoning is a Dragon without a launch escape system is probably no more dangerous than the Shuttle.