Up now at Out Of The Cradle. Ken Murphy’s done a great job.

I’m kind of surprised (though pleasantly, if true) at the estimated cost of the contract to Boeing for the Ares 1 upper stage:

The $514.7 million cost-plus-award fee contract runs through 2016 and covers the manufacture of a ground test article, three flight test units and six production flight units.

So they’re getting about ten units altogether for half a billion? Even if the development costs are zero, that’s only about fifty megabucks a copy. If we assume that it’s a couple hundred millions for DDT&E, that’s only about thirty million each. I’m sure that the J2-X will be cheaper than an SSME, but I would think it’s still going to cost several million dollars per engine. I would have guessed that the stage cost was higher. These numbers imply to me that, with learning (and I guess it helps that NASA provides the production facilities at Michaud–I’ll bet that’s not included in the costs stated above) that they could get the marginal cost per stage down in the twenty-five million range or less.

Better news for sustainability than I would have thought. I wonder what the cost of the first stage is?

[Thursday update]

OK, there seems to be a consensus in the comments that this price doesn’t include engine or avionics (those are separate contracts), which is where a lot of the cost of a stage lies. So it’s not that great a deal. I thought it was too good to be true.

I’ve always been skeptical of the “drunk astronauts” story, and think that the media (and Congress) were far too quick to jump on it, since it was never substantiated. It just never really rang true to me. Unfortunately, NASA has been put in the impossible position of having to prove a negative, and there will now be people who will believe it as gospel (just as many will continue to believe that NASA never put men on the moon).

And I have to say that I sympathize with members of the astronaut corps who are justifiably pissed off about it.

But it angers me for another reason. There are so many legitimate issues and problems with the agency, that nonsense like this and crazy astronauts distracts us from dealing with them. Yet another reason to hope for needed breakthroughs in the private sector.

Clark Lindsey addresses the ludicrous, but widespread notion that there is something different about space passenger travel that makes it so fragile that the industry will somehow be destroyed by a single accident.

I suspect that the source of this is the same one that causes us to irrationally grieve astronauts that we’ve never met, and demand that no more ever die. There seems to be something different about space in the minds of many that causes people to check their brains at the door when discussing it.

It’s just another place, people. Folks are going to die opening up frontiers, as they always have. Get over it.

Clark Lindsey addresses the ludicrous, but widespread notion that there is something different about space passenger travel that makes it so fragile that the industry will somehow be destroyed by a single accident.

I suspect that the source of this is the same one that causes us to irrationally grieve astronauts that we’ve never met, and demand that no more ever die. There seems to be something different about space in the minds of many that causes people to check their brains at the door when discussing it.

It’s just another place, people. Folks are going to die opening up frontiers, as they always have. Get over it.

Clark Lindsey addresses the ludicrous, but widespread notion that there is something different about space passenger travel that makes it so fragile that the industry will somehow be destroyed by a single accident.

I suspect that the source of this is the same one that causes us to irrationally grieve astronauts that we’ve never met, and demand that no more ever die. There seems to be something different about space in the minds of many that causes people to check their brains at the door when discussing it.

It’s just another place, people. Folks are going to die opening up frontiers, as they always have. Get over it.

Lots of good stuff over there today. Jeff Foust got an interview with Burt Rutan. I’m not surprised that the accident has caused a delay in engine development (I’d have been surprised if it hadn’t). I am surprised to hear that they’re considering going away from nitrous. What are the other options, if they want to continue to use a hybrid (whose safety Alex Tai continues to tout, a little too much I think)? Peroxide? LOX? They have their problems, too. I wonder if they’ll finally consider releasing control, and giving the work to a propulsion subcontractor that knows what it’s doing (e.g., XCOR, though that would mean a liquid, not a hybrid, since they have no interest in or experience with hybrids).

On other topics, there’s an interesting article about the V-Prize, a concept that was new to me:

The types of aircraft capable of crossing the Atlantic in less than one hour will have rocket engines. Their average speed will be greater than 6,000 km/h and their maximum speed will reach Mach 15 or even Mach 20.

Ken Murphy is looking for submittals for next week’s Carnival of Space.

As we approach the anniversary in October next year, there will be a lot of perspective, and prospective pieces like this one by (fellow) baby boomer Keith Cowing. I’ll no doubt do one or two of my own.

They’ve found a cause, and solution to the foam-falling problem that gouged the tiles on the last flight. I wasn’t sure they’d be able to do it at all, let alone this quickly. On the other hand, I think they could have continued to fly with it as is, and if they hadn’t found a solution, they should have. If it occurred again, it would only be a real problem on the Hubble mission.

I in fact think that the Shuttle is now about as safe as it can be made, and it’s in fact pretty safe. I’ll be very surprised if they lose another orbiter before they retire it. But even if I’m right, that’s no reason to not retire it (though many will attempt to keep it alive). I’ve never thought it should be retired for safety reasons (at least not because it kills astronauts occasionally). We lose people mining, in construction, driving, and even in recreation. The notion that we can’t afford to do so in space is silly. And in fact it’s ridiculous, when we’re losing people fighting a war, to argue that we can’t afford to do so to open a frontier. If we, as a nation, can’t grow up about this, and think that it’s not worth losing people occasionally. we should just give up.

As I’ve noted previously, and recently, the real problem with an unreliable Shuttle is that we can’t spare the vehicles. A reusable vehicle that’s not reliable isn’t affordable (one of the reasons that talking about “human rating” one is oxymoronic, and misses the point). And the real problem with Shuttle isn’t that it’s unsafe, but that it costs too much, for too little. There are a lot more useful things that we could be doing in space for that billion dollars per flight. Unfortunately, NASA is replacing it with a system that will be no improvement at all in that regard.