They’ve made a decision to fly tomorrow with the flaky pump (probably the right one under the circumstances) and it’s seventy percent chance of good weather for an 11:40 AM launch. Morning is better than afternoon, when the showers start to cook up. So I guess we’ll get up early, drive up and take our chances.

[Update early Friday morning]

Dang. Another fuel sensor problem, just like last year. I would waive the rule, or change it entirely (it was an overreaction to Columbia) and fly with only three, but I wish I knew they were going to do that before we drive up.

The source selection rationale is apparently out for the CEV decision:

Doug Cooke, NASA’s source selection authority, wrote in the Aug. 31 document that although both team’s proposals were sound, Lockheed’s possessed a “clear advantage.” Both received ratings of “very good” in overall mission suitability, but Lockheed’s was numerically ranked somewhat higher because of its superior technical approach.

…Cooke deemed Lockheed’s past performance on Phase 1 of the CEV program “exceptional,” saying there is “no better predictor” for how a company will perform in Phase 2. Lockheed’s past performance was rated “very good,” and Northrop/Boeing’s was rated “good.”

Good apparently wasn’t good enough.

I wonder if Northrop Grumman and Boeing are reconsidering their future relationship. I think that part of the strategy of the team became obsolete when Admiral Steidle was forced out by Mike Griffin. It looked as though the team was designed to appeal to him (having Northrop Grumman, a major Joint Strike Fighter contractor) leading would give him more comfort than Boeing (Steidle was in charge of the program during its development). But with Steidle’s departure, the spiral development concept vanished, as did the NGB basic strategy.

I suspect that there was a lot of complacency on the team as well, though, due to all of the manned space heritage within Boeing. Many probably couldn’t imagine NASA going with anyone else.

We were thinking about getting up early and driving up to the Cape in an attempt to see the launch today. Good thing we didn’t.

As I’ve said in the past, it’s amazing that this thing ever launches, with so many things that have to go right.

Jon Goff has an interesting post on the potential use of the Kistler K-1 upper stage as a lunar transport vehicle, using aerobraking. He also wonders of the Ares 1 is already obsolete.

I’m interviewed by Popular Mechanics for this weeks blogcast, about the recent Orion award.

Mark Whittington has a useful overview of COTS. The only problem is in this paragraph:

The Falcon 9 is designed to launch up to 24,750 kilograms into low Earth orbit for a cost of seventy eight million dollars, according to the SpaceX web site. That compares to a cost of two hundred fifty four million dollars to launch 25,800 kilograms into low Earth orbit estimated for the Delta IV Heavy, a competitor to the Falcon 9 built by the Boeing Corporation.

No. Those numbers are the price, not the cost. Confusing the two words is one of the reasons that people get confused about whether or not we’ve made any progress in reducing launch costs over the years (partly because we don’t really know what launches actually cost, particularly in Russia, but also with the Shuttle, due to opaque bookkeeping).

Price is what is charged to a customer. Cost is the amount of resources that the launch provider has to devote to providing the service. If cost is less than price, then the provider makes money; if it’s the other way around, then the provider is operating at a loss. I’m sure that SpaceX costs (at least its marginal costs) are less (and probably quite a bit less, to account for the business risk factor of developing it) than the published price, or there would have been no point in going into the business. I’m also sure that Lockheed Martin is not losing money on Atlas launches.

In both cases, of course, the average cost is highly dependent on flight rate. This is one of the reasons that EELV prices have gone up dramatically over the last few years. In fact, I used that example in my piece in The New Atlantis a couple years ago as an explanation to why vehicle design is at best a secondary issue of launch costs, while flight rate is a primary one. There’s an appalling amount of ignorance, even within the professional space community, as to the reasons for high launch costs, not to mention low reliability (see comments in this post for an example), which is one of the barriers to improving the situation. And of course, the problem is made worse by the lack of recognition of their lack of knowledge. As the old saying goes, it’s not what we don’t know that hurts us, it’s the things we know for damn sure that are wrong.

We finally have an answer to whether or not Anousheh Ansari is a Muslim. Sort of.

In this USA Today article (per a commenter in the other linked post), she’s quoted as calling herself a “liberal Muslim” (whatever that means).

Who discovered the mouth of the Columbia River?

If you want to see some really ignorant and moronic commentary on space policy, check out the public thoughts on this BBC bulletin board. I couldn’t make myself click past the first page of it.

Mark Whittington continues his delusion that private industry cannot get to LEO without NASA money. Elon has been planning to get to orbit all along, and funding the development of vehicles to do so. People would be planning and funding private orbital trips in the absence of ISS. COTS has the potential to accelerate the schedule, but it’s not necessary. It will happen with or without it.