Though it's a bit late SpaceX successfully launched and tested it's Dragon capsule when visiting NASA watch I read this LA Times article which questions the ability of NASA to compete perhaps even survive such competition when it comes to the private industry.
Early this month, Hawthorne-based rocket venture SpaceX launched an unmanned version of its Dragon capsule into orbit, took it for a few spins around Earth and then brought it home with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
The total cost — including design, manufacture, testing and launch of the company's Falcon 9 rocket and the capsule — was about $800 million.
Over the last six years, NASA has spent nearly $10 billion on the Ares I rocket and Orion capsule — its own version, more or less, of what SpaceX has launched. The agency has come up with little more than cost overruns and technical woes.
In October, Congress scrapped the Constellation moon program and ordered the agency to start over with a rocket and capsule design capable of taking humans to explore the solar system.
Maser warned that without reforms NASA would simply repeat the Constellation experience.
Just 800 million compared to what the Government spends to do such an event would be considered that of a miser. With NASA already in trouble trying to test etc a replacement for the Space shuttle and facing program cancellations with a limited budget here is SpaceX talking about speeding up the unmanned flights to the ISS!
SpaceX is, if anything, a young and restless company, a company on the move and as such they want to combine the mission requirements of the second and third flights – into one. In short, SpaceX is hoping to send their next Dragon – to the space station itself, cutting out one demonstration flight in the process. However, while officials at SpaceX and the company’s CEO and CTO Elon Musk are attempting to relive the golden age of manned spaceflight (this effort is somewhat similar to the accelerated launch of the Apollo 8 mission) – NASA appears uncertain about speeding up the process. NASA has stated that if all went well with the first flight of the Dragon that it would consider speeding up the program.
The next flight of the Dragon spacecraft could take place as soon as the middle of next year. According to Musk, there are few differences between the maneuvers that Dragon conducted on Orbit this past Wednesday – and those that would be required if the craft were to rendezvous with the ISS. For a mission to the orbiting outpost, the Dragon would need to be equipped with solar arrays and certain equipment on board the craft would need to be upgraded.
Will NASA be around, of course it will NASA however neglected is part of American culture and pride but could NASA become a minority role perhaps that of safety oversight etc?
I'd rather see our tax dollars spent elsewhere. The Private sector takes care of things and is the most efficient model to do so. Unfortunately that's not the majority view or at least it isn't portrayed as such.
NASA's rocket was supposed to send humans to the moon again and eventually to Mars which could possibly quite a bit more costly than sending a rocket into orbit and bringing it back down.
Of course I'm not saying that NASA doesn't need to be trimmed a fair bit, but to compare the two projects seems a bit far fetched considering their ultimate goals.
Nasa does one thing the private sector likely would not do atleast not in the same manner http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff Well there are still lawsuits but there would be many more...
On January 01 2011 09:07 FragKrag wrote: Um. $800 million to send a rocket into space ok
NASA's rocket was supposed to send humans to the moon again and eventually to Mars which could possibly quite a bit more costly than sending a rocket into orbit and bringing it back down.
Of course I'm not saying that NASA doesn't need to be trimmed a fair bit, but to compare the two projects seems a bit far fetched considering their ultimate goals.
NASA's rocket was also a huge pipe dream that would have finished about 15 years too late and billions of dollars over budget. Constellation was a massive failure, the only success they had with it since 2003 was a proof of concept launch where they sent up a refit shuttle SRB. The Ares V heavy lift vehicle, which is the part of the program that actually goes to the moon, was still in preliminary design, and even if by some miracle it did finish by 2020 it would have bankrupted us to launch it. The Ares I, which is the one most people are talking about when they mention Constellation, is basically designed to do the same things the Falcon9/Dragon will be doing, and it was also way over budget, late, and extremely expensive to maintain, not to mention the huge costs in maintaining the Shuttle. Also the $800 million figure covers the entire cost of the program to date. The cost per launch will come down to as low as 57 million per launch once they get the first stage recovery system worked out.
As to NASA's future? They will still be around, and they will be far more important than a simple safety organization. The idea is to get private space to handle the stuff we already know how to do. For example SpaceX has a contract to supply the ISS, and will soon be the first of several private companies that will be capable of ferrying humans up and down to low earth orbit. Bigelow aerospace is developing modular inflatable space stations and has plans to use them on the moon as well. They will provide a viable destination, companies like SpaceX, Boeing, Armadillo, etc will provide the means of travel, and hopefully an industry will grow from it. This relationship will free NASA from the huge costs associated with maintaining a reusable transport to low earth orbit, a role the shuttle program has basically locked them into since the 70s. Once private space gets off the ground they will be able to do more research and development, and pursue much larger goals, such as Mars, deep space, advanced propulsion.
On January 01 2011 09:07 FragKrag wrote: Um. $800 million to send a rocket into space ok
NASA's rocket was supposed to send humans to the moon again and eventually to Mars which could possibly quite a bit more costly than sending a rocket into orbit and bringing it back down.
Of course I'm not saying that NASA doesn't need to be trimmed a fair bit, but to compare the two projects seems a bit far fetched considering their ultimate goals.
According to the article it was the equivalent of what SpaceX has launched(whether one or both no idea).
That and what could SpaceX have done with 10 billion and not canceled, pertaining if they haven't already spent that much of salaries of over a thousand employees, testing of other craft etc. over the years.
On January 01 2011 09:51 On_Slaught wrote: The private sector cuts corners like mad whenever they can. Keep them out of space exploration please.
This is not true, or at least they are no worse than NASA and the usual contractors are. NASA has already lost 2 whole shuttles plus their crews due to things that they should have caught. Richard Feynman in particular was extremely critical of the quality of the safety standards on the shuttle program. They haven't even flown half of the amount of missions they were initially rated for either. The failure rate of shuttle launches is a little below 1.5%, considerably higher than say the airline industry which boasts a failure rate of about 1/1000th that.
On January 01 2011 09:51 On_Slaught wrote: The private sector cuts corners like mad whenever they can. Keep them out of space exploration please.
and the government doesn't...
nasa should really just cut its technology development branch and give out research grants to private companies to develop space technology. nasa should stick to what government organizations do the best, regulation and policy.
i can only imagine private contracts to be a bad thing. imagine if something goes wrong during a mission, when stuff is being sourced in house the engineer who built or designed whatever went wrong is a phone call away or probably on stand by. what happens when something goes wrong with a privately sourced component or two privately sourced components fail synchronously?
On January 01 2011 09:51 On_Slaught wrote: The private sector cuts corners like mad whenever they can. Keep them out of space exploration please.
and the government doesn't...
nasa should really just cut its technology development branch and give out research grants to private companies to develop space technology. nasa should stick to what government organizations do the best, regulation and policy.
When the money isn't yours you have less reason to try and save money by cutting corners :D.
You guys should read the book Deception Point by Dan Brown. It's a really interesting commentary on this.
As for me, I wouldn't want to go into space unless I could actually go somewhere. I don't get the point of just going to low orbit for a bit and coming back down. Seems pointless to me.
On January 01 2011 10:16 Ferrose wrote: You guys should read the book Deception Point by Dan Brown. It's a really interesting commentary on this.
As for me, I wouldn't want to go into space unless I could actually go somewhere. I don't get the point of just going to low orbit for a bit and coming back down. Seems pointless to me.
I never understood why people care so much about the deaths of astronauts. Millions and millions of people have died doing their jobs to get us where we are today. What is there to complain about when it is essentially safer for us to explore other planets than it was for our ancestors to explore their own country?
it isn't really NASA versus private sector but more of NASA versus the democrats. Basically everyone knows republicans and democrats love to have proverbial pissing contests and not support policies of the previous administration on basically all grounds. in 2005, bush and a republican house decided to start the constellation program for both human COLONIZATION AND EXPLORATION (note both of these are different, colonizing = ppl live on moon,mars, etc exploration = going there looking @ some rocks and saying "herptyderptyder" ok not really but you get the point). Exploration is required for colonization, Obama/democrats current view point is to curtail exploration and minimize funding for colonization = no colonization really. Moreover, all work that was done from 2005-2008 was useless as the dems/Obama scraped it. NASA budget was 16 billion/year for past 5 years or so.the 700 billion dollar bail out that gave ppl $200 and some change to blow on w/e could have sustained NASA for about 30 years and yielded a mission to mars.
offtopic as hell but funny: I just realized Obama is the only president's name that isn't recognized by spellcheck. both his first and last name.
On January 01 2011 10:37 BlackJack wrote: I never understood why people care so much about the deaths of astronauts. Millions and millions of people have died doing their jobs to get us where we are today. What is there to complain about when it is essentially safer for us to explore other planets than it was for our ancestors to explore their own country?
wow, that is extremely narrow-minded that you think of human life as being so how do i put this... not worthwhile? not important? lol. Good thing that engineers follow a code of ethics and morals, else your house would crash in on yourself--to bad it isn't after reading that comment. For more information about the earliest set of rules/ethics in engineering/building read the Code of Hammurabi.
On January 01 2011 10:52 Eric9 wrote: Why are we able to see the exhaust of the dragon rocket? I thought events like that were nonexistent in an oxygen-free environment (i.e space).
I don't think it was in space until like 9-10min if at all(i skipped around), Low Earth Orbit (commonly referred to as LEO) you don't ever go out of the atmosphere, however, you are still in orbit if I remember correctly from my studies of NASA :>. To break the gravitational pull of Earth you have to travel 17,500 miles an hour I believe, moreover, it is dependent on location as well the gravitational pull is weakest near the equator I believe.
oh for reference, the last shuttle flight to the ISS took 8min to get into space. granted the shuttle weighs a fuck ton more cuz its like a rocket +2boosts+ a shuttle.
On January 01 2011 10:37 BlackJack wrote: I never understood why people care so much about the deaths of astronauts. Millions and millions of people have died doing their jobs to get us where we are today. What is there to complain about when it is essentially safer for us to explore other planets than it was for our ancestors to explore their own country?
wow, that is extremely narrow-minded that you think of human life as being so how do i put this... not worthwhile? not important? lol. Good thing that engineers follow a code of ethics and morals, else your house would crash in on yourself--to bad it isn't after reading that comment. For more information about the earliest set of rules/ethics in engineering/building read the Code of Hammurabi.
The Code of Hammurabi sounds like something written by a five year old.
"You poked my eye out? I'M GONNA POKE YOUR EYE OUT NOW TOO"
EPT
