NASA and the Private Sector - Page 43

On September 17 2014 10:23 DragonSharp wrote:
Choosing Boeing is honestly a safer choice and they are the only company that just recently completed all of their milestones. So they're just basically waiting to see if they got the contract.

On September 17 2014 14:08 LegalLord wrote:
About time the US space program starts doing something. It disappoints me how the US couldn't even ferry its own into space.

Boeing is a good choice, it's a large and reliable company. SpaceX is not, and truth be told the biggest thing that has impressed me about it is its CEO's talent for spectacle and bumming government money for unproven, unfeasible ideas. In a perfect world, NASA would built its own rockets, but I guess anything is better than being forced to use someone else's ride.

On September 17 2014 14:25 LegalLord wrote:
Spectacle raises money, and Musk has certainly used that to make a significant fortune for himself that will survive even if all his ventures go up in flames. But I have yet to see anything that does not follow the SV-style "bleed money and gain investment until someone bails you out" strategy. That does not make for a long-term solution, which is what a space program needs.

But subpar is still better than the bottom-tier program we've had for the past 3 years, so it's a step in the right direction. NASA really should be doing this on their own.

On September 17 2014 14:25 LegalLord wrote:
But subpar is still better than the bottom-tier program we've had for the past 3 years, so it's a step in the right direction. NASA really should be doing this on their own.

United Launch Alliance (ULA), the nation’s premier space launch company, and Blue Origin, LLC, a privately-funded aerospace company owned by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, announced today that they have entered into an agreement to jointly fund development of the new BE-4 rocket engine by Blue Origin. This new collaboration will allow ULA to maintain the heritage, success and reliability of its rocket families – Atlas and Delta – while addressing the long-term need for a new domestic engine.

“This agreement ensures ULA will remain the most cost-efficient, innovative and reliable company launching the nation’s most important national security, civil, human and commercial missions,” said Tory Bruno, president and chief executive officer of ULA. “Blue Origin has demonstrated its ability to develop high-performance rocket engines and we are excited to bring together the best minds in engineering, supply chain management and commercial business practices to create an all-new affordable, reliable, American rocket engine that will create endless possibilities for the future of space launch.”



"ULA has put a satellite into orbit almost every month for the past eight years – they’re the most reliable launch provider in history and their record of success is astonishing,” said Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin. “The team at Blue Origin is methodically developing technologies to enable human access to space at dramatically lower cost and increased reliability, and the BE-4 is a big step forward. With the new ULA partnership, we’re accelerating commercial development of the next great US-made rocket engine.”

The ULA/Blue Origin agreement allows for a four-year development process with full-scale testing in 2016 and first flight in 2019. The BE-4 will be available for use by ULA and Blue Origin for both companies’ next generation launch systems.

NASA's inspector general reported Thursday that the International Space Station will likely cost more to operate over the next decade than officials expect, questioning the orbiting research lab's budget footing as the U.S. government seeks commitments from international partners to extend its lifetime beyond 2020.

The inspector general called NASA's space station cost estimates "overly optimistic" and blamed rising transportation costs for the projected budget growth.

One reason costs are expected to increase is the expense of purchasing rides for astronauts on U.S. commercial crew capsules, which could cost more than the payments NASA is sending to Russia for seats on Soyuz spacecraft, the report said.

"NASA officials expect higher crew and cargo transportation costs to be the main driver of future increases in the cost of the ISS program," the report said, adding the space station's projected transportation costs are "unrealistic."

Time was, billionaires had no shortage of bling to buy—a yacht here, a Learjet there, a professional football team if you happen to have your Sundays free. But that’s all so yesterday. The must-have, 21st-century toy for the man with real cash to burn is fast becoming a spanking new spacecraft company.

That’s the way is seems at least, with Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, Paul Allen’s Stratolaunch Systems, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and, most enigmatically of all, Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos and his double super-secret, my-lips-are-sealed Blue Origin. While the other boys are anything but press shy, Bezos has kept his operation under a comparative cone of silence. The company is based in Kent, Washington, and while it doesn’t have any actual spaceships yet, it does have a website, some cool graphics and a very nifty coat of arms featuring what appear to be two turtles holding a shield with the Earth below them, the cosmos above and the motto Gradatim Ferociter (by degrees, ferociously) inscribed beneath. Really.

The last few days have been big ones for Bezos, however, with the announcement on Sept. 17 that he was partnering with United Launch Alliance (ULA)—itself a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing—to produce a new engine for ULA’s workhorse Atlas V booster. Currently, ULA uses a Russian-made RD-180 engine in the first stage of the Atlas. That became both politically and logistically untenable last spring, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Western sanctions against Moscow and an announcement from Russia that it would tighten sales of the engine in retaliation.

So it’s good news that ULA is swapping out its hardware, but huge news—at least judging by the media response—that the universe’s biggest bookseller is part of the deal. The Washington Post—which is owned by . . . oh, let me check my notes. Ah yes, Jeff Bezos—declared the news “a historic partnership between ‘Old Space’ and ‘New Space.’” Bloomberg News and Businessweek, noting the bad blood that has long existed between Musk and Bezos in the race for the high ground, declared it a “battle of the billionaires” and even ran a madcap little graphic showing the two lads jousting on the backs of cartoon rockets, because why not?