NASA and the Private Sector - Page 89

Similar to what Elon Musk is trying to do with SpaceX, Blue Origin is primarily focused on developing technologies that will allow private citizens to travel to space without breaking the bank. And though Blue Origin receives a lot less press than SpaceX, the Jeff Bezos led company this past November launched a rocket about 62 miles up into the atmosphere (the outskirts of space) and successfully managed to land it back on earth in one piece.

At the same time, Bezos has been unusually quiet about providing specific details regarding his company’s long-term plans for space travel. But in 2016, likely emboldened by Blue Origin’s landing successes, Bezos has started to open up a bit more.

In a fascinating and informative piece published in The Washington Post, Bezos for the first time spoke freely and enthusiastically about his vision for commercial space travel.

Hardly an endeavor Bezos is embarking on just for fun, the Amazon CEO’s interest and near-obsession with space can be traced back to his childhood.

“I wanted to start a space company from when I was a little kid, but I never expected to have the resources to do so,” Bezos explained. “Then I won this lottery ticket called Amazon.com. And so when Amazon became a successful company, I realized, ‘Hey, I can actually fulfill my childhood dreams of starting a space company,’ and that’s what I did.”

What’s particularly fascinating is that Bezos’ vision of the future doesn’t just entail humans travelling to space for quick little tourism-oriented trips, but involves, at some point in the future, “millions of people living and working in space.”

Not sure how his approach is supposed to do anything in that direction though?
He builds hoppers and sounding rockets when everything long term would need escape or orbit.....

On May 13 2016 04:05 m4ini wrote:


You kinda missed what else they're building.

The BE-4. Which is already announced to be used on ULAs Vulcan. Which is good enough to replace the RD-180, so to state "they do fuck all to get to orbit" is kinda misleading.

They're not building a launcher, no. But they're supplying the engines for one.

When it comes to the future of national security space launch, everyone agrees on three things: competition is good, affordability is paramount and we must transition to all-American engines as soon as possible.

What no one agrees on, however, is the best way to achieve that third objective. But if you agree with the first two tenets, there’s only one solution to the third, and that’s to keep flying the Atlas V until the next-generation Vulcan Centaur rocket is ready. An Atlas “bridge” maintains assured access to space, strengthens competition, ensures the long-term health of the American launch industry and will save taxpayers more than $2 billion.

If you’re just now joining this discussion, here’s a quick primer: my company, United Launch Alliance, has been the Department of Defense’s go-to partner for launches of the nation’s most critical satellites for a decade. And we’ve delivered, with more than 100 consecutive successful launches. That’s unprecedented in the history of launch. We have two rocket models: the Atlas V, which is powered by a Russian-made RD-180 engine, and the Delta IV, which has American engines but costs significantly more than Atlas.

We’re now developing a new rocket, the powerful American Vulcan Centaur. When it debuts just three years from now, it will be the most versatile launch vehicle on the planet.

On May 13 2016 04:05 m4ini wrote:


You kinda missed what else they're building.

The BE-4. Which is already announced to be used on ULAs Vulcan. Which is good enough to replace the RD-180, so to state "they do fuck all to get to orbit" is kinda misleading.

They're not building a launcher, no. But they're supplying the engines for one.

On May 13 2016 06:35 iHirO wrote:


Actually they are building a launcher, the 'Very Big Brother' rocket is expected have its maiden flight in 2020.

maybe, eventually
Its at least 3 years out and i consider it prudent to assume at least some issues comming up when you "independently" design and build an engine for someone else.

I take no issue with the correctness of your additions, but my main point was that it is a bit audacious to compare a system that has flown to GTO with booster return to a system that can do small slow hops and an engine that maybe gets built in 3 years as they are "close to space".

Boeing said Tuesday that it has pushed the date of its first manned space mission back from 2017 to 2018. Boeing's CST-100 Starliner, which will carry the astronauts, is still under development.

SpaceX, led by Tesla Motors (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk, says it intends to have a manned mission in 2017 using its Dragon space capsule. Unlike the Starliner, Dragon is already built and in use, delivering supplies to the International Space Station with unmanned missions. But it will need to go through further testing before it can carry humans.

Both Boeing and SpaceX have contracts with NASA to take astronauts to the International Space Station. It doesn't really matter which one makes the first trip -- it's really just a matter of bragging rights -- since NASA will send multiple missions using both carriers.

NASA's last space shuttle flight was five years ago, and since then the agency has depended on the Russian space program to carry astronauts to space.

The company's vision is still "that the CST-100 wil be the first of the new American capsules to take astronauts to space," said Leanne Caret, CEO of Boeing's defense, space & security unit, at the company's investor day. But company spokesman Todd Blecher said that goal of being first is the company's aspiration, rather than a forecast.

Self-assembling space habitats and a deep sleep chamber for long-duration space missions sound like ideas ripped right from the pages of a science fiction novel, but these are some of the visionary projects NASA is currently developing.

Through NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts program (NIAC), the agency invests in many seemingly impossible technologies. Known for taking out-of-the-box concepts that seem like science fiction and turning them into science fact, the program is changing the future of space travel.

NASA just announced that eight concepts were given the green light to move to the next development phase. NIAC’s phase II awards $500,000 for two years of study in order to further test these technologies. This year's selections include a special habitat designed to induce cryosleep for on long-duration missions, a robotic space habitat that is able to build itself and grow in lunar orbit (making it a perfect orbital outpost), and much more.

“The NIAC program is one of the ways NASA engages the U.S. scientific and engineering communities, including agency civil servants, by challenging them to come up with some of the most visionary aerospace concepts,” Steve Jurczyk, associate administrator of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate said in a statement. “This year’s Phase II fellows have clearly met this challenge.”

Here on Earth when we go on long trips, rest stops and gas stations are essential. This is also true for long-duration space travel. Fuel is heavy and expensive to launch, so why not have a series of orbital outposts set up like rest stops throughout the Solar System? Here’s where NIAC comes in. A group of engineers is testing the feasibility of growable habitats. Not to be confused with expandable space habitats like BEAM, these Growth-Adapted Tensegrity Structures (GATs) would be built in space by robots and are able to grow and evolve as needed. The project will explore the possibility of setting up the first outpost just beyond the Moon, and if successful we could eventually see these throughout the Solar System.

On May 16 2016 13:01 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
StealthBlue, where do you find your articles besides Twatter? I frequent Engadget every couple of days, but they don't cover this kind of stuff.

SpaceX has a great business model. It gets its customers—including the U.S. government—to make upfront payments to finance and reserve space on upcoming satellite launches. As a result, SpaceX often has cash—tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars—sitting on its balance sheet that it might not need for a year or two. Most companies put this cash to work in ultrasafe short-term investments, such as government bonds and cash. But last year, SpaceX used $165 million to buy bonds issued by SolarCity that are backed by solar leases. The move is an unorthodox one for a company: The bonds aren’t really traded, and SpaceX bought instruments that don’t pay off for a year. On the other hand, SolarCity bonds pay way, way more than government bonds—4.4 percent interest for a one-year investment. This spring, SpaceX bought another $90 million in SolarCity bonds, which allowed SolarCity to pay off the $90 million in bonds SpaceX had purchased in 2015. Both parties benefit: SolarCity gets capital on relatively favorable terms, and the space company gets comparatively, um, astronomical returns.