NASA funds commercial Shuttle-replacement spaceships

NASA has chosen the companies which will receive cash in its second round of Commercial Crew Development contracts. The CCDev2 funding is intended to lead to viable commercial manned spacecraft, which NASA could then book seats on in order to keep the International Space Station crewed up in future. Boeing concept of the …

[James Hughes 1]

Agreed about SpaceX

Although who can fail to be amazed at how the pork hunters manage to get hold of Nasa's cash.

How Boeing managed to get more cash than SpaceX is weird given they haven't got anything remotely ready to show.

SpaceX could put stuff on the moon before anyone else gets in to orbit at the speed they are developing.

Blue origin are a dark horse - no-one really knows what they are up to, so interesting to watch.

[Flugal]

Age limits

The image of the Boeing proposal seems to show six grown men and a girl of around 7 years. Doesn't that seem a bit, erm, dodgy?

[Anonymous Coward]

dodgy indeed

Here's the other odd part: judging by the rendering of the occupants, the Boeing seems to have most, if not all, of the occupants actively flying the capsule.

[hplasm]

Stranger yet-

all of the Occupants seem to be members of Kraftwerk- even the girl.

[E 2]

Age of consent

No way - she looks at least sixteen!

[lIsRT]

Like John Glenn, but the other way round.

They did send John Glenn up, ostensibly "to study the effects of space flight on the elderly"; presumably we'll eventually have to know how it affects children too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Odd that they dismissed real world, proven technology

The rejected funding for Delta and Liberty. I suppose going from ultra-cautious to gamblers was in their remit. Nothing like having these companies killing a few astronauts to rekindle congresses funding of Nasa.

[Anonymous Coward]

Capsule Orientation

Why do they show a capsule in a side orientation? it will NEVER be orientated this way (wrt gravity)

I have wondered for a while why they do not have a circular layout inside to maximise the central space.

Is it just a design hangup? or is there a real reason for this odd design practice?

[Richard 12]

Dunno. The Boeing 'design' worries me somewhat

If a shoe falls off during launch, the 'bottom row' gets it in the face. That would be quite painful.

I suspect it's that Boeing don't actually have any kind of design at all but want the funding. Then they'll actually design something rather than quickly bashing something out with copy/paste from an old Apollo sketch.

Double rows like that makes no sense at all - the bottom row has no entry or egress route...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry...

They will spend serveral tens of millions designing special shoes...

The designer of that capsual has obviously been on the Soarin' ride at Disney!

[HFoster]

And...

Still no SSTO spaceplanes.

[NoneSuch]

What is needed

is a standard set of interoperable connections and controls on each capsule / rocket. Then you could take any capsule, mate it with any booster from any manufacturer and get it in orbit. Cuts down on development costs, standardizes everything across the board for maintenance and speedier launches.

NATO did that with their equipment and a radio transmitter made in Turkey can be heard by a Canadian receiver as a result. Common ammo, aircraft parts and lubricants all standardized across the board. Apollo capsules could dock with Soyuz because of well designed hardware in the 70's.

If we are going to go to space (and stay there) then costs have to be brought down and this will reduce costs nicely. NASA needs to step into space standards like the FAA does in civilian airlines. Establish common hardware and procedures so all space destined gear plays well with others.

[Gene Cash]

Vaporware except for SpaceX

Everybody does realize the Boeing entry was done by a junior staffer using AutoCad the night before the presentation, right? Boeing rents a couple senators, which is why they get any money at all. It'll simply go for more Powerpoints, at which point they'll pipe up for more.

Personally, if I had the bucks, I'd buy NASA's R&D on the X-38 CRV, which already has a shape designed, as well as the parachute autolanding system. That's a heck of a head start.

[Rick Brasche]

Doesn't take too much vision

to see reason to back SpaceX. They've actually built and flown a capsule, and passed Boeing's design only offering quite a long time ago. SpaceX is down to wringing out design improvements and getting flight certification.

Makes sense to invest in the outfit that's already doing what is desired.

However, I need to get some artists together so I can make $10m or so with just a CGI graphic.

[E 2]

Cheese capsule?

I can imagine what the trip would be like if someone farts!

[James 63]

Recycled = proven

"Musk and his team have their own rockets, designed from scratch, unlike the recycled Apollo and Shuttle tech offered for the manned space requirement so far"

Isn't one of the reasons the Russian launchers are so reliable and cheap is they've basically stuck with the same setup since the beginning? A bit of tweaking and improving, but they don't throw everything away and start again from scratch every 20 years, unlike the US approach (not sure if that's been purely intentional or merely caused by economic constraints).

Fair play to Mr Musk tho', he's ahead of the competition at the moment.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why doesn't NASA Charter from Virgin Galactic?

Wouldn't it be cheaper to ride the Virgin Galactic bus? All that money and only one Burt Rutan.

[annodomini2]

Title we don't need no stinking title

Read sub-orbital vs orbital

[Anonymous Coward]

hmmmmm

Read Tier Two.

[Chris D Rogers]

SpaceX - Expensive Cheese

Living in Hong Kong one has often wondered why Cheese in the Territory was so expensive?

Reading this article I now have an answer, evidently, all Cheese has been delivered by SpaceX - hopefully, via NASA funding, such costs will reduce in future as the cost of space flight becomes less expensive.

Beers all round I say.