back to article NASA greenlights SpaceX and Boeing to carry crew to ISS in 2017

Crew and cargo resupply missions will be launched from US soil by 2017, with SpaceX and Boeing both sending rival systems into low Earth orbit from now on. "I don't ever want to write another check to Roscosmos after 2017," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden at a press conference at the Johnson Space Center, referring to …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    In a related story....

    We're projecting a 90% decline in orbital vodka shipments, starting in 2017!!

    1. confused one

      Re: In a related story....

      That's OK, instead of vodka, we'll ship up bourbon.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: In a related story....

        What a choice,

        Go with the USA and be forced to drink bourbon,

        Play nice with the Russians and get Vodka...

        Conspire with the Chinese and get Baijiu...

        To me Bourbon is vile, I like Vodka, I can stand Baijiu,

        But I'd rather wait for Skylon and have a nice civilised cup of tea

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "I don't ever want to write another check to Roscosmos after 2017," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.

    Just a question of what the astronauts say - tried, tested, and quite reliable Russian tech versus unpredictable and explody US tech.

    OK, so the private US ventures have come a long way, but carrying astronauts? Real, expensive, meat bags?

    1. Mark 85

      I wouldn't consider Boeing to be "private" except for it being on the stock market. They've been pretty much a contractor for NASA and DoD for a long time now. The also assimilated McDonnell-Douglas with their designs and history with NASA. One would think, they have a solid shot at doing this.

      And SpaceX... well on their way with their no-nonsense check/re-check... test and retest methods.

      Personally, I'd ride into space on either one of their ships. As for the Russians.... there is the stability factor. Just have a look at the ruble for starters.

    2. Fluffy Bunny
      Holmes

      " tried, tested, and quite reliable Russian tech versus unpredictable and explody US tech" - on the other hand, the Russians have had their share of explosions, and deaths, over the years. They just tend not to publicise them.

    3. rh587

      "Just a question of what the astronauts say - tried, tested, and quite reliable Russian tech versus unpredictable and explody US tech.

      OK, so the private US ventures have come a long way, but carrying astronauts? Real, expensive, meat bags?"

      SpaceX are already establishing a reputation as having one of the most reliable launch platforms on the market. Give it another 18 months of the same and I can't see any astronauts would have any problems climbing into Dragon.

      Falcon 9 has lost precisely one payload. And that was a secondary payload that they lost not because they couldn't technically do it, but because the primary payload owners declined authority for an additional second-stage burn. Since astronauts are always a primary payload, that's a 100% success rate.

      Show me another launch platform with that record.

  3. JassMan
    Joke

    Special cargo

    >>"The Boeing CST-100 capsule will carry four crew members and a load of cargo and John Elbon"

    What? Is he an alien and not count as crew, does he occupy more space than any conceivable cargo, or does he get to travel on every journey regardless of who the anonymous crew members are?

    And then I re-read the rest of the sentence. Methinks 'tis time for a campaign about commas to match the one on apostrophes.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: Special cargo

      "Methinks 'tis time for a campaign about commas to match the one on apostrophes."

      I tried to upvote you multiple times but the button seems to be broken.

    2. Swarthy
      Headmaster

      Re: Special cargo

      I see your commas and raise you semi-colons.

      "The Boeing CST-100 capsule will carry four crew members and a load of cargo; John Elbon, general manager of Boeing Space Exploration, said that each capsule was designed..."

  4. Paul McClure

    Playing the party line

    NASA mismanaged space transport, Shuttle EOL with no viable replacement, and the Russians were nice enough to come to the rescue. All for multiple carriers in a future robust space transportation market. Still it's poor form to dump on the Russians just because the US State department is having a spat. Some time ago there was an article about the contenders and pricing, it was mentioned that the Russians were the low cost carrier of the three. With the drop in ruble wouldn't that make their bid, in a fair open competition, even more attractive. The two US contenders appreciate the subsidy and game rigging.

    1. Fluffy Bunny
      Paris Hilton

      Re: Playing the party line

      "Still it's poor form to dump on the Russians just because the US State department is having a spat"

      It's little things: like invading an independent country (Ukraine), shooting down commercial passenger aircraft, imprisoning oil executives so you can take over their companies, using your dominance of oil and gas supplies to blackmail Europe. Those little things somehow poison an otherwise good relationship.

      Yes, Paris, because you somehow seem to have missed the whole point of it.

      1. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

        Re: Playing the party line

        It's little things: like invading an independent country

        The Russians are just following the example set by Uncle Sam.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Playing the party line

        >>> It's little things: like invading an independent country (Ukraine), shooting down commercial passenger aircraft

        With respect, some may say that it was completely frigging stupid flying a commercial airliner over a war zone in the first place.

        Would you be happy with your family flying over a war zone because so far surface to air missiles had only been of a type able to go to 20,000 feet, and airlines fly at 35,000+? As the Russian said on the radio transcript, "what the fuck were they doing there?".

        Seriously, the "geniuses" in the airline industry got off very lightly over that crash.

      3. Little Mouse

        Re: Playing the party line

        It's little things:

        You're not kidding - They sure do know how to "poison a good relationship". With Polonium.

      4. FlatSpot
        Stop

        Re: Playing the party line

        @ Fluffy Bunny. You might want to google Neoconservatism before you get all high and mighty.

      5. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Playing the party line

        >like invading an independent country (Ukraine)

        And next you are going to show me photos of the invading Russian military?

        The people that up-voted you as well as yourself appear to suffer from propaganda induced rectal cranial inversion...

        >shooting down commercial passenger aircraft

        Nice try, how did they shoot it down? I'm curious how your very small brain works...

        Here's a simple exercise. Google the planes that went down globally since MH17, and in each case see how long it took to process the information from the recovered black box. Getting a clue yet?

        1. Not That Andrew
          Joke

          Re: Playing the party line

          Yeah, those Russian troops were just vacationing and had accidentally strayed over border.

          I know do that all the time in my BTR 80, one minute I'm in Kent and all of a sardine I'm in France or Belgium, the Gendarme are stating to get cheesed with me.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Playing the party line

      Its not just the U.S. having a spat with Russia. I can name a couple dozen EU countries that have passed sanctions over various Ukraine-related skullduggery from Moscow.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Playing the party line

      Grenada <cough> Vietnam <Cough> Iraq <cough>

    4. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Re: Playing the party line

      Still it's poor form to dump on the Russians just because the US State department is having a spat.

      NASA have been trying to get a shuttle replacement going for a while. This isn't a sudden thing. And they did it in a sensible order, which was to pay SpaceX to learn by delivering the dinner - where we don't care so much if it explodes - and then get them to have a go at shipping the astronauts afterwards. So far SpaceX haven't incinerated any of the dinners - although they do like to blow their rockets up at sea level afterwards, to make up for that disappointment...

      Some time ago there was an article about the contenders and pricing, it was mentioned that the Russians were the low cost carrier of the three.
      I've not been through the figures myself, so I'm happy to be corrected, but I quote from the article:

      NASA administrators said the two firms were offering a cost per astronaut of $58m per launch, while the Russians are currently charging $70m.

      I believe the Russian's costs are much lower than that, but obviously they're taking a nice profit on their monopoly on manned flight to the ISS. And who can blame them. So it's perfectly possible that NASA can make savings - plus it's useful to have the ability. And NASA have been getting decvent bang-for-their-buck from SpaceX - who seem to be improving global space capability pretty damned quickly, with help from nice NASA contracts.

      As for your comment on tried-and-tested, that's interesting. The Russians apparently haven't changed much in the Soyuz system, so they've obviously got a lot of experience, and good, reliable hardware. On the other hand technology has moved on a lot since then. At some point new tech may allow for considerable safety improvements - even though you obviously introduce a lot of risk by doing new things. There's a point at which one outweighs the other. Plus, with new tech we can gain new capabilities, and that may be worth some extra risk. Eventually the new stuff will be tested, at which point it gets even safer.

      Also the Russians have been having quite a few failures of late. Mostly on Progress, but even minor failures on the manned flights. I wonder if they've been getting complacent (as NASA did with the shuttle after a while)? Or if they've been cutting costs - something that's likely to happen now anyway, after the rouble collapse and new Russian recession.

    5. Tom 13

      Re: Playing the party line

      For as much as there are problems at NASA that are of their own making, mismanaging space transport is not one of them. That falls squarely on Congress which never set appropriate goals and funding for the agency.

      As other posters have noted, this isn't just a silly State Department spat. The Russians under Putin have returned to Soviet form and are bad actors on the international stage. When it comes to subsidies and game rigging, Putin's got anything that happens here in the US beat hands down.

      Looks to me like the only one playing the party line here is you, and it isn't a pro-liberty party line.

    6. 96percentchimp

      Re: Playing the party line

      Don't blame NASA entirely: they spent almost a decade trying to second-guess Dubya and an increasingly anti-science Congress - no-one would give it the resources or long-term security to build a Shuttle replacement, whether it was a heavy-lifter, an Apollo-style crew capsule or the cute little spaceplane that became Dreamchaser (and was cruelly excluded from the final round of potential crew delivery systems).

    7. This post has been deleted by its author

  5. guyr

    17000 parts, all bid at lowest cost

    Sure, I'll be the first astronaut aboard your shiny new private venture capsule. Beam me up, Scotty!

    1. F111F
      Coat

      Re: 17000 parts, all bid at lowest cost

      You obviously didn't see the Boeing contract...

      ...mine's the one with the extra $ billion in the pocket...

  6. Martin Budden Silver badge
    WTF?

    Why was the original article replaced?

    I read the article and commented on the article a few hours ago. I come back now and find that the article link is showing in the "unfollowed" colour and my comment has disappeared. Why was the article original replaced, thereby erasing comments?

    Here is a link to the original article: clickety

    1. Phil Koenig

      Re: Why was the original article replaced?

      That is awfully strange, isn't it.

    2. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Re: Why was the original article replaced?

      Martin Budden,

      That is odd. Magic disappearing articles.

      To answer your comment on the other thread though, I don't think it's 50 Dragon launches before they go for a manned mission. I think it's 50 launches of the Falcon 9 rocket. Because they also use those for satellite work too. I don't know how many launches of the new Dragon capsule will be considered enough. I'd imagine it'll have to be more than just one. And they'll have to do testing on docking with the ISS as well, as they only get close at the moment, and get pulled in by the arm.

      But then the Dragon 2 is going to be very different to the Dragon 1. But they can always use it to do the cargo delivery flights too, as part of its testing. And they'll have to test the launch escape system as well, where the whold Dragon capsule abandons the rocket stack and flies off on it's own - as they don't use an escape tower.

      1. Martin Budden Silver badge

        Re: Why was the original article replaced?

        And now both articles are there in the headlines! Curiouser and curiouser.

        p.s. thank you to someone who isn't Spartacus for a good answer :-)

  7. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Good

    Good to see progress being made. I don't care muc for all the political grand-standing, but applaud the engineering efforts that with get more people into space at lower (if still eye-watering) cost.

  8. fpx
    Pint

    Still a long way to go

    I'd love to visit one of Bigelow's space motels, but price has to come down a couple of orders of magnitudes first.

    The $58M per head makes me flinch a bit. Weren't these launches supposed to be a lot cheaper? Wikipedia says that a space shuttle cost $450M to launch, carrying 7 people and a lot more cargo. Sure, one number is in 200x dollars, the other in 2017 dollars, but still.

    The Sojus price seems to have risen a lot too. Now it's $70M, but early internet billionaires were able to catch a ride for $20M including use of the ISS.

    1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

      Re: Still a long way to go

      The Sojus price seems to have risen a lot too. Now it's $70M, but early internet billionaires were able to catch a ride for $20M including use of the ISS.

      No alternatives = a monopoly price.

      It will be really interesting to see how the prices will change now, with a bit of competition.

      Russians can easily go down to USD 40 or even 30 million per seat. What will SpaceX and NASA do?

      I can see the rise of Orbital Miles, Advance Booking Discounts and special rates for carry-on baggage only - in spa-a-a-a-ace!

      1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

        Re: Still a long way to go

        It will be really interesting to see how the prices will change now, with a bit of competition.

        The initial costs for Boeing and SpaceX I'd imagine include for a good deal of the design and factory tooling costs for the first run of capsules. Something the Russians must have paid off a loooong time ago with Soyuz.

        But if SpaceX and Boeing can get this re-usability thing going, they should be able to cut those costs quite significantly. I guess they'll be flying, then dismantling, the first few vehicles. But with SpaceX able to re-use their first stages and capsules (assuming it all works), they're likely to be very competitive with everyone.

        1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

          Re: Still a long way to go

          But with SpaceX able to re-use their first stages and capsules (assuming it all works), they're likely to be very competitive with everyone.

          Agree. This will be very interesting to watch.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Unhappy

        Re: Still a long way to go

        @Vladimir Plouzhnikov

        Thanks a lot, Vlad. Now I have to imagine the future of space travel involving checked baggage fees, early boarding fees, cash-only fees for the bar cart, etc. I'll probably get felt up by a TSA screener as well :/

        So much for space travel being an inspirational leap forward for mankind! Now it will be like crowding into a 737 to Los Angeles, with the obnoxious 7 year-old behind you kicking the back of your seat all the way there!

        1. Florida1920

          Re: Still a long way to go

          Now I have to imagine the future of space travel involving checked baggage fees, early boarding fees, cash-only fees for the bar cart, etc. I'll probably get felt up by a TSA screener as well :/

          Just wait until you see the inside of a Budget Suites capsule!

    2. Killing Time

      Re: Still a long way to go

      Regarding the Biglow kit, I'm afraid you have to allow for inflation.............

  9. Tom Cooke

    NCC

    Is it my imagination or does that shot of the ISS against the Moon just look a teensy bit like the Starship Enterprise (Captain Kirk version :)

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Keltisch Wolf Services LLC

    Boeing was not selected first SpaceX is further ahead in their design and testing!!! SpaceX piloted flight to the ISS isto be Early 2017, While Boeing is set for July 2017!!!

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