US to Stop Using Soyuz Spacecraft, Invest in Domestic Private Space Industry | Hacker News Reader

US to Stop Using Soyuz Spacecraft, Invest in Domestic Private Space Industry

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82 pointssz4kerto31 comments

So a bit link baity and not exactly news. The US has been "going have a manned space flight capability again" since forever. But it was pretty clear the current development and procurement system was breaking down. Orion is taking way to long and weak budgeting it only part of the story.

Unless they go out of business I'd expect SpaceX to develop a manned mission capability with or without NASA contracts. Its one thing to be able to take US astronauts into space, it is quite another to be able to take anyone you want into space and back again. Even now I don't think some people fully appreciate the capability SpaceX has developed.

For those of you making proposition bets, here is one for you, "Mexico builds an open access launch facility on their gulf coast." The argument for is pretty strong, it can create a bunch of jobs, it can take advantage of NAFTA, and as a launch only facility needs a relatively limited amount of infrastructure. as Arianespace has shown in French Guiana.

Then its really the Mexican equivalent of the FAA giving licenses to send something orbital.

Would ITAR play nicely with a launch facility in Mexico? Would they need some sort of loophole or clever organization to ensure that it wasn't "exporting" the rocket tech?

It has always been possible to legally export ITAR controlled technology. You just have to follow the correct procedures and get the correct permissions. A PITA to be sure, but I doubt launching from Mexico would pose any serious problems. Besides, it is not like they would be selling rockets to random people in Mexico, it would remain under the control of the U.S. owner until it was launched.

Hell, we've let China launch ITAR controlled tech.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelsat_708

Hopefully it's SpaceX. The other two have fatten enough on wasteful government contracts.

Whoever wins, the money will attract corruption from within and from secondary contracts. If it's SpaceX, they'll eventually be bought by Lockheed or Boeing.

Was not 2017 original plan? Orion is under development for more than 10 years now.

Orion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(spacecraft) not to be confused with Project Orion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsi...

It's hard to take the non-nuclear Orion seriously, knowing it's a product of W Bush's "space initiative".

> It's hard to take the non-nuclear Orion seriously ...

It might be a bit early to describe a booster as "non-nuclear" until there's a practical candidate in the nuclear category that meets with public approval. That would be like calling a coal-fired power plant non-fusion-based.

NASA had/has 2 Orions: a "nuclear" and a "non-nuclear" ;-)

Orion, as a spacecraft name, originally referred to the plan to build spacecraft propelled by pooping nuclear weapons out the back and exploding them behind a gigantic pusher plate. It may not have public approval, but it's quite practical (aside from the bit where you poison the planet and trash every piece of advanced electronics in a thousand-mile radius) and very well known among nerd circles, so it's worthwhile to disambiguate.

Are they going to go with just one of them? If so, that looks bad for SpaceX. They may have caught wind of it early and let go of some people in anticipation. I just can't see the federal government giving a mega deal to a "small" less-connected SpaceX over industry favorite Boeing. Tell me I'm wrong. I really want to be wrong.

SpaceX looks to me like a software startup, that can clue a cheap, working hack from existing products. But Boing is a mega corp like Microsoft, Google, Intel that can create revolutionary new products from the ground up.

SpaceX is making rockets that come back and land like a 50s sci-fi wet dream at what look like they'll be drastically lower prices than ever before. Boeing is making an Apollo successor. I think you've got which one's innovative backwards.

Agree, it's hard to say when was the last time Boeing did something innovative - on the scale of SpaceX - in space technology.

In 12 years SpaceX roughly managed to build two rockets and one space freighter cheaply - economical "first", to produce stages with e.g. high (comparing to industry standard) dry-to-wet-mass ratio, to produce a kerosene engine with, again, pretty high thrust-to-weight - and run a development program on vertical landing for the first stage.

Don't see anything comparable to that from Boeing.

Not just run a development program for vertical landing but figure out a way to make customers pay for much of the testing, too. Part of what's so brilliant about their reusability system is that it can be included on many regular launches without any additional risk to the payload. So instead of having to make expensive special launches just for the test program, they get to fire satellites into orbit and carry out testing on a flight the customer purchased.

Sadly it took sanctions and not gusto to fund the US space program v2.0

Brace yourself for another Cold war.

And for trillion dollar profits, if you're luky to be in the MIC complex. Which is the force behind Euromaidan.

Which one? Russian or American?

American of course: after the advertised end of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan a new enemy was urgently needed.

And yet, the equipment being used and destroyed and purchased in this "new Cold War" is almost exclusively Russian. Putin can't really fairly blame the West for invading Crimera, either.

>Putin can't really fairly blame the West for invading Crimera, either.

blame? Putin can only be grateful to the Ukraine right nationalists (supported by West) who assaulted the foundational freedom of the Russian ethnic minority - the language - the very first thing after they took power in Euromaidan. While not having any real practical meaning, this assault was extremely symbolic and immediately provided popular support that Putin may have been lacking before. Crimea was basically handed over to Putin on the golden plate. It was so great for Putin that i sometimes wonder whether these right nationalists were paid Putin's agents :)

Next March, when military budgets are decided, American taxpayers will get another 1.5 trillion bill, because Russia.

I've owned http://secondcoldwar.net for some time now, in anticipation of something like this. Maybe now's the time to get it going!

Brace yourself for a hot war.

I do not think so, it will still use Russian titanium.

Fortunately there are other options:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_titanium_p...

This has nothing to do with the sanctions. Here's an article from 2 years ago with the same plan: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/06/20/nasa-private-...

Peaceful competition between nations has always been beneficial to humanity.

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