NASA to Make Major Announcement Today About Astronaut Transport to the ISS | Hacker News Reader

NASA to Make Major Announcement Today About Astronaut Transport to the ISS

nasa.gov

89 pointsadam_klein43 comments

I can only imagine it is related to this announcement from SpaceX...

http://www.spacex.com/press/2012/12/19/nasa-selects-spacex-r...

"Hawthorne, CA – Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) today won a $440 million contract with NASA to develop the successor to the Space Shuttle and transport American astronauts into space."

"SpaceX expects to undertake its first manned flight by 2015 – a timetable that capitalizes on the proven success of the company's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft combination. While Dragon is initially being used to transport cargo to the International Space Station, both Dragon and Falcon 9 were designed from the beginning to carry crew."

there were numerous stories submitted here today that point to Boeing winning

There is a good chance for a joint award (SpaceX/Boeing).

This is related to Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) phase of Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Crew_Development

That announcement is from 2012 so I think that's unlikely.

These were awards handed out to a few companies in 2012 so that they could develop their capsule technology. After a couple years, NASA planned to select one of the companies (out of SpaceX, Sierra Nevada, and Boeing) to fully test and eventual use their capsule. The winner(s) of the next contract is being announced today.

According to the follow sources, one of the winners is Boeing in a joint effort with Jeff Bezos' company Blue Origin:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/16/us-boeing-lockheed...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2014/09/16/reports-boe...

http://seekingalpha.com/news/1984465-boeing-lockheed-bezos-t...

http://www.cnet.com/news/boeing-said-to-win-nasa-space-taxi-...

While I agree with the analysis, it appears to still be speculative . . .

I actually would be fairly happy with that. At the moment, I think the space industry resembles very closely how the transistor market looked in the 50's. Very few immediate commercial prospects, but an eager government. I think more competition only helps the industry as a whole?

Though from my sideline uneducated perspective SpaceX has demonstrated more success then anyone else at this point.

Agreed, which is why I am hoping for a joint contract.

Surprised this is the top comment. Your first link is reporting on an unrelated military program to replace the RD-180 rocket engine. The other four links are all blog spam using the same source: the Wall Street Journal article by Andy Pasztor. Pasztor is well known in the aerospace industry for writing what you might call "speculative" articles based on not much more than rumor.

Edit: here's the WSJ article so people can go to the original source. You'll need the google trick to get around the paywall. http://online.wsj.com/articles/boeing-takes-lead-to-build-sp...

Fair warning I don't think it has any actual news content. The expected outcome was that Boeing and SpaceX would both be winners, but because SpaceX is always cheaper, Boeing would get a larger amount of money.

It certainly could be true, but the official announcement is in two hours so probably just makes the most sense to wait and see what happens rather than post more speculation.

I found some better sources and cleaned up the links. Thanks for pointing that out. The purpose of the links is to shed more light on what is happening and the relationships among the companies and government bodies.

if it goes like a typical gov contract then Boeing wins and later it buys rides on SpaceX when its own dev program costs spirals out of control with no real progress in sight.

According to this article Boeing beat SpaceX.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2014/09/16/reports-boe...

I'm curious what the implications of that are. My emotional reaction is disappointment that "the old guard" is winning because of NASA's risk aversion. But is that really the case or am I just living in the Musk-worship echo chamber? Is Boeing still something to get excited about? How much cheaper would a Space-X solution be per astronaut trip versus Boeing (if at all)?

But is that really the case or am I just living in the Musk-worship echo chamber?

It's probably not the Musk echo chamber, your assumptions carry the telltale scent of the "large corporations can't do anything right!" echo chamber. They're slower, suffer from inefficiencies caused by scale, more risk-adverse, etc... But they're not outright incompetent the way startup-fellating media leads you to believe.

Boeing could have just delivered better. Or they delivered worse but Boeing's track record covered the spread in a reasonable way. Or in a nepotistic way. The fun part is that unless they blew SpaceX out of the water, you'll never know which of the three it is!

It's not large corporations per se, but traditional government contracting where the implicit incentive is to deliver minimum value at maximum cost.

The most (potentially) exciting part of this news would be the joint venture between Blue Origin (who has been developing engines for the past decade) and Boeing to make this happen.

If Boeing are responding to competition properly then it's something to be excited about, as it means SpaceX and others will have more to compete and co-operate about.

SpaceX has a lot in common with Tesla, where the real winning plan is not to compete over slices of the pie, but to radically grow the pie.

That was a big if though, and if all this is is old guard cronyism then it's a step backwards.

According to the article, "Industry experts" say that is the safe bet (and I agree). However, nothing has been announced, yet.

The Washington Post is saying they both won contracts, with Blue Origin on subcontract to Boeing to replace the Atlas V engine.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/09/16...

This makes the most sense. Two companies offer competition to help drive down costs and a backup plan if one can't deliver.

This is a ridiculous article based on completely illogical assertions. It states that Boeing and Blue Origin are the "low-risk option", when the Boeing CST-100 and the Blue Origin BE-3 rocket have had precisely zero test flights, zero completed missions, and zero qualification tests.

Conversely, the Falcon 9 and the Dragon have flown numerous successful missions for both NASA and commercial customers.

This is just nonsense, and I doubt NASA would be stupid enough to give the contract to an undeveloped vehicle vs. a vehicle with a proven track record. Ironically, this is the same argument Boeing and ULA have used against SpaceX for years.

Looks like they are going to announce the CCtCAP award winners: http://www.spacepolicyonline.com/news/rumors-swirl-about-imm...

Washington Post: NASA to award space contract to Boeing and SpaceX

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/09/16...

> NASA plans to award a much-anticipated, multi-billion dollar contract to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station to both Boeing and SpaceX, according a person familiar with the process.

>> United Launch Alliance is expected to counter that tomorrow by announcing that Blue Origin, the space startup founded by Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, would develop an American-made engine for the Atlas V, according to another person who is close to the situation. ULA is a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

Here's hoping Bezos doesn't blow the barnacles off the F1 they fished out the ocean and pass it off as a new 1.5 million lbs thrust engine :)

Result:

"The partnership w/ @Boeing & @SpaceX promises to give more people the opportunity to experience the exhilaration of spaceflight"

https://twitter.com/NASA/status/511970135935295488

Boeing is being selected due to its being the "least risky" option.

IMHO NASA needs to start taking some risks. It is amazingly slow and inept. So much so that I would consider shutting it down completely and allocating the money we spend as grants over the next 10 years to get private industry viable.

When the Dutch group asked for volunteers for its one way mission to Mars, how many viable candidates signed up? 10,000? NASA ruled during the 60s, since then it has been just another government bureaucracy.

There's a lot more stuff under the NASA umbrella than manned spaceflight that do a lot of great science (Such as the JPL) and are generally some of the best at what they do, so I wouldnt advocate shutting down the whole program, however I would agree that building launch vehicles is not something they should handle themselves. I would have preferred them to be championing SpaceX, but it seems big, slow, hulking bureaucracies have an affinity for each other.

Unless NASA's already got a rocket they've been developing in secret, I'd say SpaceX could put up a person in orbit faster than NASA+Boeing can with theirs, given their respective track record.

NASA has been developing the Space Launch System (SLS) [1] since the 2010 Authorization Act killed the Constellation program. If it means anything, they're through their Preliminary Design Review and heading towards their Critical Design Review. They expect somewhere between 70 metric tons to 155 metric tons to LEO depending on the version of the design. Whether it will fly, who knows, but they are actually farther along than NASA has gotten on a space vehicle in a while.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System

Except Boeing is not the "least risky" option, because their vehicle hasn't even been tested. "Least risky" doesn't just mean the company record. The CST-100 is a brand new vehicle, and Boeing's oh so famous "track record" doesn't apply. Not to mention the rocket it is designed for (Blue Origin BE-3) has also yet to be tested. Doesn't look like a low risk combination to me.

Ironically, the Falcon 9 and the Dragon are indeed the "least risky" choice here, by a huge margin.

I think the CST-100 is actually further along in terms of NASA's qualification milestones than SpaceX's Dragon, funnily enough. (Also, the Dragon V2 that the crewed version will be based on is a brand new design that hasn't been flown yet either.)

Is it just me or is the "Launch America" banner completely ridiculous? Of course NASA is government agency and the subject is highly political, but still...

It's not just you.

Come on you apes, you wanna live forever?

They're doing their part. Are you? Join the Mobile Infantry and save the world. Service guarantees citizenship.

Less money going to Russia the better, now if only they would do the same for the middle-east.

Boeing CST-100 awarded $4.2 billion and SpaceX Dragon $2.6 billion.

I really dislike announcements of announcements.

Boeing, SpaceX, Lockheed?

my guess is multiple groups. Having uninterrupted access to LEO is crucial for long term habitation and exploration of space. We can't afford to stand down our entire manned program just because one launch platform is not available either due to supply or grounding in an event such as STS-51L or STS-107.

Boeing, SpaceX, Sierra Nevada?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8296567

"Astronauts now given free* pouch of Snapple for their ascent."

*to the astronaut. $4.2bn per pouch from Lockheed-Snapple.

"SpaceX is scheduled to launch its fourth operational cargo mission to the ISS, SpaceX CRS-4, this Saturday, September 20."

My guess is spacex got disqualified so boeing won because elon was found stowing away in a space suit in this saturday's launcher. That would severely ruffle some feathers.

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