NASA Threatens To Buy More Soyuz Flights From Russia
NASA May Order More Soyuz Rides to Station Despite Commercial Crew Advancements, Space News
“Companies working on commercial crew transportation services to and from the international space station reported milestones in their efforts even as a NASA official warned that the agency likely will have to order more Russian Soyuz crew capsules to keep the orbital outpost fully occupied. Phil McAlister, director of commercial spaceflight at NASA headquarters, told an advisory panel Dec. 9 that the agency may have to order another batch of Soyuz crew capsules from Russia unless Congress funds NASA’s Commercial Crew Program at the $800 million-plus level sought by the White House.”
I always suspected that some in Congress were never serious about fast-tracking commercial crew. It may even be canceled, if NASA cannot convince them to extend the ISS program beyond 2020. At least the Chinese Space Station is looming for those American companies who wish to offer their spaceships.
Fast tracking? There are members of Congress who have done everything humanly possible to slow or kill commercial crew. Fast tracking was never a possibility except in the minds of folks like us.
Dana Rohrabacher would have fast tracked it.
A Bigelow Aerospace facility will be in orbit long before the chinese finish their space station in 2020. (which has already been moved to 2022 in a recent statement from the chinese)
Remeber, it is always better to have one dollar to given politician’s district and 9 to Russia than 10 dollars to somewhere else in America. This is how USA works nowadays.
First, I like your cynicism. But following Tip O’Neil’s maxim that all politics is local, what else would you have expected?
At first this breaks my heart. But this think this out, Elon isn’t going to let this stop him on the crewed Dragon. He has stated it might slow him down a year or two but he has a launch on the manifest for every month this year. Including the Falcon Heavy. He will get a crewed Dragon going in a few years I am sure of this, its part of his master plan. I think the public will finally have something to say when they see an Amercian company putting people into orbit while we are paying the Russians. Hopefully it will mean something.
I wonder if there is enough profit in the sat launch biz to fund a trip to Mars…
If I order a taxi to be at the station before 20:20 and the only cab available at this time is a Lada I will take it. If there is another train 20:25 and the nice GM is there offering a cheaper ride I will take that. The time for US companies is coming. It is a free market, buy your ride where it is cheap.
The money saved by *not* buying twelve more seats (at about $71 M) from Russia could fund the entire commercial crew budget request. Russia will no doubt laugh all the way to the bank. Meanwhile, US commercial crew will be delayed by yet another year or two.
Thank goodness Musk plans to procede whether he is funded or not.
If another batch of seats is purchased, it’s unlikely the price would remain at $71M. It would be their last chance to exercise their monopoly on crew service, so I’d expect to see it closer to $77M.
You could be right; the $71 M figure is from April 2013, the time of the last price increase. Would I be shocked if the price went up this Spring? No.
The ineptitude of NASA’s Human Spaceflight (HSF) program is truly disgraceful. It is a national disgrace that NASA planning left the US without a means to fly astronauts to ISS for six years; more if Commercial Crew is not funded enough. I do not blame the engineers but rather the management inside NASA and the politicians that treat HSF as a means for pork barrel spending and imagine they can conceive grand missions of exploration.
It just goes on and on. The worst is the loss of two Shuttle crews, 14 astronauts. Then Hubble repair is dismissed, then later declared back on, then they add an additional last flight of Shuttle for the heck of it. Through all the mismanagement, poor decisions, terminating, abandoning (J-2X <$1B>) restarting programs, years and $Billions are wasted.
The public just stands and watches the spectacle. But interest in Apollo faded. A Shuttle blowing up or disintegrating gained their attention. And NASA reminds the public that space is hard, not easy and is costly. And the public does not recognize the difference between robot craft flying to the planets, Hubble spying the Universe and Human Spaceflight; all the same. So the Science Mission Directorate is what has made NASA worth all the extra $100s of Billions spent. Yet politicians want to continue spending on big HSF pork barrel and cut spending to Planetary Science and Commercial Crew.
Question
Does anyone know what it cost Russia to launch a crew vehicle?? What is their profit to taxi us around????
Both SpaceX and orbital took several years longer than their public estimates to get their LV and unmanned COTS capsules working. This is the nature of the business. Has NASA allowed for similar delays with CCDev when ordering Soyuz capsules?
Is NASA allowing for delays or creating delays inCCDEV?
It seems that NASA will continue the political subsidy to the Russian space program. I have no problem with it, as long as we call it what it is.
Buying seats on Soyuz is not a subsidy but buying human transport from a monopoly supplier.
NASA is not subsidizing Russian Space program. Congress is subsidizing the Russian Space program.
This forum has made clear to me of one thing: NASA is just an arm of Congress. What programs ultimately get funded, what priorities eventually are pursued, are all in the hands of congress. Just is how it is. It makes the achievement of anything really scientific even more amazing. Realities are what they are. NASA will build SLS because congress wants it and no one can stop that. I will apply my studies t evaluate how to best use this new transportation system.
You are correct and I when I comment I usually make that point. With the glaring difference in what the domestic suppliers plan on charging and what Congress is paying for russian flights, it is about politics and not sane economic policies.
Read your comments back a few months, thoughtful, Good Luck with your studies, Hope your career is not wasted.
Bigelow Aerospace recently stated that it will cost 26 million a seat for SpaceX and 36 million a seat for Boeing. Look for soyuz to reprice at 35 million a seat.
Also Spacex has stated that they will be able to get falcon R launches down to 5 to 7 million .
Others are laughing and saying they are dreaming .
Laugh while you can boys and girls lolol
“unless Congress funds NASA’s Commercial Crew Program at the $800 million-plus level sought by the White House”. Partisan foamers please take note: which party in Congress wants to cut the budget? Which party now controls the White House?
Commercial Crew is not just the means to resume Human Spaceflight (HSF) from American soil with American built vehicles. It is the future of NASA’s HSF, period! It may be impossible to halt SLS and Orion before the big changeover from the 2016 elections. However, it is possible for space advocates to stop H.R. 3625 and also assure that Commercial Crew and COTS are given the sufficient funding. NASA claims and does have a library of missions designed to use SLS and Orion. They are on paper. These same missions can and will be revised to use commercial crew and commercial heavy lift. It is not a matter of if but rather when. The best that can be said for SLS and Orion is that its a public works program giving NASA engineers and contractors forewarning that the gig will be up. Its taxpayer money and Republicans that claim to be saving taxpayer dollars by cutting off unemployment benefits (small in comparison to SLS and Orion) want to make termination of SLS and Orion very difficult by passing H.R. 3625.
There are four significant problems here.
Industry has no schedule credibility – it took both SpaceX and Orbital YEARS longer than contracted to get through COTS. SpaceX is multiple missions behind the launch profile they promised in the CRS contract.
Industry has no cost credibility – both SpaceX and Orbital received over $100M extra for COTS beyond what the FIXED PRICE contract (SAA). Some rational was provided that that was for extra NASA requested work but the reality was that neither would have flown without it. How long before a “justified” increase in CRS contract value?
NASA has no schedule credibility – they have said that if they did not get the presidents full request they would be delayed in the last 3 budget discussions (when many know that their internal discussions said that they could not get to crew transport before the end of 2017 even with all the money).
NASA has no business case credibility – they expect that there is a huge pent up demand for crew transportation out there that will supplement (even exceed) the NASA revenue to the industry. How is that working out for Dragon lab? How many tourist seats have been sold on Soyuz? This bodes very poorly for the final cost for crew transport.
But, of course, all this is congresses fault.
developing brand new technology is far more difficult than most people think. rocket science actually IS rocket science, it’s not easy – and it’s damn impressive that private companies have even been able to deliver cargo to the ISS.
NASA needs more money, Congress keeps heaping things on their plate to do, but not the money to do it – and they have a LOT on their plate, over 80 active missions ongoing – they do not just do manned spaceflight, and the cuts that NASA have taken have been very hard on them.
Yes, it is hard. But we had a commitment by the “innovators” that they would do something in time A for dollars x if NASA would only change the rules and do it a new way. NASA changed the rules and did gave them the requested agreements in the requested form. They failed to satisfy those agreements. NASA accepted those failures and gave them more money and time.
This was supposed to be “commercial”. It is the same old story with just the money distributed to someone else. Cost and schedule overruns with no impact and no one held accountable. Either NASA was not smart enough to recognize the contractors could not perform or they were smart enough to ignore it (because NASA is a captive customer and it does not matter what happens with cost and schedule).
Why should we believe that commercial crew will be any different?
So back to credibility – is NASA specifically deciding that credibility does not matter?
I disagree with your interpretation. i don’t think the contractors failed, in this case, i think the goalposts shifted on both sides, new requirements from NASA and additional time for redesigns and testing needed to meet those new requirements. the nice thing about the agreements is that both sides are working together without NASA being heavy-handed about control. SpaceX has had a lot more leeway to do the things they want to do than I thought NASA would have been willing to allow them to do.
I think the credibility is unchanged. schedules slip all the time. this is the real world, not everything goes as smoothly as you would like it to on paper.
NASA isn’t a “business” in the first place and shouldn’t be treated like one.
Instead of threatening to give Russia more money NASA should just write commercial crew a check from the SLS/Orion programs.
Seems to me congress would be happy to buy more Russian seats.
Since the contract goes through ’16, then since our flights don’t start to sometime in ’17, they may have to buy seats. ISS has been rotating 3 every 3 months. With the lead time needed there may have to be overlap. I assume Russia will fly there on crew, so they will need the capsules anyway. They will probably go to a 6 month schedule. I seem to remember something about 1 US still flying on Soyuz to make sure a US astro is on ISS.To be cut off a test flight would have to be already flown. Of course if NASA had done what everybody had wanted and had a crew system started as soon as they knew the Shuttle would be retired, we would be in good shape. COTS-D was there, but the ones in charge must not have believed SpaceX could deliver. So start all over. Plenty of time, Soyuz is there. I see NASA has given the OK for 4 more years of ISS. If everybody else says OK, then our sytems will see more use.
NASA says they are on schedule for crew. It looks like they are.
Saturn 13 wrote: Of course if NASA had done what everybody had wanted and had a crew system started as soon as they knew the Shuttle would be retired, we would be in good shape.
You have to remember that CEV, which became Orion/MPCV, was started as soon as the decision to shut down Shuttle was announced. And the first test flights were supposed to take place long before Shuttle came to a close. Remember safe, simple, soon? It was partly due to some AAs and Administrators that NASA went through convulsions trying to come to grips with what to build. Even today, we still suffer with an Orion/MPCV that is not the vehicle that was ever needed. But subterfuge by a politically minded NASA Administrator together with unquestioned support from AAs and Program Managers who are still in place today caused serious repercussions and this latest is still a direct result. They are building an MPCV/Orion which is too big, too heavy, too expensive, operationally compromised and our best hope is that Commercial Crew will supplant Orion and eventually cause Orion’s cancellation.