NASA Announces ISS Cargo Selections
NASA Awards International Space Station Cargo Transport Contracts
“NASA has awarded three cargo contracts to ensure the critical science, research and technology demonstrations that are informing the agency’s journey to Mars are delivered to the International Space Station (ISS) from 2019 through 2024. The agency unveiled its selection of Orbital ATK of Dulles, Virginia; Sierra Nevada Corporation of Sparks, Nevada; and SpaceX of Hawthorne, California to continue building on the initial resupply partnerships with two American companies.”
Building a Robust Commercial Market in Low Earth Orbit En Route to Mars, NASA
“NASA is on a Journey to Mars and a new consensus is emerging around our plan, vision and timetable for sending American astronauts to the Red Planet in the 2030s. Our strategy calls for working with commercial partners to get our astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station while NASA also focuses – simultaneously — on getting our astronauts to deep space.”
– CSF Congratulates ISS Commercial Resupply Awardees and Partners
– NASA Selects Orbital ATK For Space Station Cargo Contract
– NASA Selects Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Dream Chaser Spacecraft for CRS2 Contract
–Smith, Babin Congratulate NASA Commercial Cargo Awardees
also, word on the street is that spacex will fire the recovered booster stage today. They are using pad 40. The original plan was to use 39a and thus test the whole launch system hardware and processes. However, they decided that it would delay, so the firing on the current pad.
Yep, pretty exciting day. Fingers crossed for Dream Chaser.
Mostly successful test firing of recovered first stage of F9:
Musk: “Conducted hold-down firing of returned Falcon rocket. Data looks good overall, but engine 9 showed thrust fluctuations. Maybe some debris ingestion. Engine data looks ok. Will borescope tonight. This is one of the outer engines.”
How does a rocket engine ingest debris? Did soot collect in it during the return?
Not exactly ingest like it got sucked in, but it was going backwards and that engine wasn’t firing so I guess something could get in there pretty easily, especially when it got close to the ground.
Or something flaked off or broke off inside the tanks or pumps or whatever
WOW, I didnt see Sierra Nevada making it. Good for them, always had a soft spot for the Dream Chaser.
Great news for all the awardees. Very pleased to see that Sierra Nevada is in the mix. It will be very nice to see Dream Chaser fly.
More competition and more design approaches are general goodness. But I’m having trouble seeing the operational advantages of Dream Chaser. It looks cool, but what does it do better than Dragon?
It does supply an alternative cargo ship with return capability, FWIW. Also it is much lower gee forces. Mostly I see it as NASA’s way to keep spaceplanes alive.
It also might be a way to optimize shipping. I can’t find the numbers, but I believe Dream Chaser can return more payload than a Dragon. At least more relative to what it can take to ISS. There is some benefit to flying one rather than the other, depending on the current needs.
Dreamchaser can return 1750 kg from ISS.
Dragon can return 2500 kg.
Dreamchaser can dispose of 4750 kg
Dragon can dispose 3310 kg
Some advatages of the DC is that it uses non-toxic fuels and can be cargo stocked and emptied without delay. It also, because it is runway landed, can have quick cargo retrieval.
Plus it can do station reboost.
Station reboost, good. When Dragon starts powered landings on land I suppose cargo retrieval will be just as fast?
I guess you will need to take care of hypergolics – toxic fuels before unloading.
Also today the Pentagon released some extremely important contracts for engines.
Orbital ATK got funding for solid fuel strap-on development and more importantly for a solid fuel main engine and a conversion kit for a Blue Origin BE-3 to create an upper stage. Essentially, this would allow the re-creation of the ARES-1 as an alternative to the Falcon or Vulcan.
SpaceX got funding for creating a conversion kit for its Raptor engine to operate as an upper stage on an F9 or FH (and the upcoming BFR Mars rocket) giving it Centaur-like capabilities.
“[…] re-creation of the ARES-1 as an alternative to the Falcon […]”. Just in case we need something more expensive and less reliable. Good plan.
Is there a transcript for this anywhere? Video of the presentation? I’m looking for primary sources since I’m interested in issues like docking versus berthing for CRS2.
Did you check out the Sierra Nevada DreamChaser Cargo video? Really cool how it highlights docking and berthing – as well as the handling an external cargo pack.
It would be useful to see the price list from each partner. This should be public info from the bid proposals? Given any yearly NASA budget for commercial cargo it would be a simple matter then to figure out some relative measures comparing each partner as well as relative to other programs.
So does anyone know for sure…is a manned Dreamchaser dead?