Is NASA Getting Cold Feet On Commercial Crew?
NASA to pay Russia $88 mln to deliver astronauts to world’s sole orbiter in 2018-2019, TASS
“Russia has signed a contract with the United States to deliver six NASA astronauts aboard Russian-made Soyuz MS spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2018-2019, according to a quarterly report released by Energiya Rocket and Space Corporation on Monday. Energiya Corporation is the producer of Russian spacecraft. According to the document, NASA will pay Russia 5.7 billion rubles ($88 million) for the delivery of NASA astronauts to the ISS and their return to the Earth. The deal was signed on January 27.”
Boeing’s first crewed Starliner launch slips to 2018, Ars Technica
“NASA has pinpointed next year as the time when its dependence upon Russia to fly its astronauts to the International Space Station will finally end. However, one of the two companies now slated to provide that service, Boeing, has said it will not be able to launch a crewed mission of its Starliner spacecraft until 2018 at the earliest.”
Keith’s note: That’s $88 million per American astronaut.
$88 million doesn’t sound like a lot for six Soyuz seats. In fact, based on past prices, this is just a bit over the “old” price for one Soyuz seat! I guess (looming) competition even works with Russia.
A quick web search turned up a price per seat of about $80 million for a contract signed in 2015 to extend Soyuz rides for NASA astronauts through 2017.
Jeff:
That’s $88 million per seat. The price has actually gone up since the last contract. SpaceX may be able to send 4 astronauts to the ISS for $30 million a seat.
tinker
Yes the Russians do have a good sense of an opportunity for financial gain, they remind me somewhat of the Ferengi in Star Trek. “Ferengi rule of acquisition no.1 once you have their money you never give it back”
I guess I read that wrong. And I agree with Spacenut that the Russians are quite good at capitalism (judging supply and demand and setting prices accordingly).
This is why I’m glad there are two commercial crew providers. Competition is a good thing.
Had NASA not signed this agreement and lets say in 2018 Starliner continues to slip and Dragon has an issue, the headline would read, “NASA could have paid for backup Russian seats.”
–** GO SPACEX — GO DRAGON **–
Well at this rate, maybe NASA ought to just outsource the space program to Russia? They are sending a significant fraction of their human space flight budget to our buddies, the Russians.
Perhaps we could invite international guests on one of the first Dragon 2 flights. We’ve done that on Shuttle missions. Perhaps a Georgian and an Ukrainian kosmonaut.
Golden rule is that NASA and Russia never politicize space cooperation. And when China finally gets organized it’s better to have Russia Japan, and the ESA in our corner.
I can’t remember a time when manned spaceflight was not politicized. Was it just a coincidence that, during the cold war, all the Soviet “guests” were from Soviet allies or nations they were trying to establish better relations with? Or that the same was also true of the foreign astronauts the United States flew on the Shuttle?
Don’t forget the well-received tours made by Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov around the US with Mr. Armstrong and others.
Tours? I was around during the entire Space Race era and took a lively interest in Soviet and Russian affairs starting at the time of Sputnik and continuing to the present day. I have no recollection of any such tours. Nor do the Wikipedia biographies of Gagarin and Titov mention any such excursions.
Gagarin and Armstrong seem a particularly problematic pairing as the thing for which Armstrong became uber-famous, his first step onto the Moon, didn’t happen until 16 months after Gagarin had been killed in a plane crash.
If you have any links to information I haven’t been able to locate on-line, I’d be appreciative of seeing them.
Sounds fair. About as much as it cost on a Shuttle.
This is confusing. As far as I can see this is for a deal announced by NASA in Feb of 2015.
It is for 6 seats on Soyuzs. It was signed because neither US taxi service is certified yet and NASA must guarantee access and lifeboats. NASA said that as soon as a taxi service is operational the soyuz seats convert to backup service.
Is this a TASS timewarp disturbance?
READ HERE:
http://spacenews.com/nasa-i…
Commercial crew has been systematically underfunded in order to pay for SLS/Orion. The schedule slips are the symptom, not the cause. The budget language has been quite clear – SLS as a priority and cut commercial crew to pay for it. There has been no suggestion commercial crew funding has been cut because of underperformance of the contractors. See here for example: http://nasawatch.com/archiv…
Not sure why this prudent move by NASA indicates cold feet.
I’d need to see the details, but the contract may specify payment, whether or not the services are needed or provided. As in, the USA _will_ pay for at least one seat, not that the USA has the option of buying up to six tickets. That would be, in a sense, buying insurance against SpaceX and Boeing both being a couple years behind schedule. If they think that insurance is necessary, and worth what it costs, then it implies something about what they think the odds are.
Boeing’s slip doesn’t mean SpaceX won’t slip. They just haven’t announced it yet. Chances are SpaceX will slip as well. I think Boeing has met 13 of it’s milestones compared to 8 for SpaceX. A major milestone for SpaceX will be the inflight abort which has kept slipping.
There’s no evidence of SpaceX slip either way. As well, the milestones for each company bear no resemblance to each other nor does the timing.
As an example, Boeing has elected not to do an inflight abort whereas SpaceX has. An extra milestone for SpaceX.
When you look at the milestones, Boeing’s initial ones are far more paper exercises whereas SpaceX has built hardware.
Cheers.
This is pretty much a perfect example of the kind of old guard thinking I posited in my previous comment.
1) The old guys are always better than the new guys.
2) The old guys are slipping their schedule.
3) Therefore, the new guys will also slip their schedule – by more.
The whole syllogism rests on that initial premise being true.
This just looks like NASA buying more insurance. Very few buy insurance because of certainty something terrible is going to happen. It gets bought to cover the possibility that something terrible might happen.
That said, it is entirely likely that many old NASA hands now think it much more probable that Commercial Crew will still be “pending” instead of operational in 2018-19 because of the Boeing announcement. Given NASA’s seeming institutional bias toward assuming legacy contractors are lower risk than newer firms, the confirmed Boeing slippage no doubt got the NASA greybeards figuring that equal or worse bad news was all but inevitably going to be forthcoming from SpaceX too. One can practically read their thoughts – “If even Boeing is having trouble meeting schedule, what chance do these new guys have?”
I think this represents a fundamental misunderstanding of Boeing’s and SpaceX’s relative strengths. But it will be another year before the full truth of the matter is unarguably in-hand. SpaceX doubters, both inside and outside NASA, will continue to think and do what they have since SpaceX first appeared on their radars. If they prove to be right, reminders of this will be perpetual. If they prove to be wrong, nothing more will be heard about Commercial Crew and they will simply move on to dire predictions about something else that SpaceX has promised but not yet delivered as of that time. This game can go on indefinitely and probably will.
Having the sole responsibility for the well-being of a crew in a remote location is sobering at the very least.