Another Cygnus Leaves Earth
NASA, Northrop Grumman Launch Space Station, National Lab Cargo
“The spacecraft launched on an Antares 230 Rocket from the Virginia Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport’s Pad 0A at Wallops on the company’s 10th cargo delivery flight, and is scheduled to arrive at the orbital laboratory Monday, Nov. 19. Expedition 57 astronauts Serena Auñón-Chancellor of NASA and Alexander Gerst of ESA (European Space Agency) will use the space station’s robotic arm to grapple Cygnus about 5:20 a.m.”
Regrettably, Fox News was describing this as a “NASA” launch, not a Northrop Grumman launch.
Northrop not having the sex appeal of SX, one supposes.
Still, having several resupply missions in a few days, plus the Japanese not far behind, is a good thing. A very good thing.
However we should not forget that these rocket launches serve a single customer.
“However we should not forget that these rocket launches serve a single customer.”
This is not true at all. All commercial rockets (F9, Atlas, Delta, Vega, Proton, Antares) serve or hope to serve more than one customer. SLS however not being commercially available serves just a single customer NASA human spaceflight for the most part. People who are more pro-SLS sometimes don’t grasp the implications of it.
The customers for commercial launch and other spaceflight services are:
1. US government in the form of NASA-human space flight(COTS and CCREW), NASA-unmanned spaceflight, Airforce, DOD, NOAA(weather satellites with the help of NASA), NGS(Landsat, with the help of NASA) and to small degree DARPA.Each of those agencies represent a different customer as they have their mostly unrelated budgets
2. Other governments. Most countries don’t have launch capabilities and they use countries that do for their own things mostly communications satellites but occasion something else.
3. Private companies mostly communications satellites but also some earth imaging ones.
Anyway this has major implications as to cost per launch, cost of development of rocket systems, space politics and policy. With more customers(and units) to spread fix costs over those systems are cheaper than SLS(a government owned rocket that has no other users.)
For commercial crew it is just crank out another Atlas or Falcon 9 from the line vs. the Ares 1 which was looking to cost 800 million per launch! Similar for cargo(Antares was not just built to launch Cygnus, they hoped to get some of launches that would have gone to the Delta II when ULA dropped it—but the cheaper F9 pulled the rug out from them).
In terms of Development it means that the US Government does not need to foot 100% of the bill and gives the companies in question a reason to be good stewards with the money. Orbital had to put cash in to develop Cygnus and Antares and can if a customer were ever to show offer a Cygnus mission to someone other than NASA. It also means the NASA does not have to fund all rocket development. Darpa gave a tiny amount the Space X for the Falcon 1, NASA only gave about 40% of the money needed for the F9 and further development (like landing) was paid for by Space X. FH was fully funded by Space X and The Airforce gave some funding for the Raptor engine planned to be used in BFR.
Lastly in terms of Politics and Policy well at best we are painfully adapting.
Oh dear, myopia again!
I _meant_ to talk about the importance of ISS as a customer, and the significance of ISS in the development of commercial launch.
Now, as I pull my foot out of my…err…
Your comment was clear enough that you were talking about supply missions. The myopia was Pathfinder’s.
For whom is the launch being done?
For NASA, obviously. But when I fly to Michigan next week, it will be on a United Airlines flight using a vehicle built by Airbus. Even if I were rich enough to charter a private plane, no one would call it a Crary flight. In aviation, the owner and operator of the vehicle gets credit (or blame) for the flight, not the customer. Commercial cargo to ISS is about NASA being the customer not the owner/operator of the vehicle. So I think the commercial aviation standards should apply when it comes to giving credit for the launch.
Another analogy might be FedEx. It’s a FedEx rocket launching a FedEx capsule carrying parcels for the ISS, addressed to Expedition 56/57 from NASA.