False. Boeing is one of three providers in the commercial crew program. If you’d like, I can send you copies of the contracts.

Again, who is the top in aerospace?

I cannot imagine the amount of mental energy it must take to watch SpaceX’s missions and think of them as failures.

>ken anthony
> The first three F1′s were part of the learning curve. Thus not failures.
> How did your first three rockets go?

Generally all their competitors went flawlessly. Thats the standard in the industry. Engines pretty much never blow up. There are a couple big exceptions, but 1/3rd of your launchs having a inflight explosion?

> The fourth F1 was a success. ==

If you ignore some systems failures.

If it hadn’t been, SpaceX would have been no more according to Elon.

> Every F9 has succeeded in it’s mission despite glitches. ==

Glitching including a engine explosion, control system drop outs etc.

In general you ignoring the real failurs in the systems. Pretty much every flight has a serious systems failure, then they brag about being able to work around it. Other launcher – even shuttle, had the vast bulk of the flights with no serious problems that anyone needed to work around.

Its like the blat baffels on the F9 so it can make it to orbit even with a engine explosion. No one else uses them – they just build better engines.

> High cost? In your dreams. ==

Thats not what their customers say, what the CBO, GAO, SpaceX press statements say.

Launchs per pound to the ISS are 20% higher then what shuttle was.

Fan boy logic and numbers don’t cut it. Nor does ignoring inconvenent facts.

High cost, high failure rate.

The first three F1’s were part of the learning curve. Thus not failures. How did your first three rockets go?

The fourth F1 was a success. If it hadn’t been, SpaceX would have been no more according to Elon.

The last F1 was a success. Customer’s agreed and orders went up.

Every F9 has succeeded in it’s mission despite glitches. The F9 has a 100% success rate. Even when a secondary payload was not put into it’s correct orbit (a decision, not a technical issue) the customer was happy with the result because they got the data they needed which was the purpose of their mission.

High cost? In your dreams. That’s why they are getting orders that would have gone to others.

Only one thing prevents SpaceX from really breaking out and that will be resolved in just a few years. You haven’t seen anything yet.

Kelly, time is not on your side. If you were famous we’d be quoting you saying 64k is more memory than anyone needs.

Boeing’s CST-100 Capsule is part of the current Commercial Crew activities.

Voters also reelected a lot of budget hawk republicans last Nov.

Boeings not involved in Commercial crew – though they have expressed interest – perhaps.

SpaceX is near the botom. High cost, high failure rate.

Unfortunately, Congress will do what the public wants it to do. And sadly the public does not want the federal budget cut right now. The November election proved it. So do polls. The public is unwilling to make any sacrifices at all, and will punish any politicians who try to trim the budget.

This at least is my pessimistic take on the situation right now. I hope I am wrong.

Good Lord. If SpaceX and Boeing are the bottom end of aerospace, who is the top?

>..comercial crew is the fastest way to stop relying on other countries..

Really its not. The providers are the bottom end of aerospace, and really arn’t up to anything like that – as SpaceX has demonstrated – adn isn’t even projected to really be faster. If anything NASA doing a good job of using them to dosprove the concept of “commercializing” NASA launches. Ignoring that, The craft are to limited for anything beyond, and Congress was sold by Griffin on doing something BEO in the future, and needing a HLV for it. So SLS is seen as minimal table stakes for NASA future.

So if they want a NASA for anything in the future they figure SLS is the minimum technical lead, certainly it needs to be major (including budget wise) to get voter support to sustain it.

Right – no bias shown here.
;/

NASA priorities are a mess and every space cadet has their own preferred route. But someone needs to sit the Republicans and Democrats down and explain to them that comercial crew is the fastest way to stop relying on other countries, who are not always friendly, for access to the ISS. As a bonus we get redundant capabilities and wont need SLS as a back up.

The $1.2T are planned cuts over a 10 year period (and that is the sequester), of which the $85B (in reality $45B) are for this year. Granted, planned cuts are just that…planned. But that is a far different conversation than the one we were having in 2004 when spending cuts were not even discussed, and programs never had to be paid for. I just think things are being discussed differently now…programs have to be paid for, cuts are happening, and almost every planned expenditure comes with a “how are we going to pay for that” disclaimer. I think its why, for example, our total expenditure in Libya was $1B rather than $1T. I’m not saying we are there yet by any stretch of the imagination, but the whole conversation now is completely different.

Where are you getting $1.2 T in cuts? I’ve been hearing $46 billion for this year, below what was projected, and we’re still spending more than last year. The encouraging thing is that discretionary spending is slightly down.

If we don’t do anything about entitlements I think it’ll be game over. I hope there is a grand bargain struck, so long as it makes sense.

We’ve gone downhill quite a bit from 2004. I hope we get a critical mass of people who are serious about solving the problems before it’s too late. It’s too easy for politicans to kick the can down the road, but the kicks are getting shorter and shorter.

The whole way NASA is being handled per this article tells me we’re far from reaching that critical mass.

I hope I’m wrong.