Tag: competition

The investigation into the failure of a Proton launch several weeks ago has been completed.

10:18 am

The investigation into the failure of a Proton launch several weeks ago has been completed.

The May 16 crash of the Proton space rocket was due to a failed bearing in the steering engine’s turbo pump, the chief of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, Oleg Ostapenko, told ITAR-TASS. “The final version agrees with the preliminary findings made at the first stage of the inter-departmental probe. Telemetry and analytical information indicate that apparently a bearing in the turbo pump failed.

The information so far released is still a little vague in details. Whether the Russians will be more forthcoming is also not clear.

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Orbital Sciences has announced a further delay to July 1 for the next Antares/Cygnus cargo mission to ISS in order to complete its investigation into the failure of a Russian engine during testing.

8:57 am

Orbital Sciences has announced a further delay to July 1 for the next Antares/Cygnus cargo mission to ISS in order to complete its investigation into the failure of a Russian engine during testing.

The total delay is now about a month. The press release provides no information as to the status of the investigation, so why it is taking longer than originally expected is unexplained.

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Why Japan (and Germany) really lost World War II.

10:23 pm

Why Japan (and Germany) really lost World War II.

The article also illustrates with facts why Russia would have lost to the U.S. as well if we had fought them then, before they got the bomb.

Read it. The facts are quite astonishing. Moreover, I have read a number of histories of World War II from the perspective of the Japanese and the Germans, and in both cases their experience matches the facts laid out by this article: The depth of the U.S. manufacturing capability — created by freedom and property rights and small government — was beyond anything the Axis powers could match. As the war continued it overwhelmed them.

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Richard Shelby’s poison pill in the Senate NASA budget bill that will double the cost of manned commercial space.

8:46 am

Senator Richard Shelby’s poison pill in the Senate NASA budget bill that will double the cost of manned commercial space.

Essentially Shelby wants to require the commercial companies to follow the older paperwork requirements used by NASA in the past. Presently, the contract arrangements NASA has used for these new companies have been efficient and relatively paperwork free, allowing them to build their cargo freighters (Dragon and Cygnus) and their manned spacecraft (Dragon V2, CST-100, and Dream Chaser) for relatively little.

The older contract rules are what NASA has used for Constellation and SLS as well as all past attempts to replace the shuttle. In every case, the costs were so high the replacement was never finished. In the case of SLS, the costs will be so high it will never accomplish anything.

Why has Shelby (R-Alabama) inserted this language? He wants pork, and SLS is the way to get it. Rather than cut the cost of SLS to make it more competitive (and which will reduce the pork in his state) Shelby instead wants to make the new commercial companies more costly, thus making SLS appear more competitive. It will still cost too much and will not accomplish anything, but this way he will be able to better argue for it in congressional negotiations.

Shelby illustrates clearly that the desire to waste the taxpayers’ money is not confined to the spendthrifts in the Democratic Party. Republicans can do it to!

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Aerojet Rocketdyne says it can replace the Russian rocket engines used by American rockets for $20 to $25 million per engine.

7:43 pm

The competition heats up: Aerojet Rocketdyne says it can replace the Russian rocket engines used by American rockets for $20 to $25 million per engine.

Including legacy systems and various risk-reduction projects, Aerojet Rocketdyne has spent roughly $300 million working on technologies that will feed into the AR-1, Seymour said during a June 3 roundtable with Aviation Week editors. The effort to build a new, 500,000-lb. thrust liquid oxygen/kerosene propulsion system would take about four years from contract award and cost roughly $800 million to $1 billion. Such an engine is eyed for United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Atlas V rocket as well as Orbital’s Antares and, possibly, Space Exploration Technology’s Falcon 9 v1.1.

This is roughly the same price cited for the cost of standing up U.S. co-production of the RD-180 engine, which is manufactured by NPO Energomash of Russia and sold to ULA for the Atlas V through a joint venture with Pratt & Whitney.

Unfortunately, this announcement is part of a lobbying effort to get Congress to fund the new engine rather than a commitment by Aerojet to build it themselves. Thus, I fully expect them to go over budget and for the engine to cost significantly more once in production, facts that will make it less competitive in the future.

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On Monday the Russians announced that they plan to fly two tourists around the Moon by 2017.

9:19 am

The competition heats up: On Monday the Russians announced that they plan to fly two tourists around the Moon by 2017.

This is in conjunction with Space Adventures and the previous tourist flights that have gone to ISS. They say they have two customers willing to pay the $150 million ticket price, but they have also been saying this for years. I am not sure I believe them anymore.

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House and Senate budgets for NASA give almost full funding to manned commercial space while boosting SLS.

9:13 am

House and Senate budgets for NASA give almost full funding to manned commercial space while boosting SLS.

The bill would provide $1.7 billion for the heavy-lift SLS rocket, some $350 million more than the White House requested for 2015, and $100 million more than the House has proposed. SLS is being built at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), ranking member of the Senate Appropriations commerce, justice, science subcommittee, is an ardent defender of the center.

The bill also provides $805 million for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, under which the agency is funding work on three competing astronaut transportation systems with the goal of having at least one delivering crews to and from the international space station by the end of 2017. The White House requested $850 million next year for Commercial Crew, its top human spaceflight development priority. The House proposed $785 million, which would represent a high water mark on a program that has never received the full funding sought by the White House.

That the proposed budgets made only tiny cuts to commercial space indicates that the political clout of this program is growing, since in previous budget years Congress had trimmed this program’s budget much more significantly. That Congress continues to also feed gobs of money to SLS, even though it won’t be able to fly more than 1.5 missions because of a lack of a European service module, indicates that these legislators are really only throwing pork at whatever they think will buy them votes, without any concern for the overall federal budget, instead of using their brains to pick and choose the smartest projects to fund.

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Airbus has begun drop tests of its own suborbital spaceplane.

8:53 am

The competition heats up: Airbus has begun drop tests of a scale-model version of its own suborbital spaceplane.

The video at the link is very disappointing, as it cuts off almost immediately after the spaceplane is released, showing nothing of what happened and how it landed. Nonetheless, that Airbus is testing such technology means that they are considering competing with other suborbital companies like Virgin Galactic and XCOR.

More details here, but they are scanty as well.

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