The end of the Shuttle program? So what now?

[ICANHITHIMMAN]

I have been hearing on the news all week about how NASA is ending the shuttle program. So whats next? Do we have another type of craft you are going to use to get into space with or are we just done with the whole thing?

What have you guys heard? What do you think?

Jon

[mhanna91]

I am interested in this as well. I am in an astronomy class right now and I meant to ask the professor about his thoughts on this but didn't get the opportunity to ask today. I don't suppose we are done with it though. My prof. says that in the next two years China will be sending a manned craft to the moon, and I wouldn't imagine that the US would let that slide by without making some other sort of advancement in space. He is disgusted by how much politics dictates what is done in space, and I agree. If NASA was not a government entity I wonder how far we would have come by now.

[jwfuhrman]

We will be riding with the Russian Space Agency in their Soyuz rockets until NASA selects a "private firms" design for a new vehicle. NASA itself is developing a new version of the Saturn V rocket with a larger Command Module and Moon Lander, plus a vehicle that can get us to Mars. Supposedly by freeing up NASA from doing manned missions at the moment, they can get the Mars vehicle completed, along with their planned "Space Station" on the moon itself, which will act as a literal truck stop for missions to Mars and beyond.

[montanadave]

I'm biased. I grew up watching the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs-- the lift-offs, the mission updates, the splashdowns. Launched Estes rockets in the back yard and sent out a phalanx of kids on Schwinn Stingrays to retrieve the rockets. Read every Heinlein book in my grade school library. I was totally enthralled with NASA and their manned missions. Watching 2001: A Space Odyssey all I could think about was "wow! that's gonna happen in my lifetime!"

Obviously, things haven't quite panned out that way. I know all the arguments about the futility and exorbitant costs of manned space flight, that everything we do could be done cheaper and more efficiently with unmanned spacecraft.

But I still remember the pride that folks felt watching those missions. There was a palpable sense of shared accomplishment. With all the turmoil during that period, it seemed the NASA missions captured the imagination of everyone and brought people together. And that was a remarkable accomplishment, regardless of the cost.

I'd love to see the United States set some ambitious goals for space exploration and actually follow through on them. A manned Mars mission, building a permanent Moon base, or something I haven't even thought of yet. Unfortunately, I think too many folks have become so cynical they have no desire to "shoot for the moon."

[ICANHITHIMMAN]

Well I already learned a little more thanks guys. Can you just picture the look on your dads face in the 60s, 70s or 80s if you told him we are going to ride the Russians rockets into space :lol:

[GermanSynergy]

It's a sad day, as the sun has set a program that has defined American ingenuity and greatness, and inspired millions across the globe.

I hear that the Russians will be selling us seats on their spacecraft, however.

[VooDoo6Actual]

I think the focus has shifted from that paradigm & belief of the Space Program as a priority for the next frontier.

It would appear that some have completely "screwed the pooch" on our own frontier & planet & don't put a priority on screwing up another one....

[obucina]

Senator Nelson was on Fox News this morning and said that a contract is to be awarded very shortly for a new rocket system to carry astronauts into orbit. Hopefully, the next administration will "advise" NASA to discontinue its foreign "outreach" programs and focus on its actual mission.

*I got to see STS-135 lift off this morning from Port Canaveral, its was pretty cool!

[mhanna91]

Senator Nelson was on Fox News this morning and said that a contract is to be awarded very shortly for a new rocket system to carry astronauts into orbit. Hopefully, the next administration will "advise" NASA to discontinue its foreign "outreach" programs and focus on its actual mission.

*I got to see STS-135 lift off this morning from Port Canaveral, its was pretty cool!

That is very cool that you were there to see that! I came accross an article in the Huffington Post that was actually titled as, "Atlantis Shuttle Launch: NASA's Final Flight". Like there will be no more space program or something. Geez.

[BrianS]

Hopefully, the next administration will "advise" NASA to discontinue its foreign "outreach" programs and focus on its actual mission.

Yeah the National Arab Self-esteem Agency never made any sense to me considering the retirement of the Shuttle and nothing to replace it ready to go. I hope we can get NASA back into the Space business with a fully funded HLV program and elect a President with some vision to put a manned mission to Mars in 20 years.

[obucina]

That is very cool that you were there to see that! I came accross an article in the Huffington Post that was actually titled as, "Atlantis Shuttle Launch: NASA's Final Flight". Like there will be no more space program or something. Geez.

I left early this morning with the intent of watching it from Satellite Beach! When I got to A1A, traffic was light, so I just kept driving north, made a turn toward the beach and ended up in a full parking lot. So, I took a few turns and found myself facing the south entrance at Port Canaveral. I parked and just started walkin' toward the sand!

[ICANHITHIMMAN]

I never got to see a launch my self must be quite a sight. I hope we do a mission to Mars or a moon base in the next 20 years that would realy be something. But if we drag our feet the Chinese are going to beat us there.

[obucina]

I never got to see a launch my self must be quite a sight. I hope we do a mission to Mars or a moon base in the next 20 years that would realy be something. But if we drag our feet the Chinese are going to beat us there.


Senator Nelson mentioned getting to Mars and developing the rocket necessary and being able to safely get there and back, though the technology isn't there yet. If the Chinese "do", hopefully they will cut in clips from Red Planet with video of some random rocket footage.

*I know the Senator is a politician, but he has flown in a few shuttle missions and is a bit connected to NASA, so I'm taking his info for what its worth. He did mention that NASA will be scaling from 16k jobs down to 8.5K But the new program will push the number back up to 10k. I guess for now, it be what it be.

[mhanna91]

I left early this morning with the intent of watching it from Satellite Beach! When I got to A1A, traffic was light, so I just kept driving north, made a turn toward the beach and ended up in a full parking lot. So, I took a few turns and found myself facing the south entrance at Port Canaveral. I parked and just started walkin' toward the sand!

Awesome! Sounds like you lucked out! We watched it live on TV from about 1:30 min to launch until the shuttle separated from the 2 side boosters. That was amazing. When the shuttle separated it looked like a computer generated image, the clarity of the upper/outer atmosphere is amazing. How long was the rocket visible from the ground?

[ForTehNguyen]

SpaceX and Bigelow have engineered built and demonstrated rocket systems that were a lot cheaper than what NASA could do

[obucina]

Awesome! Sounds like you lucked out! We watched it live on TV from about 1:30 min to launch until the shuttle separated from the 2 side boosters. That was amazing. When the shuttle separated it looked like a computer generated image, the clarity of the upper/outer atmosphere is amazing. How long was the rocket visible from the ground?


it appeared in my line of sight over the berms at about 15 seconds after lift off. I hit record on my camera right at lift off and I have just over two minutes of video.

I have a Sony TX-7, while its primarily a still cam, it records video in 1080i with a 4x digital zoom. The highlight of the video is the chick standing next to me. She asked her friend is "they" put mufflers on the shuttle because it was a quiet one!

[randyman_ar]

Giant F'n slingshot!!! Much more environmentally friendly!:rolleyes:

[Caeser25]

WAIT!!!!!! what happens when our GPS sattelites go down and need fixed and we start "air raiding" civilians in Afghanistan cause they're broke :suicide2:

or is that tooooooo much logic for a liberal pea brain to understand ?

[Moose-Knuckle]

Well we have out sourced everything else, why not manned space flight?

Deindustrialization at it's pinnacle.

[JSantoro]

Some of the experiments they did up there on the Shuttle were things like studying the sexual habits of tsetse flies in zero-G, and other, similar BS. I would personally prefer that that sort of horseshit was done on a private company's dime instead of that of the taxpayer. The Shuttle was a great PR vehicle for a short time in the 80s, and not much else; once it was established that it was possible to repair and replenish things left in orbit, NASA should have gotten bored with it and made a good-faith effort to move forward instead of hunker down into comfortable banality.

I think that the private entities will do a far better job of keeping the eyes on the prize, which is looking outward for the purposes of worthwhile things like getting heavy industry off the planet surface and getting us to the point of mining asteroids for resources. Romanticizing the spirit of exploration for its own sake is all very well and good, but somebody needs to be an adult about this crap.

Private companies are also stand a better chance of being less prohibitively risk-averse and prone to cronyism as NASA is. NASA is the space version of PEO Soldier; exists for the creation of staff positions and the sustainment of career paths, not to produce anything of worth.

Privatization is more likely to make the space program actually accomplish something besides opportunities for the general public to take cool pictures of launches, unlike the snail-pace stagnation of the last 25 years.

[RogerinTPA]

Deep cuts at NASA to help fund Obama care, that's whats next.

[ForTehNguyen]

NASA cant even dream of costs and efficiencies like this. The average shuttle mission costed near half a billion dollars each.

http://www.spacex.com/updates.php



May 4, 2011

Whenever someone proposes to do something that has never been done before, there will always be skeptics.

So when I started SpaceX, it was not surprising when people said we wouldn’t succeed. But now that we’ve successfully proven Falcon 1, Falcon 9 and Dragon, there’s been a steady stream of misinformation and doubt expressed about SpaceX’s actual launch costs and prices.

As noted last month by a Chinese government official, SpaceX currently has the best launch prices in the world and they don’t believe they can beat them. This is a clear case of American innovation trumping lower overseas labor rates.

I recognize that our prices shatter the historical cost models of government-led developments, but these prices are not arbitrary, premised on capturing a dominant share of the market, or “teaser” rates meant to lure in an eager market only to be increased later. These prices are based on known costs and a demonstrated track record, and they exemplify the potential of America's commercial space industry.

Here are the facts:

The price of a standard flight on a Falcon 9 rocket is $54 million. We are the only launch company that publicly posts this information on our website (www.spacex.com). We have signed many legally binding contracts with both government and commercial customers for this price (or less). Because SpaceX is so vertically integrated, we know and can control the overwhelming majority of our costs. This is why I am so confident that our performance will increase and our prices will decline over time, as is the case with every other technology.

The average price of a full-up NASA Dragon cargo mission to the International Space Station is $133 million including inflation, or roughly $115m in today’s dollars, and we have a firm, fixed price contract with NASA for 12 missions. This price includes the costs of the Falcon 9 launch, the Dragon spacecraft, all operations, maintenance and overhead, and all of the work required to integrate with the Space Station. If there are cost overruns, SpaceX will cover the difference. (This concept may be foreign to some traditional government space contractors that seem to believe that cost overruns should be the responsibility of the taxpayer.)

The total company expenditures since being founded in 2002 through the 2010 fiscal year were less than $800 million, which includes all the development costs for the Falcon 1, Falcon 9 and Dragon. Included in this $800 million are the costs of building launch sites at Vandenberg, Cape Canaveral and Kwajalein, as well as the corporate manufacturing facility that can support up to 12 Falcon 9 and Dragon missions per year. This total also includes the cost of five flights of Falcon 1, two flights of Falcon 9, and one up and back flight of Dragon.

The Falcon 9 launch vehicle was developed from a blank sheet to first launch in four and half years for just over $300 million. The Falcon 9 is an EELV class vehicle that generates roughly one million pounds of thrust (four times the maximum thrust of a Boeing 747) and carries more payload to orbit than a Delta IV Medium.

The Dragon spacecraft was developed from a blank sheet to the first demonstration flight in just over four years for about $300 million.Last year, SpaceX became the first private company, in partnership with NASA, to successfully orbit and recover a spacecraft. The spacecraft and the Falcon 9 rocket that carried it were designed, manufactured and launched by American workers for an American company. The Falcon 9/Dragon system, with the addition of a launch escape system, seats and upgraded life support, can carry seven astronauts to orbit, more than double the capacity of the Russian Soyuz, but at less than a third of the price per seat.

SpaceX has been profitable every year since 2007, despite dramatic employee growth and major infrastructure and operations investments. We have over 40 flights on manifest representing over $3 billion in revenues.

These are the objective facts, confirmed by external auditors. Moreover, SpaceX intends to make far more dramatic reductions in price in the long term when full launch vehicle reusability is achieved. We will not be satisfied with our progress until we have achieved this long sought goal of the space industry.

For the first time in more than three decades, America last year began taking back international market-share in commercial satellite launch. This remarkable turn-around was sparked by a small investment NASA made in SpaceX in 2006 as part of the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. A unique public-private partnership, COTS has proven that under the right conditions, a properly incentivized contractor — even an all-American one — can develop extremely complex systems on rapid timelines and a fixed-price basis, significantly beating historical industry-standard costs.

China has the fastest growing economy in the world. But the American free enterprise system, which allows anyone with a better mouse-trap to compete, is what will ensure that the United States remains the world’s greatest superpower of innovation.

--Elon--

[Moose-Knuckle]

Deep cuts at NASA to help fund Obama care, that's whats next.

Exactly what the War on Poverty did for the space program. . .progress and all. :rolleyes:

[variablebinary]

The space program should be dialed back and the money should be invested in energy and propulsion exploration, because long term, without an advanced energy and propulsion system the space program really has no where to go.