BBC: Boeing pilots to make space trip

[Larry]

Link:

Boeing says two of its own employees will crew the first manned mission of its new astronaut capsule.

The year 2015 will see the Atlas launch the capsule three times.

The first flight will put the ship in orbit. The second will take the CST-100 part-way towards space before practising an abort.

In this procedure, the capsule will push itself away from the rocket mid-flight as if there were some problem on the rocket. This will be a critical test of astronaut safety features built into the capsule in the event of an emergency.

Assuming these demonstration flights go well, the third mission will see Boeing test pilots take the CST-100 all the way to the International Space Station.

The CST-100 would then be ready for commercial service starting in 2016.

[isle-hawg]

Depressing. So in 5 years we can go back to the space station.... Meanwhile back in the early 1960's we could go to the moon. Not exactly great progress.........................

[Larry]

1) Actually late 60's. 20 July 69.

2) And I'm with you.

OTOH, I was under the impression that we had no manned launch capability, and weren't funding any, either. Compared to what I thought, waiting 4-5 years doesn't seen nearly as bad.

3) And BOY am I glad you posted. I was getting depressed over the "doesn't anybody even care?" factor.

[RansomthePasserby]

So the plan is to contract space flights out to Boeing? Interesting.

[mjah]

The plan is to have several private contractors. Some are traditional defense/space contractors. Others are not.

And we were always going to have a years-long gap in US manned capability, even long ago before the Ares I rocket turned out to be a giant unworkable boondoggle cluster-[...] Michael Griffin pipe dream. If anything, the sad but very necessary recent abortion of Ares I makes it possible for NASA to more quickly debut a more useful heavy-lift rocket and make room for private-sector launch outfits. Why should NASA be doing run-of-the-mill low Earth orbit work, if the private sector shows real promise to do it at least as well? NASA has been doing that type of work for almost half a century in one form or another. It's time to focus on deeper-space missions, heavy lift, and unmanned/autonomous craft. Boeing, SpaceX, etc.: godspeed.

Still, it's such a shame that Michael Griffin was handed the opportunity to shepherd an overweight, lumbering, delicate NASA manned space program through such a critical transition, and decided to just shove that yoke forward into a totally avoidable nose dive instead. It goes to show how important it is to have an unbroken string of (at least minimally) competent leaders at the helm of a large organization. It also serves as an apt metaphor for the character of Griffin's boss's stewardship across a much larger delicate transition. It only takes one complete loser in power to piss away years of others' (minimally) competent work. Hole-digging, however ill-advised, costs lots of money. And as we're now seeing, hole-filling can be every bit as expensive and a lot more frustrating.

Anyway, IMO the more people we have taking their shots at reliable, comparatively cheap, useful LEO access, the better. The International Space Station may turn out to serve a historically useful purpose after all, as a one-size-fits-all launch and docking target for private industry's many upcoming efforts to make space a destination. I wouldn't be surprised to see its mission lifetime extended if this pans out well. Reach the ISS's goofy orbit, successfully dock, deliver humans, return them unharmed, do it for a fraction of NASA's cost, and you've proven that your private outfit can really do something great.

[Larry]

Anyway, IMO the more people we have taking their shots at reliable, comparatively cheap, useful LEO access, the better. The International Space Station may turn out to serve a historically useful purpose after all, as a one-size-fits-all launch and docking target for private industry's many upcoming efforts to make space a destination. I wouldn't be surprised to see its mission lifetime extended if this pans out well. Reach the ISS's goofy orbit, successfully dock, deliver humans, return them unharmed, do it for a fraction of NASA's cost, and you've proven that your private outfit can really do something great.

My Dad was an electrical engineer who moved up into management of engineering teams. And I always remember something he told me about how to manage large projects.

He said that what you do is, you write specs for the borders.

You nail down exactly what the interface will be, at the input of your project, and what the interface will be at it's output.

If the project is too big, and needs to be divided up, then you specify where the dividing line will be between the two sub-groups.

He said that he always liked to make the dividing point a relay, because it was something that was easily verified.

Example: Your project is "whenever A happens, then make B happen" You break the project down into two parts:

1) Whenever A happens, close Relay 1.

2) When relay 1 closes, make B happen.

When the prototype is built, you test it. If A happens, but B doesn't, then you look at the relay. If A happened, but the relay didn't close, then the fault is in team 1's work. If the relay closed, but B didn't happen, it's team 2's problem. Neither side can argue about whether the relay did or didn't close.

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Read an editorial, decades ago, in a sci-fi magazine, about encouraging the private development of space. And the writer claimed that one of the things that the US government did, to encourage the growth of the aviation industry, was a law that was passed, in which the government announced a mission: deliver 50 lbs pf mail, 200 miles. (I'm making these numbers up, I don't think the article even mentioned the real ones). And the government announced that any company who could deliver that mission would receive a guaranteed number of flights, at a guaranteed price, even if somebody else made an airplane that was better in one way or another.

It meant that any venture entrepreneur who wanted to get into the business, had a known target, a known customer, and a guaranteed price. The entrepreneur still had to gamble (his airplane had to work, or he got nothing), but at least part of his business plan wasn't a gamble.

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I could certainly see the argument that something like "deliver 500 lbs of cargo to the space station, and we guarantee you a contract for 20 missions" could certainly serve well, as a similar target. It gives the companies a known target and a known price. And the government knows that we;re going to need it. At least I certainly hope that we're going to be sending hundreds, maybe thousands of missions there.

(And later, the goal can be moved. "Deliver three people, and bring three back" could well be the next goal. So could "deliver a 30 ton module".)

And, to me, the station makes a dandy "demarcation point", too. We could well establish the boundary that NASA is in charge of the station, and everything beyond it, but some day getting things to the station might even be a competitive bid process.

For example, I'm not a big fan of a manned mission to Mars. (I think it's a dead end, in that once you go there, the only thing you can do is come back.) But I think it's glaringly obvious that if we ever do decide to go there, that the spacecraft that goes there, will be assembled at the station. It will be built on Earth in multiple modules, launched in pieces, and it will be assembled, and tested, there.

[mjah]

In the event that privatized space travel (or at least launches/deliveries) becomes a "regular thing," I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of ISS specs become the de facto standards for things like docking adapter dimensions, etc. essentially forever. Kind of like the adage about the width of the Shuttle's SRBs being traced back to the total width of two horse's asses side by side.

[Prosperity]

thanks Larry, always love these threads...

[mjah]

I don't know about you guys, but I feel like I play exactly the same role in every single space thread.

...Yet I can't stop...

Time for a 12-step program.