Grumblings of true commercial space travel at NASA

I agree, hats off to Michael Griffin!

Editorial at:

http://aviationnow.ecnext.com/free-s...ticle=06275p09

begin quote

.... tried to pound that point home last week with a bracing call for
private enterprise to carry crew and cargo to the International Space
Station. Let's hope he's taken seriously, in and out of the government.

"We've got to get commercial enterprise into the space business," Griffin
said. ". . . There's no future for us continuing to build manned
spacecraft that cost $200,000 a pound."

end quote

There is another good article in this weeks issue too.

--
Craig Fink
Courtesy E-Mail Welcome @

Its very common for NASA to talk about commercializing, but not so
common for NASA to actually act on it. The chances are that what NASA
is thinking about here is a Prime Contractor, like United Space
Alliance, not a truly commercial service.

"Explorer" wrote in
oups.com:

Its very common for NASA to talk about commercializing, but not so
common for NASA to actually act on it. The chances are that what NASA
is thinking about here is a Prime Contractor, like United Space
Alliance, not a truly commercial service.

The question will hinge on insurance. In government-contractor
relationships, the government is responsible for the project and
indemnifies the contractor against liability. In commercial supplier
relationships, the vendor is liable for its actions and must carry
liability insurance.

It will be interesting to see how the insurance industry reacts when an
alt.space company walks in the door and asks for a liability policy for
approaching and docking with a $100 billion space station, something the
alt.space company will have had no track record with. The actuaries will go
nuts trying to assign probabilities, and therefore premiums, so the policy
will probably be priced conservatively, resulting in sticker shock.

There are several potential ways out. One is to have the commercial
suppliers launch the cargo in passive cannisters and use a space tug based
at the station to retrieve it. However, this just moves the liability
problem from the cargo supplier to the space tug supplier, since one does
not currently exist.

The other solution would be government indemnification for commercial
suppliers, but the government would likely insist on a level of oversight
comparable to a government-contractor relationship, which would negate many
of the benefits of a commercial approach.

--
JRF

Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail,
check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
think one step ahead of IBM.

"Jorge R. Frank" wrote:

The other solution would be government indemnification for commercial
suppliers, but the government would likely insist on a level of oversight
comparable to a government-contractor relationship, which would negate many
of the benefits of a commercial approach.

ponders Didn't a relationship something like that help kill off the
nuclear power industry?

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

In article ,
Jorge R. Frank wrote:
There are several potential ways out. One is to have the commercial
suppliers launch the cargo in passive cannisters and use a space tug based
at the station to retrieve it. However, this just moves the liability
problem from the cargo supplier to the space tug supplier, since one does
not currently exist.

One obvious solution is to have the tug supplied by one of the station
partners. Then only the tug is an insurance issue, still not trivial but
vastly more tractable than the station itself.

People are already thinking in that direction. When Boeing asked SpaceX
for a quote on freight delivery to an orbital fuel depot, what came back
was a quote for delivery to a point 1km from the depot.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |

(Henry Spencer) wrote in
:

In article ,
Jorge R. Frank wrote:
There are several potential ways out. One is to have the commercial
suppliers launch the cargo in passive cannisters and use a space tug
based at the station to retrieve it. However, this just moves the
liability problem from the cargo supplier to the space tug supplier,
since one does not currently exist.

One obvious solution is to have the tug supplied by one of the station
partners. Then only the tug is an insurance issue, still not trivial
but vastly more tractable than the station itself.

It also means that the particular station partner is in the critical path
of commercial crew and cargo service to ISS. That's not to say this is not
a viable path, but it does mean that availability of commercial services
prior to 2010 is wishful thinking at best.

People are already thinking in that direction. When Boeing asked
SpaceX for a quote on freight delivery to an orbital fuel depot, what
came back was a quote for delivery to a point 1km from the depot.

That suggests SpaceX has not thought the problem through. "1 km" is a
meaningless metric, when not tied to a particular relative *velocity* as
well.

--
JRF

Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail,
check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
think one step ahead of IBM.

"Jorge R. Frank" wrote:
It also means that the particular station partner is in the critical path
of commercial crew and cargo service to ISS.

The americans have "complained" about Russia being in the critical path with
fears it couldn't be relied upon and could jeoperdize the station.

Now, the Americans are definitely on the critical path with so much of the
hardware designed to be hauled up and down by the shuttle and the Shuttle is
being widthdrawn before the station is really complete.

If there is ever to be a HAB attached to a USA node, it will have to have a
new tug. HTV may have technologies developped to bring additional modules to
within grabbing distance from the station arm for berthing. But do the
Japanese have sufficient lift (and tugging) capacity to bring a whole new
module up ?

How long would it take the Japanese to adapt HTV into a module tug ?

Has ESA indicated they are willing to fill the gap left once MPLMs are no
longer usable by committing to more ATVs ? Or will the station have to revert
back to 2 crewmembers once ESA has expanded the ATVs it had committed to
build ?

People bitch about the Shuttle, but I don't think that they realise how
important it is to have a space truck with the shuttle's capabilities.

On Sun, 10 Jul 2005 21:12:25 -0500, in a place far, far away, "Jorge
R. Frank" made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

People are already thinking in that direction. When Boeing asked
SpaceX for a quote on freight delivery to an orbital fuel depot, what
came back was a quote for delivery to a point 1km from the depot.

That suggests SpaceX has not thought the problem through. "1 km" is a
meaningless metric, when not tied to a particular relative *velocity* as
well.

I didn't see the quote, but I would assume that it was at least
implied, if not stated, that the relative velocity would be zero.

In article ,
Jorge R. Frank wrote:
One obvious solution is to have the tug supplied by one of the station
partners. Then only the tug is an insurance issue, still not trivial
but vastly more tractable than the station itself.

It also means that the particular station partner is in the critical path
of commercial crew and cargo service to ISS. That's not to say this is not
a viable path, but it does mean that availability of commercial services
prior to 2010 is wishful thinking at best.

True, especially if the partner in question is the US, which can't even
keep its *existing* station commitments (e.g., the one about providing
lifeboat service starting around now).

People are already thinking in that direction. When Boeing asked
SpaceX for a quote on freight delivery to an orbital fuel depot, what
came back was a quote for delivery to a point 1km from the depot.

That suggests SpaceX has not thought the problem through. "1 km" is a
meaningless metric, when not tied to a particular relative *velocity* as
well.

No, it suggests you're nitpicking. :-) Zero relative velocity, of course.
The point is that Musk doesn't want to do proximity operations near even a
fuel depot, never mind ISS.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |

Jorge R. Frank wrote:
(Henry Spencer) wrote in
:

It also means that the particular station partner is in the critical path
of commercial crew and cargo service to ISS. That's not to say this is not
a viable path, but it does mean that availability of commercial services
prior to 2010 is wishful thinking at best.

People are already thinking in that direction. When Boeing asked
SpaceX for a quote on freight delivery to an orbital fuel depot, what
came back was a quote for delivery to a point 1km from the depot.

That suggests SpaceX has not thought the problem through. "1 km" is a
meaningless metric, when not tied to a particular relative *velocity* as
well.

They're using standard rendevous terms. 1 km means zero relative
velocity, in the same orbit, 1 km ahead of the spacetug. The space tug
would then perform a manuever to lower its orbit from that of the
target slightly, to catch up to the target, then phase back to the same
orbit within about 200-300 m of the target, after which it's close
enough to be 'driven in' without really worrying too much about orbital
period. (That's how shuttle rdvs happen).

Of course, then it has to get back to the station, which means
optimally this would all happen behind the station. The tug would then
lower its orbit to catch back up to the station with the payload 'in
hand.' Of course, all the maneuvers have to be done in a short enough
time frame that perterbations don't screw up the parameters, but it's
doable.

cuddihy