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I believe that dragonrider is actually quite close to being ready. It depends how much NASA is willing to allow in the way of waiving its requirement for an infinite number of launches to demonstrate that the launch system is safe, but I'd think that if NASA were to give SpaceX a boatload of money they could get DragonRider operational within the year. I believe that downmass capability has already been demonstrated?
Elon is tweeting that a Dragon Mk 2 announcement in imminent. I'm sure he saw the Generals comment yesterday and decided now was the right time to pounce.
I wonder if it will simply be the Dragonrider or the powered dry landing version two.
Orbital and ATK form space flight super group
Orbital and ATK have merged forces to form a joint company that will combine the talents and resources of two well-known space industry stalwarts. To be known as Orbital ATK Inc. – the deal will give birth to a new Global Aerospace and Defense Systems Company that will result in the further merging of synergies with their respective space hardware.
Orbital ATK Inc:
While Tuesday’s announcement was heavily angled at investors and the financial market, the initiation of the merger is aimed at a combination of forces that may result in some interesting and positive implications for the space hardware both companies currently run separately and together.
With a focus on affordability, the merger is targeting a stronger foothold in the increasingly competitive space market.
One wonders what this merger means for orbital logistics going forward. Orbitals Antares kind of earned the COTS consolation prize, but other than a slightly extended payload module, it is essentially a dead end system flying a Russian first stage engine that will increasingly struggle to compete with the reusable Falcon.
ATK on the other hand, has to know that depending on the SLS is not going end well for them, and they need to break to more viable market. They already provide the Castor second stage on the Antares, and has previously partnered with Orbital to provide the solid first and second stages of the Pegasus II airborne rocket.
So where are they going with this? ATK has tried every which way to find a customer for the old (or new) shuttle SRB. The SLS is not long for this world, and though the Liberty rocket went over like a lead balloon as a manned launcher, it does have tremendous potential as a logistical launcher, providing far more cargo in a scaled up Cygnus II than the Dragon can deliver, on what is, after the Ares I-X flight, essentially proven flight and ground hardware. I think they are looking to replace the Antares first stage with a reusable SRB, with the Pegasus II filling the lower end of the market, and an Antares two providing serious supplies to future exploration outposts and Bigelow commercial, or government owned space stations, striking a happy medium between the Falcon 9 and Heavy, in order to take over the orbital logistics market, compete on equal terms on the satellite market, and leaving the manned, and politically volatile super heavy exploration market with SpaceX.
For a while there it looked like SpaceX would be by itself, which of course isn't good from the competitive standpoint. But between the two I think we might have a good mix of competition, specialization and diversity in our commercial providers to do great things in an all commercial launch provider space program.
Do you really want to fire the first shot in a space war? Then it really will be the shot seen round the world, every 90 minutes.
General Gerasimov just fired a shot across our bow, saying further interference with Russian expansion into Eastern would result in bad things happening to our astronauts and investment.
What I am suggesting is a peaceful separation of the two segments. Nothing gets damaged unless the Russians fail to comply. International law says we are responsible for our segments anyway, such an act would be in compliance with such standards.
Do you seriously think the astronauts would be held hostage by Russia when they return?
That's precisely what General Gerasimov just threatened.
If their aim is to deliver a blow to Russia's rocket-building sector, then by default, they would be exposing their astronauts on the ISS
They are threatening Western access to the station as sole launch provider, or the astronauts themselves.
Or that the Russians onboard would be able to overpower them and force them into the Soyuz capsules? Or steal both, leaving them stranded, and destroy the life support so that they can't be picked up later?
You misunderstand. I'm suggesting that the US and Japanese crew members duck out on a Soyuz to preempt any Russian move. We've already paid for the Soyuz in the contract for seats up, we would just be taking them down, and the Russians would come out ahead on the rocket launch costs. Alternatively, we could keep the Soyuz in orbit to await the separation, and then re-dock with our segment. At that point we would probably have a lot of work to do to put the whole thing in standby mode, and then leave it unmanned until the Dragon is approved for manned flight. In a contingency such as this, I'm sure SpaceX could just bolt some seats into a Dragon, and we could fly with Shuttle safety standards (ie. no LAS) within a year. Anything longer than that and some sort of station keeping method would have to be applied to our segment, as that duty is assigned largely to the Russian segment. Perhaps something as simple as a Falcon second stage with a docking ring for a solid connection. Of course, ultimately to point would be to replace it as quickly as possible with a purchased Bigelow station
Do you seriously think the astronauts themselves would be willing to do all that, or that the Russians would destroy the station and thus prove that they're a threat to the entire world?
Astronauts are still representatives of the United States. I'm sure that individually they are good friends with their Russian comrades, and our beef is not with them or the Russian people. Nevertheless, Putin's actions must have consequences. Hopefully the Russian people will see that what Putin is doing is harmful to them and vote him and his stooges out.
The ISS is a $100 billion dollar and counting scientific resource outpost, most of which was spent by the US government. I contend that it doesn't make any sense to demand that the Russians detach their segments (Is that even possible, realistically?) and doesn't serve anyone's interests to do so.
Russia has apparently decided to be openly hostile to our values, making cooperation increasingly difficult to justify. And you don't leave such a valuable assets in the hand of rival, even if it means losing it yourself. If anyone understands the policy of scorched Earth, its the Russians.
The Russian have made clear they want to keep their segments after the other expire, so let them. They would just have a station with 10% of the capability it did before.
Whether or not we are ultimately able to save our segments on their own is irreverent. With the will and newly developed commercial resources, we can replace it with something with greater capability for both us and the rest of our international partners within a couple of years for less than it would cost to maintain the old station.
Of course, an utter lack of will/spine is precisely why Obama will do nothing about this as the crisis in Ukraine escalates into either open war or ethnic cleansing between the Russians and Ukrainians.
Why Nebraska?
I figure its the closest to Kazakhstan that we have.
It was only a matter of time...
[url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10795372/Ukraine-crisis-EU-sanctions-target-separatists-and-Russian-spies.html]Ukraine crisis: EU sanctions target separatists and Russian spies
New EU sanctions target separatists and their Russian military sponsors as Moscow threatens American astronauts on ISS[/url]
...
In a significant political move, General Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian military general staff, has been added to the sanctions list for his responsibility "for the massive deployment of Russian troops along the border with Ukraine and lack of de-escalation of the situation".
Following the announcement, Mr Rogozin said that fresh US sanctions against Moscow could compromise US astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS).
"If their aim is to deliver a blow to Russia's rocket-building sector, then by default, they would be exposing their astronauts on the ISS," the Interfax news agency quoted Mr Rogozin as saying in Crimea.
...
If Obama had any strategic sense, he'd give secret orders to the US astronauts get themselves and the Japanese crew member off on one of the Soyuz capsules and land it in Nebraska, and then maneuver an orbital asset, the X-37 currently in orbit perhaps, into a menacingly close orbit, demanding the Russians detach their segments, or we will collide the asset into our own segment. If we sit on our hands on this, and the Russians make the first move, we'll never get our people back.
Jews Are Being Ordered to Register in Russian-Controlled Ukraine
Jews over 16 in the Ukrainian city of Donetsk are being told to pay a special tax and register their identities with the pro-Russian militants who have taken over the town, according to multiple reports.
Early in the Euromaidan revolution that swept Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich, a Russian ally, from power in Kiev, pro-Russian media had sought to portray Euromaidan as an anti-semitic, fascist-led movement that would wreak havoc on the Ukraine's Jews. But if the Donetsk orders are to believed, it's Russian forces and their proxies that now threaten Jews' safety and freedom of movement.
The orders were distributed on flyers throughout the city, according to the wire service JTA and USA TODAY. Those flyers bear the name and signature of Denis Pushilin, leader of the Russian-sympathetic separatist rebels who wrested control of Donetsk from Ukraine earlier in the month. Pushilin's forces have since patrolled the streets in black ski masks, AK47s slung over their shoulders.
Pushilin confirmed to one source that the flyers belonged to his group, which is calling itself "Donetsk's temporary government," although elsewhere he distanced himself from the flyers' content.
Technically that's a falling saucer.
At this rate our children might declare Putin's Law when debating history by scratching out pictures in the dirt with sticks.
Expediting an existing program isn't anything new. Considering how alpha-male the Congresscritters are, I expect ending reliance on Russians for transport would be a no-brainer. And getting money more quickly into the hands of contractors who employ engineers and technicians in their district? Why would you have to even discuss this? But I've been pleasantly surprised to find many voters want international cooperation and peaceful relations. The response on facebook hasn't been positive. I was all for that, and the strongest advocate here on NewMars, until Crimea. I don't know how that can be reconciled with what happened in Crimea.
They have to be in the right district though. SpaceX, Bigelow, and Orbital simply are not in the right districts.
Considering the price of a handful of Ba330 modules and the vastly enhanced capabilities, a logistics module or two, commercial crew transport and orbital resupply, and the Falcon Heavy launcher, why would we keep using the ISS?
The only question is whether to sink it before or after the Russians detach their modules.
Excelsior put his finger on acceptability of passenger rail in the US. You have to drive to the departure terminal, and pay to park your car there. Then you have to rent another car to get where you are going at the other end. In a big, spread-out country like this, that doesn't work for people. Fix that, and passenger rail becomes attractive.
I put a suggestion for this up on http://exrocketman.blogspot.com as "Rethinking High Speed Rail to Make It Work", dated 1-30-14. You don't need really "high speed", just faster than the interstate highways. Do combined freight-passenger service, and run it at about 100-120 mph on the tracks we have. All you need to do that is good track maintenance. Yes, it can be done, we already did it: passenger service was typically 90-110 mph with steam a century ago in this country.
Passenger service gets added by a dining/club car at the tail of the freight. You drive to the station, and onto a flat car to be chained down, a flat car tagged for your destination. You go wine/dine in the club car for the trip. Taking your car with you completely fixes the inconvenience problem, and also gives trains a way to compete with air travel that the airlines cannot match. You do the load and unload of automobiles at the station, decoupled from the train. That way the train stop is short, and divorced from automobile load/unload operations.
Doing it as mixed freight-passenger "hides" the cost of hauling the automobiles as a tiny trivial item amongst the mass of all the freight. Trains already run 70-80 mph in Texas, even freights, and about 10 mph faster than that in Illinois (saw it riding Amtrak to Chicago a few years back). In some states, the maintenance is too poor to travel more than 20-30 mph. Fix THAT, and my out-of-the-box passenger service concept could be implemented far cheaper than anything I have ever heard proposed.
GW
It's an interesting idea. The only issue I see is the lack of sufficient freight traffic to make it a viable commuting option. How often do we have mile plus long freight train going between major metro areas? And back again within short order?
Having recently completed a weeklong, solo, wintertime drive from upstate New York to Idaho, I find the thought of loading my truck unto a transporter and relaxing in the sleeper for a couple days intriguing. I think the key to increasing the use of passenger rail is in increasing its capability, including the transport of personal vehicles.
Edit: Amtrak does this on one route: Washington to Orlando.
During fiscal year 2011, the Auto Train carried over 250,000 passengers, a 6.4% increase over FY2010. The train had a total revenue of US$68,618,768 in FY2011, an increase of 12.5% over FY2010. The Auto Train had the highest revenue of any long-distance train in the Amtrak system.
Looking at the price of the Washington to Orlando run, and considering the stress, mileage on the vehicle, and the price of gas, if they offered this from Albany to Salt Lake City, I'd be on it in a New York minute. Updating the rolling stock and rails to the "high speed" caliber would be a bonus.
When the United States bought Alaska, it paid Russia some money. I think Russia should do the same for Ukraine at a minimum. When the United States took the American Southwest from Mexico, they paid Mexico some money, even though we also beat them in a war. I think Russia should pay Ukraine some money to buy some peace. I agree that Crimea shouldn't have been part of Ukraine in the first place, but it hurts Ukraine's pride for Russia to take it by force, essentially steal it. I think if Russia wants to keep Crimea and get the rest of the World to eventually accept that, it should pay Ukraine some money, probably on the order of $100 billion would seem fair, in installments or financed by bond sales if necessary, but it should pay Ukraine some money!
I'm sure there is $100 Billion in Russian assets in US and Western banks that could be frozen and transferred to Ukraine.
Oh, the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth that would ensue....
I see someone in the Chinese military finally got around to watching that bootleg copy of You Only Live Twice.
What are we going to do when we get there?
There is no room in the budget for anything other than the SLS/Orion combo.
The objective of any first interplanetary expedition should be the successful operation of a life sustaining microponic ecosystem for the duration of the mission.
In fact if Dennis Tito wants to make Inspiration Mars successful, and actually inspirational, he needs to realize that it is about creating an Earth like environment in deep space, and not about drive-byes of a couple of planets. He should prep his vessel, it's crew of biologists and veterinarians, and the ecosystem it contains as a space station in low earth orbit prior, only launching his propulsion modules just prior to his departure window. He can store a missions worth of freeze dried rations, but success is measured by how little of it the crew needs to use. Bonus points if they sustain a hit from a solar flare, nuking their gardens, but they are able to restore it from what they can preserve in the rad bunker by the end of the mission.
Get the 100,000 signatures necessary, and see how quickly the Congresscritters claim it was their idea.
I would love to be proved wrong.
But between the election this year, and pending the results, I don't see a whole lot of new policy being decided. It will be more about correcting the past.
Wet/Dry workshops are a fantastic way to provide additional pressurized volume, which we can never really get enough of. Its a shame we never got do something with all the Shuttle tanks we burned up.
The idea is not dead. Unless of course they insist on using the SLS. Even with the advance of inflatables, there will still be a need for wide body second stages and decent stages, and there is no reason to not design them with re-utilization in mind, and to invest in executing that potential.
Even the first stages have potential. The 3.6m diameter Falcon cores would be pretty limited in an on-orbit application, but the Mars Colonial Transport is sure to have a useful diameter for this purpose. While the goal is to reuse the first stage and boosters to get things off the ground, if they have enough leftover fuel to do a cross range controlled landing, could they get to orbit by themselves post separation?
Sadly, our President is not interested science or engineering that doesn't support his political ideology, and our Congresscritters are far more interested in buying votes at home with juicy contracts than they are actual progress in our space program.
I would love to see a vast expansion of domestic intermodal rail transport for cargo, if for no other reason than getting the bloody semi's off the freeways.
Passenger rail wouldn't work as well in this country simply because the odds of your final destination being within a practical range an urban rail hub is very small. If you've got to rent a car at the train station, there is no advantage to taking a train over flying, in fact, it's much slower even with the high speed rail systems so popular in geographically smaller countries.
An evacuated maglev network could change that equation considerably.
I challenge you to find a group of people with at least one hundred members in this country who would like to become part of Mexico. (Hint: If a person came to the US, either legally or illegally, then they don't want to become part of Mexico).
Its no secret that modern day immigration is very different than that of prior eras. When our forefathers crossed the oceans, there was generally no expectation of ever returning, and cultural, economic, and political ties where severed. Today, there is no such requirement, because people can waltz back across the border as easily as they got in, and many are here simply to support family back home. Consequently, there is no reason to sever ones loyalty to ones home country, and we have the "Reconquista" concept floating around, backed by political organizations on both sides of the border.
But back to the Crimean issue. The problem is not so much a question of the Crimean peoples right to associate with either Kiev or Moscow, its Moscow's utter disregard for Ukrainian sovereignty on the issue. Whether Putin likes it or not, Crimea is a part of Ukraine until a free, fair, and occupation free referendum on the matter can be held according to Ukraine's constitution, as opposed to that 97% farce held last weekend. Honestly, I though Putin was smart enough not to take ballot stuffing tips from North Korea, because there is no way that the less than 60% of the ethnically Russian population legitimately scored 97% without massive ballot stuffing and voter intimidation on the part of Russia's occupation forces. And it should be noted that the only reason there is an ethnically Russian majority in Crimea is because Stalin rounded up the Tarters and shipped them off to Siberia in 1944 for allegedly collaborating with the Nazi's. There is no need to try to get the toothpaste back in the tube and round up the Russians and kick them out, but lets not pretend that Russia has any legitimate historical claim on it.
What this is about is nothing more than Russia's longstanding historical fetish for warm water ports. And quite frankly, if Russia is going to blatantly disregard its international agreements and its neighbors sovereignty in order to project power into the Mediterranean and beyond on behalf of rouge states like Syria, then NATO needs to actually fulfill its purpose to counteract such aggression. If we had sane leadership, we would have called up the Turks the moment Russian boots stepped foot on Ukrainian soil, and gotten them to shred the Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Straits, declaring the Turkish Straits off limits to non-NATO military vessels, and to Russian commercial vessels so long as they occupy Ukrainian soil, militarily backing up the Turks accordingly. If Putin wishes to contest this, he'll be the aggressor in a war with NATO.
But alas, we don't have sane leadership. Obama plays blocks while Putin plays chess, and Europe too dependent on Russian natural gas and too weak militarily to do anything about it. So Putin feels free to restart the Cold War.