• US wants to privatize Space Station

    From Fred J. McCall@21:1/5 to JF Mezei on Tue Feb 13 22:45:53 2018
    XPost: sci.space.policy

    JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> wrote:

    On 2018-02-13 20:20, Fred J. McCall wrote:

    SpaceX is affected to the extent that resupply and crew missions would
    go away. BFR is probably largely unaffected, though, since it
    probably would just barely be into that business and once it is,
    development spending is largely complete.

    In all of the fancy powepoints, SpaceX has its BFR attacxhed at the
    station (where PMA2 is, so docked).


    Yes. Go read what I wrote again.


    If SoaceX intends to retire Falcon 9, then one would expect BFR to
    replace its duties to bring cargo/crews to/from station.


    Correct. Go read what I wrote again.


    Loss of station about the time BFR gets functional removes a commercial >customer for its crewed version. And also removes the need to develop
    docking software for the station.


    There is no "docking software for the station". BFR knows how to do
    to things (including ISS). So "extra special" development is
    required. As for the rest, go read what I wrote again. The primary
    purpose of BFR is ***NOT*** to dither around ISS. Yes, shutting down
    ISS costs you some missions, but it costs you some missions regardless
    of what you planned on flying them with.



    Why would 'commercial crew' be forced to split? Do you know what
    'commercial' means?


    If you hjave 10 years with of crew rotation split between 2 companies,
    each company has a fair number of paind launches. But if you now have
    only 5 year worth of crew transport, can 2 companies cost justify the >development costs for manned capsules?


    Uh, you understand they're being paid for that development as part of
    a separate program, right? Recovery of costs is generally not reliant
    on number of flights to ISS.


    With SpaceX ahead, wouldn't it make sense for Boeing to kills it CST
    program since the number of launches it could expect to make before the >station is shut wouldn pay back the investment in CST and whatever
    rocket gets man-rated to launch it ?


    As long as NASA is paying Boeing to develop CST, they will continue to
    develop CST even if it never flies at all outside the development
    program.


    --
    "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
    man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
    all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
    --George Bernard Shaw

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)