Jeff Foust has the details.
As usual, SLS/Orion is funded above the request, and Commercial Crew below it. And technology takes it in the shorts yet again. But at least they didn’t underfund Commercial Crew as much as they have in the past. It’s only about a hundred-twenty-five million less than the $800M+ request. It apparently also contains a three-year extension on launch indemnification.
Note that Congress is demanding a cost-benefit analysis for Commercial Crew, but (as Clark Lindsey notes) not one for the wasteful $3B that’s going to SLS/Orion.
Nothing too upsetting, other than some of the SLS/Orion costs. As Clark Lindsey noted, Orion got $1,197 million, which is $1.197 billion – for a capsule (and I suppose a service module) whose all-up weight is 46,848 pounds, or so says the Orion wiki. That comes to $25,000 per pound, and we’re spending that much every year. Eight years of such costs would mean we spent $200,000 a pound on the capsule, or $13,700 per troy ounce. Assuming that one of the Orion crew couches weighs 50 pounds, that comes to only $10 million dollars a seat. What a bargain!
Oh, wait… I didn’t do that quite right, did I?
I can’t wait to read this report about why funding Boeing to catch up with SpaceX, and then selecting only one of them (gee, I wonder which one!) is more cost effective than just funding SpaceX – which they could have done with COTS-D as early as 2009.
Some of us are still holding out the hope that NASA gets both Boeing and SpaceX operational.
As for why not just COTS-D, I can only speculate. But I’d guess that when the plan for Commercial Crew was laid out in 2009, SpaceX had only launched a small launch vehicle five times, and only twice successfully. There was some serious question whether SpaceX was up to the complex challenges of manned spaceflight.
Meanwhile Boeing had designed and built every manned spacecraft NASA ever used to launch humans into space. That experience shows in the speed they are able to execute the Commercial Crew contract. SpaceX started Dragon in 2006 and plans to fly it manned in 2015 (nine years). Boeing started CST-100 in 2010 and plans to fly it manned in 2016 (six years). For comparison, Lockheed started Orion in 2005 and plans to fly it manned in 2021 (16 years).
Here’s the thing. While Boeing is proving itself with each new milestone, so is SpaceX. And SpaceX is answering the question above with each flight of the Falcon 9 and cargo Dragon. The competition is not so one-sided as either side would have believed in 2009.
And that’s a good thing.
It was a milestone based contract.. there was no risk in initiating COTS-D. If SpaceX didn’t deliver, NASA didn’t pay. The failure to enact COTS-D was precisely because “we wanted to maximize competition for the vehicle” – Chris Scolese. i.e., they wanted to give Boeing a chance to catch up.