Assume for the moment that we can assured access to space via Commercial Crew. Also assume that the tech development program succeeds in developing the tech we are talking about. Finally, assume that the budget for NASA’s HSF stays at around $8-9 Billion a year.

Why wouldn’t there be more?

BTW. I didn’t say Orion would be going away. My reference there was to the (and there will be more) part. Sorry if that was unclear.

NASA is one of the 2 big stakes in ISS – yes, it doesn’t have absolute rule, but I don’t consider that a huge deal. After all, NASA doesn’t have control over many things (in particular what budget it has). And, as I said, it is one of the 2 biggest stakeholders, and so NASA’s say has weight.

As for ISS going away – don’t bet on it. There are far to many people who prefer it flying, then going away. It’ll be there through 2020, and my bet is it’ll be there until 2030 (unless it wears itself out, or, god-forbid, a catastrophic accident), and if it does, I suspect we’ll have other stations that can grow/augment & replace it.

BTW, regarding returning to the moon or going to mars – the point is we can use ISS to go to the moon or mars – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11304559

And why wouldn’t Orion be there? Its in the budget, and in the authorization act?

Interesting reply – thanks.

Except :

In other words, NASA will have at least 2 spacecraft, and maybe more. And in fact, one of them is already flying. These spacecrafts are… the International Space Station

(Emphasis added.)

Okay, first up is a space *station* really a spacecraft? I guess technically perhaps it is but still..

Secondly, NASA owns & runs the ISS? Really? It has a share in it I’ll grant you sure but it is *also* flown and run by the Russians, Europeans, etc .. NASA here is a stakeholder and not solely in charge.

Secondly, I gather some people are already talking about the ISS being destroyed after a short spellof operation. I am not convinced that the ISS will be the way of the future. I hope it stays in orbit and runs well for at least a few decades from now, I’m not knocking it, but the ISS hardly seems like a great step forward in the way, say, returning to the Moon or travelling to Mars would have been.

and Orion (and there will be more).

I hope so. I wish I had your confidence in that & hope it is not misplaced.

@44. MaDeR Says:

I see MTU at least stopped talking nonsense about Ormianin ancestry of Obama or whatever.

Eh? I have always acknowleged that Obama was born in Hawaii as he claims. There doesn’t seem any real reason to doubt that. I am not, repeat NOT a “birther”.

However, It is also true – as I’ve pointed out before – that Obama was born to Muslim father and a American-American mother and was raised in Indonesia. That make him half American by ancestry on this mothers side and half Muslim Kenyan on his fathers side. Given Barack Hussein Obama was raised in Indonesia you can certainly say he is at best one-third culturally American and two thirds unAmerican.

Also Obama is NOT really “African-American” as defined properly in the sense of people of long distant African ancestry raised in and going back centuries in the USA. His father was an immigrant from Kenya which is very much not the same thing.

How is pointing out these evident truths “nonsense” or considering that someone whose heritage is 2/rds NOT American might not really be the best, most wholy American choice as somebody to represent and lead the USA?

@ 45, 46, 47, 48 : ASFalcon13 & Ferris Valyn : interesting comments & discussion – thanks.

Regarding COTS – what you forget is that there are still 2 US providers – NASA didn’t just fund SpaceX after the collapse of RpK – they took the remaining money, and funded Orbital Science Corp’s Cygnus. And don’t forget – there are 2 other non-US suppliers, outside of Progress (IE H-2, and ATV). You actually have 5 total Cargo suppliers, 2 of which are US based.

Regarding manned/cargo vs satellite – the point worth asking is can the satellite launch help to lower the cost of the manned launches enough so that other users will come in (since up to MECO & payload separation, the flight will have a TON of similarities).

Commercial Crew to Orion – actually, we don’t know WHAT NASA has planned for Orion, yet. Yes, the discussion is for it manned, on an HLV. OTOH, there are a lot of people who would prefer an earlier launch date for Orion, rather than a later (something which an HLV will result in). A lot of big people, with money & power (looking at Congress, and the really big aerospace guys, like Lockheed martin). I think this is something that has really yet to be decided at this point, and so I would wait to write off this possibility.

With regard to coming on at the same time – the commercial crew/orbital guys, this will probably happen. For the very simple reason that they are all getting their funding from NASA. And I think the likely orbital providers are actually all about equal right now – I would be hard pressed picking between Boeing & SpaceX. I am a little more pessimistic on the Dreamchaser, but I am not giving up hope on them yet. They’ve made it this far. That tells me they aren’t stupid.

With regard to the sub-orbital guys – I am less interested in teh Rocket Racing League, and more interested in the Space Adventures/Armadillo, and XCOR’s 2 wet lease deals. And its hard to ignore Blue Origin (I mean, we are talking about the pockets of the guy who founded Amazon.com), and Masten (who beat Armadillo for the Lunar Lander Challenge)

2. I mentioned ISS cargo in my first post, and should have mentioned it in my previous one. You’re right, there will be cargo launches too, but still not a whole lot of them. I think Soyuz/Progress + a single US commercial service will be sufficient to cover the demand. Any more than that, and the commercial providers will eat each other up, pre-ULA style. Heck, we’ve already seen that sort of attrition in the COTS program…RPK, anyone?

I also mention manned/cargo vs. satellite, because I think that the newspace guys are going to find a lot more profit by providing cheap access for satellites rather than scrapping for a few NASA crew/cargo spots (and all the man-rating requirements and red tape that comes along with them, threatening to throw a wrench into their simplified, streamlined processes). The massive Iridium NEXT contract that SpaceX recently picked up immediately comes to mind.

CST or Dreamchaser serving Orion. That’d be a great opportunity for commercial space…if NASA were actually looking into that. But they’re not, so it isn’t. No commercial companies are getting any money to develop that concept. NASA’s looking at crewed Orion launch, with either a heavy lift (which, by the looks of it, will be developed by the usual NASA contractors) or a yet-to-be-officially-identified Ares I replacement doing the lifting. Regardless of whether it’ll work or not, that’s the concept of operations that’s being funded right now, and there’s no saying that they’ll change that. So no, Orion flying doesn’t help commercial, at least not in the way you suggest.

I’d agree, multiple providers would make for a much healthier market, but they’d need to come on board pretty close to simultaneously. Otherwise, the earlier entries to the market can establish a flight history and reliability numbers, which they can use to coax customers away from the new guys. The problem is that there are a few providers that are already head-and-shoulders above the competition: SpaceX, Bigelow, and Scaled/Virgin already have spaceflight experience at this point, so that initial market parity is already out the window.

I’ll admit, XCOR/Armadillo are an interesting case though…I’m interested to see what happens with the Rocket Racing League. I imagine that’ll help them get experience with their systems outside of the launch market, if they can ever get it up and running.

We are talking about 2 different things here. You are talking about long term market viability, while I am talking about development costs. NASA will fund the Commercial Crew program, so that, at the end of the program there will be between 2 and 4 different vehicles capable of delivering astronauts to ISS. And it has the funds available to do that level of funding. Whether those vehicles & providers can sustain once the market has moved to actually flying vehicles, is a more difficult question.

To put it another way – at the end of the current Commercial Crew program, in 2016 – there will be between 2-4 providers (My bet is on 3, but I can see up to 4, and as few as 2). Whether there is that same number in 2020 or 2025 – that I grant, we don’t know. I think the market is large enough to sustain 2-3. I know you disagree. And the real answer is, we don’t have enough data to know for sure what is going to happen

2. You have to be careful here, when you say cargo – because Cargo to ISS (IE COTS & CRS) they have to provide ops cost for everything. However, more to the point – yes, the provider has to provide more stuff than if they are merely a satellite launcher. But the point is, everything done in the satellite launcher will still have to be done in the crewed launcher. So those costs can be spread over the satellite launches, making your total price cheaper, than something solely dedicated to launching humans (whether this lowers the operations enough so it is profitable with a large enough market – again, I grant, we don’t have total conclusive data).

With regard to Orion – my point, which you missed – Orion flying actually HELPS develop the market for commercial crew. Because if you don’t develop a new rocket, Orion cannot be launched manned. So what you can do is, launch Orion unmanned, and then launch a CST-100 or Dreamchaser, dock it with Orion, and then go and do your exploration mission (go to the moon, or Lagrange point, whatever). In otherwords, the market is transporting astronauts to Orion, which will then go do exploration.

With regard to newcomers the market – I think this is why its important to have multiple providers get funded, and develop vehicles. With only 1 provider, you end up with a monopoly, and nothing changes. But if you have 3 different providers (plus the suborbital guys working on their projects that will lead to orbit), then you get some interesting market dynamics. And I think this is why Bigelow has consistently said it wants a minimum of 2 providers (IE not just SpaceX)

With regard to the suborbital guys – I would submit that Blue Origin, Armadillo Aerospace, XCOR, and Masten Space Systems all have to be regarded as legitimate competitors. First, there is the point that all have demonstrated hardware, and hardware that is comparable to their operational crafts (and if you look at Blue Origin, the size of their test craft rivals that of SS1). Then, there is the issue of funding, and all of them have enough funding to make them practical (again, Blue Origin is the big rival, but all of them have enough funding to make a serious run)

Finally, from what I’ve heard, SS2 still lacks a working engine.

1. “Its not the commercial guys saying there will be more than one – its NASA.”

…and with EELV, it was the Air Force that said there would be more than one launch provider. However, market forces didn’t bend to USAF’s will, and we got ULA. Again, a bigger market than crewed spaceflight, but, even there, anything over one supplier was still too many. But lets play with some numbers here…ISS is basically running 6 astros per 6-month expedition, for 12 astros per year. The 7-seat Dragon can haul an entire expedition, plus an extra tourist, every 6 months, for 2 flights a year. That’s it; there are no other NASA destinations. I haven’t even thrown Soyuz into the mix here…Russia’s sure to want to keep their domestic launch capability as well. NASA wants to break that among 3-4 companies? That’d mean each company would be flying crew at a rate of less than 1 revenue-generating launch per year…can you please point me to an operational non-government launch organization that’s been able to survive that sort of low flight rate? Again, what the government wants, and what the market will be able to actually sustain, are two different things.

2. I agree with what you’re saying from the launch vehicle perspective, but ops differs between crewed and uncrewed launches. For an uncrewed launch, the launch provider’s responsibility ends at MECO and payload sep. However, for a crewed launch, the provider still has to provide ops for their spacecraft as well. In other words, crewed launch will still carry costs that just can’t be spread over unmanned launches. And rest assured, if companies can’t manage to operate their crewed operations in the black on their own merit, expect them to cut that out and become cargo-only launch providers…why would a commercial, profit-driven organization continue to operate a service results in the company losing money?

And then responses to my points…

1. The authorization bill directs Orion to continue to be developed as a crew exploration vehicle. Dragon may be capable of providing BEO, but NASA isn’t buying it (not under the current authorization bill, anyway). By Congressional order, there’s no market here.

2. I’ll agree with you here too, and I’m interested to see what Bigelow has. I also think that Bigelow and their inflatable stations will be the main provider for commercial space R&D if they’re successful…I believe that once a provider has established a flight history and has seen financial success, it’ll be extremely difficult for a newcomer with no flight history to enter the market and challenge.

3. When I see some test runs comparable to what Scaled/Virgin have accomplished out of the other guys (remember, Scaled already has spaceflights with a similar architecture and an X-Prize to their name), then I might actually believe in some of the competition. However, between Scaled’s flight experience and Branson’s charisma, I think Virgin will already have already cornered the market before anyone else even gets off the ground.

A few things

1. Its not the commercial guys saying there will be more than one – its NASA. More to the point, you are talking market size. I am talking about what NASA funds vis-a-vie a development contract. NASA has made it very clear – it will be looking to fund up somewhere between 2-4 development contracts. Just as there are 2 cargo resuppliers, expect at a minimum 2(and I think its more likely to be 3 or 4) crew providers.

2. Part of what is going to support the market is that it’ll be amatorized across the unmanned market, as well as the manned market. Falcon 9 & Atlas V & Delta IV & Taurus 2 unmanned launches will probably be higher than the manned launches. But since more flights on those rockets will bring prices down (thanks to markets of scale & the like), that means the companies will be making it on volume.

Regarding your point by point

1. Actually you are wrong. First, Dragon has been said to have a built in BEO capability. However, I actually could care less about that. The reason is thus – Right now, we can launch Orion on a Delta IV, but we can’t put people in it (the LAS is too heavy). Of course, the solution to this is simple. Launch it on the Delta IV, and then launch the people on a CST-100 or Dragon or Dream chaser, and dock it, and go off to the moon. That will happen much sooner than waiting for the big Super HLV, and launching Orion on it manned.

2. I do agree that NASA ISS is the big money maker. OTOH, I think its FAR too early to know what is happening with Bigelow Aerospace. Specifically, they have said that they’ll announce six countries that will be Bigelow’s first customers – http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=24159

Now, it is true, any company can say what it likes. But then, Bigelow has 2 prototypes already in orbit.

3. Tourism – I think people will see the suborbital & orbital tourism markets differently, at least for a little while. As for Virgin cornering the market – there are 4 other companies that I think will give Virgin a run for their money. Anyway, back to the orbitals.

I also think there are other possibilities offered by orbital spaceflight, not yet considered.