NASA's Deep Space Gateway

[Nightside]

18 hours ago, wumpus said:

Why do I get the feeling that "partnering" means "spreading around the pork"?

Well, typically partnering means bringing in other companies that specialize in the secondary aspects of a complex project. It is surprising that their launch provider has only ever built a carnival ride so far.

[tater]

40 minutes ago, Nightside said:

Well, typically partnering means bringing in other companies that specialize in the secondary aspects of a complex project. It is surprising that their launch provider has only ever built a carnival ride so far.

Not to mention they are the partner for human rating, and they have literally never sent a human into space, and when they do it will literally be for an amount of time the passengers could plausibly hold their breath.

[wumpus]

4 hours ago, tater said:

Not to mention they are the partner for human rating, and they have literally never sent a human into space, and when they do it will literally be for an amount of time the passengers could plausibly hold their breath.

True, but a month or two ago I would have thought SpaceX certainly had the lead in man rating.  I suspect ULA holds the lead for American human [orbital] ratings right now.

[jadebenn]

33 minutes ago, wumpus said:

True, but a month or two ago I would have thought SpaceX certainly had the lead in man rating.  I suspect ULA holds the lead for American human [orbital] ratings right now.

You mean Boeing, right?

Don't think the ULA is interested in man-rating any of their rockets.

[ZooNamedGames]

4 minutes ago, jadebenn said:

You mean Boeing, right?

Don't think the ULA is interested in man-rating any of their rockets.

aside from Vulcan and Atlas.

[jadebenn]

On 5/26/2019 at 8:04 PM, ZooNamedGames said:

aside from Vulcan and Atlas.

I'm a forgetful idiot. Sue me. 

[tater]

 

[jadebenn]

Okay going to do an image dump, sorry in advance. Jeff Faust's twitter is a gold mine.

Comparison of Lunar Capabilities in 2024 vs. those that will be available by 2028
Basically an explanation for why we'll be able to stay longer on the later missions. We really, really, need to get the Z2 to a working state, especially since I believe it has been designed primarily with EVA expeditions in mind until recently, not Lunar surface missions.

---

Possible Landing Sites / Future Surface Outpost Location
No peaks of eternal sunlight, but something close. Also with good access to Lunar ice for possible future ISRU.

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Why NRHO was selected for the Gateway
Kinda weird they show the BFR and NA when they're talking about a 15 mt to TLI capacity. That's for existing commercial launchers; those two would be roughly on par with the SLS. Possibly surpassing it, depending on whether Block 1B becomes a thing

[tater]

NG was just selected (no competition) for the Gateway Hab module, to be based on their Antares ISS resupply spacecraft.

No cost released.

[jadebenn]

4 hours ago, tater said:

NG was just selected (no competition) for the Gateway Hab module, to be based on their Antares ISS resupply spacecraft.

No cost released.

Cygnus, actually. Antares is the rocket.

It's called the Minimal Habitation Module, which I believe is simply the new name for the US utilization module. It's essentially an over-glorified docking node with life support capability.

Sole-sourcing the module was justified by NASA on the basis of schedule (NASA said bidding it out would add 12-18 months of delay). NGIS got the win because they had already done a lot of work on this concept, and had drawn-up detailed plans on how they could build it with existing parts and tooling.

[tater]

Sorry, my bad. Cygnus. I had both tabs open to look at Antares fairing size.

Yeah, no competition makes sense for schedule, but I’d like to see how badly we’re being reamed.

[Guest]

On 5/26/2019 at 10:45 AM, wumpus said:

Why do I get the feeling that "partnering" means "spreading around the pork"?

I’ve never heard that saying before but somehow I know exactly what it means XD

(btw, I was thinking about this stuff recently and came to the idea of what would happen if there was a new space rush involving China. 

Pretty sure the US government would go bankrupt trying to keep pace alone this time... say what you will about China, they have political endurance (and deep pockets) the US government can only dream of, so partnering with commercial companies is probably a survival strategy as much as... well, pork spreading XD.)

 

Edited July 23, 2019 by Guest

[tater]

29 minutes ago, Dale Christopher said:

Pretty sure the US government would go bankrupt trying to keep pace alone this time... say what you will about China, they have political endurance (and deep pockets) the US government can only dream of, so partnering with commercial companies is probably a survival strategy as much as... well, pork spreading XD.)

All the other space programs combined have a lower budget than NASA.

 

 

[mikegarrison]

7 minutes ago, tater said:

All the other space programs combined have a lower budget than NASA.

 

 

China's real space budget is assumed to be much higher than the officially reported numbers.

[tater]

29 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

China's real space budget is assumed to be much higher than the officially reported numbers.

Yeah, and/or mixed with military expense (of course the same is true of US space expense, gotta add a few billion for the Pentagon, at least). I saw another graph that somehow corrected for the cost of things, and what value they got in constant dollars, and it put the US at closer to 40 B$, but the PRC at more like 11 B$ (so 25% vs 10%).

Edited July 23, 2019 by tater

[Guest]

@tater 

China is in a much better financial position than the US, I’m speaking in terms of that, not what is currently supplied for their current programs comparatively. 

Edited July 24, 2019 by Guest

[tater]

Just now, Dale Christopher said:

China is in a much better financial position than the US, I’m speaking in terms of than not what is currently supplied for their current programs comparatively. 

This is simply put, untrue.

[Guest]

Just now, tater said:

This is simply put, untrue.

Please elaborate, it seems pretty objectively true 

[tater]

Just now, Dale Christopher said:

Please elaborate, it seems pretty objectively true 

Spoiler

This is way, way off topic.

Pretty much every metric that matters. China has had a bad few years, and they depend on growth.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/20/business/china-economy-gdp-fourth-quarter.html

I could fill a page with news stories about the Chinese economy, or we could look at standard of living, per capita GDP, median income, etc, ad nauseum. China has an economy, it's not a disaster, but it's not super awesome, either, the same can be said of any country. If you can demonstrate it's "in a much better position than the US." by all means, do so.

 

[Guest]

Spoiler

28 minutes ago, tater said:

  Hide contents

This is way, way off topic.

Pretty much every metric that matters. China has had a bad few years, and they depend on growth.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/20/business/china-economy-gdp-fourth-quarter.html

I could fill a page with news stories about the Chinese economy, or we could look at standard of living, per capita GDP, median income, etc, ad nauseum. China has an economy, it's not a disaster, but it's not super awesome, either, the same can be said of any country. If you can demonstrate it's "in a much better position than the US." by all means, do so.

 

1      China                                              $24,980,000,000,000                               
2      United States                                      $14,000,000,000,000                               
3      Japan                                              $8,917,000,000,000                                
4      European Union                                     $8,138,000,000,000                                
5      Germany                                            $3,282,000,000,000   

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2215rank.html

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_external_debt

1	United States	1.9765887×1013	31 December 2018[1]	58,200	115
2	United Kingdom	8.475956×1012	31 December 2017[2]	127,000	313
3	France	5.689745×1012	31 December 2017[3]	87,200	213
4	Germany	5.398267×1012	31 December 2017[4]	65,600	141
5	Netherlands	4.5104×1012	31 December 2017[5]	265,40

Spoiler

 

https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDP_RPCH@WEO/OEMDC/ADVEC/WEOWORLD/CHN

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/12/the-world-s-top-economy-the-us-vs-china-in-five-charts/

I mean there’s heaps of evidence so you can’t say by any stretch that “it’s simply put, untrue” there’s nothing simple about it. But at the same time I guess it’s not something I can say is an objective fact either since the shear mass of information and various metrics and analytics make it a really subjective matter. Still, I stand by the first thing I said, in a space race I think China would run the US into the ground.

 

Edited July 23, 2019 by Guest

[tater]

https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/07/23/nasa-taps-northrop-grumman-in-sole-source-agreement-to-build-gateway-habitat/

[tater]

13 hours ago, Dale Christopher said:

I mean there’s heaps of evidence so you can’t say by any stretch that “it’s simply put, untrue” there’s nothing simple about it.

Spoiler

Yeah, I can. If you make any positive claim (ie: "China is in a much better financial position than the US"), it requires demonstration, and short of demonstrating the veracity of the claim, we don't assume it is true. The rest of the argument was predicated on that claim, so it's simply untrue short of demonstration of what you asserted at the start (China is in a much better financial position than the US).

I can't see any possible way to demonstrate that this is true (economics has trouble demonstrating the truth of anything, it's not physics)

<S>

 

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

Imho, there is a simple general criterion to compare places wealth: direction of low/mid class migration + who is buying real estates where.

 

[tater]

Gateway should really be put inside an asteroid. Where are the Heechee when you need them?

Edited July 24, 2019 by tater

[Guest]

Spoiler

4 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

  Hide contents

Imho, there is a simple general criterion to compare places wealth: direction of low/mid class migration + who is buying real estates where.

Well China buys everything my country produces XD including our realestate (even though it’s illegal unless it’s a new building...) There’s even regulations now to stop people buying out stuff from the supermarkets and sending it back to China cos they have been buying our baby food (theirs was being adulterated by formaldehyde from memory >_<... what a thing to fill something out with....

Whats your opinion on China’s economy vs the US anywhoozles?

 

 

Edited July 24, 2019 by Guest