Nibb31

Yes, for CRS-2, I think that SpaceX is a pretty sure win: they have past performance, CBM berthing, downmass, unpressurized cargo, and all developed and flight-ready. None of the other contenders can match the capabilities of Cargo Dragon without some development work, and therefore risk. I think Cygnus is ahead of CST-100.

Humanity is much more diverse than you think. Most humans live in countries that don't have a space program. Many of them have never heard of rockets and the vast majority of humanity doesn't even care. They care more about the wellbeing of their families, living in peace, access to education, and so on... People who are preoccupied by space exploration are a tiny minority of the populations of a tiny minority of countries. It's very far from being a universal value shared by all humanity.

Let's reiterate. 1) No other spacecraft was available in the timeframe. 2) No other spacecraft was capable of reaching Columbia's orbit. 3) No other spacecraft had EVA capability and Columbia had no docking or berthing capability and no RMS. 4) No spacecraft had refueling capability which would have been necessary to prolong the on orbit lifetime of Columbia. So effectively, the only spacecraft that could actually RV with Columbia was another Shuttle. Even if a Soyuz or Progress could have been sent, it would have been useless because there was no way to transfer any supplies over to Columbia.

J-1 engines ?

What was proposed at the project's inception, what has been developed, and what SpaceX is willing to sell are 3 different things. I don't believe in a tourism market that relies on launching off an Atlas V. The DoD isn't interested in manned spaceflight. Tourism is a sector that has yet to prove its sustainability, and Jeff Bezos disagrees with the wings statement.

It has winglets, control surfaces, landing gear, tyres, brakes, doors, hydraulic lines, reservoirs, and pumps. It also has heavy heatshield material that covers a much wider area and which is exposed to MMOD damage throughout the mission. The crewed version also had parachutes to make a launch abort survivable. Capsules are also lifting bodies, they just don't need to carry all that stuff to space and back (except the parachutes), meaning that they can either carry more payload or use a smaller rocket. They are simpler, have less failure modes, are passively stable, and can survive a landing anywhere on the planet, not just on a runway. The only advantages of horizontal landing are slightly lower Gs on reentry and higher cross-range, neither of which are valued or required by NASA. Not on Cargo Dragon, which this thread is discussing. And NASA isn't super keen on using any of that gear for landing either. Commercial Crew Dragons will be descending on parachutes and the SuperDracos are officially for launch abort and dampening the touchdown impact like Soyuz. Crew Dragon doesn't meet NASA requirements very well either in that respect. Actually, CST-100 was probably the best match to NASA's RFP, which associated with the perceived risk, explains why it was favored.

I don't do hate. I do rational. The appeal for wings is irrational. I understand that it looks nice to Buck Rogers fans, but it's simply not the best use of upmass and esthetics shouldn't be a factor when it comes to selecting the best vehicle for the job. Landing accounts only for the last few minutes of an orbital mission, yet the wings and all the associated systems (landing gear, hydraulics, larger heatshield...) take up the largest fraction of mass on the vehicle. Any benefits are far outweighed by the drawbacks in terms of weight, reliability, complexity, cost, flexibility, and safety. That's what they are doing. Dragon, CST-100 and Cygnus are radically different vehicles. Irrelevant. They don't share any systems. What sort of failure on one of the three major competitors could impact another one? I think NASA has learned the hard way that wings on a spacecraft don't make much sense.

Reusable. Lifting body. Hybrid engines. None of those are actual requirements for the CRS-2 mission. Actually, they are programmatic risks that are likely to score negatively in NASA's evaluation process.

DreamChaser is a lifting body capsule that launches on top of a freaking disposable Atlas V. In fact, it has the disadvantages of the Shuttle with much less reusability.

Just to elaborate, NASA screwed themselves. When the barter arrangements were originally made, NASA was still flying the Shuttle and those seats didn't cost them anything. Screwing up those barter agreements was a consequence of ending the STS program without having a replacement. I don't agree with that. They have lost competitions many times in the past (X-32, CEV, etc...)

It was a barter deal. ESA got seats on the ISS in exchange for 5 ATV flights. That arrangement was extended in exchange for 2 Orion SMs. Note that the barter deal is with NASA, therefore NASA is now paying Russia to fly ESA astronauts on Soyuz. A rather bad deal for NASA really. - - - Updated - - - I don't know what you mean by that. CST-100 is completely new spacecraft with plenty of new technology and R&D. It's fully automatic, it has a pusher LES, it's reusable, and it lands on airbags, and I could go on... I don't know what disadvantages you're talking about. Heck, America hasn't flown a new manned spacecraft since 1981, and now you're getting 3 of them. You should be excited.

Not without completely redesigning the pressure vessel and all the upper compartment and aerodynamics. This includes the access tunnel, the parachute compartment, the fairing, and all the reentry flight dynamics. It would be a completely different spacecraft. The diameter of the IDS collar constrains the moldline of the vehicle. This diagram shows the size difference: This is also why SpaceX is sticking to Cargo Dragon for CRS-2 instead of proposing a cargo version of Crew Dragon.

[Citation needed] That's just a load of bull. - First, what is "Europe"? There is ESA, Arianespace, the EU, etc... - Second, ESA is not going to be buying a spacecraft from a US company. That would be counter-productive on so many levels. ESA receives money from its member countries and that money has to be spent proportionally in those countries. If they need something from another country, they use barter arrangements (like the JWST launch or the Orion SM). - Third, there would be the point of developing a manned spaceflight infrastructure for Ariane 5 when Ariane 5 is being phased out and the ISS is reaching end-of-life. Also, DC on Atlas V is not scheduled anywhere. It doesn't appear in any Atlas V launch manifest and it won't happen unless DC can start selling flights. DC is pretty much on life support at this stage, waiting for someone to pull the plug. As for the CRS-2 contract, SpaceX is pretty certain. The second contender will be either Boeing or Cygnus. I'm betting on Cygnus because it uses CBM berthing while CST-100 uses IDS docking. Cargo vehicles stay attached for months, so if it's attached to one of the two IDS adapters, then you lose redundancy in case there is a problem docking with one of them, or in case you need two crewed vehicles at the same time. Also, the CBM allows larger cargo, including ISPR racks that don't fit through an IDS port. - - - Updated - - - This is for CRS-2, it will be a strictly unmanned vehicle with no life support.

If it was that easy, why would we even bother with having a heatshield? As soon as you get below orbital speed (6.9km/s), you are coming down, and it won't take 16 days unless you have engines to sustain your flight. You are going to have to bleed off that energy whatever you do.

Or it could be an SLA panel. Or it might be Apollo 10 LM "Snoopy". I hope they manage to get some telescope-based pictures to identify it.

From the CAIB report Basically, Columbia didn't "burn up". First, the hole caused a burn-through that damaged the wing's aerodynamic properties. Then, because of that damage, the Orbiter lost control due to increasing aerodynamic forces. The break-up was a consequence of hitting the hypersonic airflow at a bad angle. This is why, as you noted, it seemed to survive the peak heat, but only broke up a while later as the atmosphere became denser. Especially as the Shuttle's were made of aluminium, not titanium.

It wasn't a matter of temperature, but of aerodynamics. The damaged wing had a gaping hole in it, generating excessive drag and excessive lift, which induced excessive roll and put the Orbiter into an attitude where the hypersonic airflow ripped it apart. The problem would only have gotten worse as the atmospheric pressure increased. Pieces of Titanium aren't usually carried on board the Shuttle. They could have tried to repair the hole with material scavenged from the stuff that they carried (foam, insulation, kapton tape...) but it is unlikely that it would have survived reentry.

Did you even look at the STS-400 mission profile or the Ars Technica article I linked to? Let me link it again, because it's a really good read: http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/02/the-audacious-rescue-plan-that-might-have-saved-space-shuttle-columbia/ Also, I forgot to mention that Columbia wasn't equipped with any docking system at all. It only had an airlock. - - - Updated - - - The CAIB doesn't agree with you, since the CO2 scrubber issue defined the deadline for sustaining life support on board Columbia in the event of this hypothetical rescue scenario. Are you joking? Do you have any idea what kind of effort is needed to design and build a spacecraft interface. You can't just stick a Soyuz on top of a rocket that it wasn't designed for, and expect everything to work, and certainly not in less than a month. It would take more than that just to ship a Soyuz out to Kourou. Even if you could, what do you do once you get there? Soyuz can't do EVAs (the old models could initially, but that capability was removed), and it couldn't dock with the Shuttle. Even if Columbia had been fitted with its APAS docking system, Soyuz still couldn't dock because it uses the SSVP (probe and drogue) system instead of APAS. No, a Soyuz rescue would have been impossible for so many reasons. The only other vehicle that was available for a rescue mission was another Shuttle, as described in the CAIB report.

No they couldn't.

Having a rescue mission ready for each manned mission isn't reasonable. Most manned missions are going to dock with a station or hab that can act as a safe haven in case of a problem. Also, most spacecraft aren't vulnerable to the sort of problem that the Shuttle had, because their heat shield is typically well-protected. Standardized docking was the whole idea of the IDS standard. Unfortunately, Russia and China seem to be sticking with APAS for their future vehicles, which rules out easy interoperability on that level. - - - Updated - - - No, food can't survive vacuum, but food would have been the least of their worries. The limitation was the CO2 scrubbers and the fuel cells. The article that I linked too says that the first EVA would have transferred new lithium canisters to Columbia, because the CO2 level would have been the biggest threat. Unfortunately, pretty much everyone agrees that a rescue mission wasn't possible and they were doomed from the strike on.

Did you even read the Ars Technica article that I linked to? You can't berth without a CBM, and Columbia didn't have a docking system. Other Shuttles had the Russian APAS that was inherited from the Shuttle-Mir program, but even then, they couldn't dock with each other because the docking ports were recessed in the payload bay. The solution that the CAIB came up with was to grapple the shuttle with the SSRMS, to set up a lanyard between the two vehicles, and to EVA each crewmember from one Shuttle to the other. After Columbia, the Shuttle was reduced to ISS missions only, so that an STS-300 mission could rescue the crew at the ISS. The only exception was the STS-125 Hubble servicing mission, for which NASA devised the STS-400 rescue mission profile. This had Endeavor on stand-by to Launch On Need in case Atlantis got stranded and would have used the same "grapple and EVA" technique as described in the CAIB report.

Part of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board report focused on what could have been done to save the astronauts. They came up with a rescue mission profile that might have worked. In reality, it would have added the risk of losing even more crewmembers and a second shuttle. http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/02/the-audacious-rescue-plan-that-might-have-saved-space-shuttle-columbia/

I actually like it. The fact that they introduced new models of fighters for each movie stinked of Lucas wanting to sell new merchandising and toys. It's understandable, but it's not realistic. The Rebellion was supposed to be a semi-clandestine operation with little resources, it made little sense that they would be renewing their fleet of starfighters every two years.

And what could they have launched ? The only vehicles that could carry cargo in 2003, other than the STS, were Progress, Soyuz or Shenzhou, and they couldn't dock with the Shuttle without extensive modifications. There was no way a Soyuz could have reached Columbia's inclination anyway, and China was no where ready to launch a Shenzhou for such a mission. And even if you could bring up supplies, Columbia's fuel cells would be dead by then anyway, because there was no way to refuel a Shuttle in flight. Kourou has existed since 1964. In 2003, Ariane 5 was flying regular launches.

Lucas didn't make the Expanded Universe. It's mostly fanfic. As for Lucas, he's a great universe-builder, an sub-average writer, but a really bad director. - - - Updated - - - I'm old enough to have seen every Star Wars movie in the theaters, so I'm not going to let my track record go. Regarding the prequels, they were so bad that the Red Letter Media reviews are way more entertaining than the movies. I actually enjoyed the Abrams Star Treks (I really hated TNG and everything that came after), so I'm looking forward to this.