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Boeing's Starliner


Kryten

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7 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Interesting costs... So now we can say that a Starliner crew launch is about 360 million and a Dragon crew launch is about 220 million. Both of those numbers are higher than I would have expected.

I wonder if the filling of the other 3 seats (tourists, short term astronauts like the UAE astronaut a while ago) would reduce the price for NASA or if it would go directly to Boeing/Spacex's pockets.

NASA has already paid for all 4 seats. Any crew launch has 1 NASA seat, and one ROSCOSMOS seat (ditto on Soyuz), which we will then trade 1:1 (that way each crew has a CO for each section of ISS). The third seat varies, and presumably NASA sells/trades those seats to partners (ESA, JAXA, etc). A forth seat is desirable if they use it... but I'm unsure about when that might be.

As to the launch cost, SpaceX nominally sells launches at 62M$. That might be for a reflown booster. Dragon is already more than that, so it's safe to assume an F9 for Dragon/Dragon2 is something north of 100M$, even without the spacecraft. Each Dragon 2 is new, so 120M$ is I suppose "normal" from a space industry standpoint. CST-100 is Atlas V, so more like 160M$/launch? That makes their spacecraft maybe 200M$ of that launch cost (and reusable, so... still more expensive---for reasons).

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Starliner is a really nice looking spacecraft----but the way it looks on Atlas? Yuck.

Vulcan doesn't promise to look much better. They need a serious SM, BLEO heat shield, then a full Vulcan dia upper stage with CST-100 on top.

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14 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

The bottom is weird here, expected an cone to give an aerodynamic transition to upper stage
Assume it bleed in air bellow the service module.

Nope. based on comments from up the thread, it's to move the shock reattachment on the Centaur to a stronger area of skin, to prevent tank rupture. AFAIK, the only air there is entrained.

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17 minutes ago, MinimumSky5 said:

Nope. based on comments from up the thread, it's to move the shock reattachment on the Centaur to a stronger area of skin, to prevent tank rupture. AFAIK, the only air there is entrained.

Yes, everyday astronaut talked about it. 

And successful launch. 

The weird part now is why they hanged on the SRB 40 seconds after burnout. 
Suspect it was for safety reasons, its safer to drop them then drag is lower, you had the Soyuz boaster separation fail 

Edited by magnemoe
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16 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

The weird part now is why they hanged on the SRB 40 seconds after burnout. 

Suspect it was for safety reasons, its safer to drop them then drag is lower, you had the Soyuz boaster separation fail

I think they always do that with these inward curving nosecones.

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2 hours ago, Canopus said:

I think they always do that with these inward curving nosecones.

Think Manley said it had to do with range safety, so they'd fall far enough out to sea. Apparently dropping your SRB's on your launch center is only acceptable to Kerbals. Least they never mind when I do it.

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29 minutes ago, Treveli said:

Think Manley said it had to do with range safety, so they'd fall far enough out to sea. Apparently dropping your SRB's on your launch center is only acceptable to Kerbals. Least they never mind when I do it.

„The SRB jettison sequence is initiated after SRB burnout. SRBs 1 and 2, if applicable, are jettisoned at a predetermined time dependent upon the dynamic pressure constraint. SRBs 3, 4, and 5 are jettisoned 1.5 seconds later, if applicable“, from the Atlas V user guide

https://www.ulalaunch.com/docs/default-source/rockets/atlasvusersguide2010.pdf

Edited by Canopus
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