

NASA announces $1.1 billion for trio of spaceships - adastra
http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/03/13103192-nasa-announces-11-billion-in-support-for-a-trio-of-spaceships?lite 

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drzaiusapelord
Its incredible to see the Dream Chaser being a contender. Is essentially a
small-ish space shuttle and designed to be mounted as-is on top of a larger
rocket. Its surprising to see continued interest of a lifting body in space,
but I guess the DoD is fond of the X-37B's shuttle-eque design.

It does seem like a waste of resources considering Orion is being developed as
well as the Dragon capsule. Do taxpayers need to pay for a shuttle clone? I'd
rather see a new robotic mission or telescope instead of yet another human
vehicle design that will never see space.

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adastra
NASA needs multiple winners so they will never be dependent on a single
vehicle again. The multi-year standdowns after the shuttle accidents and being
dependent on Russia for astronaut transportation are both pretty highly
undesirable, to say the least. They could have picked only two winners, but
there's a risk one of them could drop out. Boeing has said they might shut
down their program if NASA doesn't address their liability and indemnification
concerns, for example. Having two leaders plus a back-up is a sound strategy.

The real waste of resources is Orion. NASA is spending more on Orion than all
these other spacecraft combined, yet despite Lockheed first beginning
development on Orion 6 years ago, it won't do an unmanned flight until 2015,
three years _after_ SpaceX. The total cost will be almost $10 billion. That's
why the Obama Administration tried to cancel it... but Congress had other
ideas.

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api
I'm gonna hazard a guess that SpaceX will have a reusable Falcon 9 test by the
time Orion is ready for a real mission.

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miahi
Quite cheap. Just 10% more than Instagram, and that doesn't fly into space.

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georgemcbay
The acquisition price for Instagram has been falling with Facebook's stock.
The budget for these spacecraft is bound to be much, much higher than initial
estimates (based on historical precedent).

FWIW I am not complaining about the budget for these or the virtually
guaranteed overruns. I think a strong space program is essential if the US is
to remain technically relevant over the next 50 years.

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jlgreco
440 Million of that is for SpaceX. I know HN loves to hear about them so I
thought I'd point that out. ;)

If I am not terribly mistaken, this is more money than they have received
either from NASA or Elon so far. Pretty significant.

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mcpherrinm
Coincidentally, that's also the same amount of money Knight capital lost in
their half hour of software muck-up this week.

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thematt
I know it's a few days after the "Who's Hiring" thread, but for those of you
interested in being a part of this stuff first-hand, we're hiring at Blue
Origin: <http://www.blueorigin.com/careers/careers.html>

It's truly an amazing thing to be a part of and we're always looking for the
best and brightest. I'm head of software development, but of course we're
recruiting for other disciplines as well.

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velodrome
This is great. The more competitors, the more viable the market.

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spartango
Given that Boeing does not have a flying (in space) version of their capsule
yet, I find it a little surprising that they are receiving more funding than
SpaceX, who have demonstrated their vehicle already. Perhaps it's driven by
the stage of development?

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natep
My guess is that SpaceX is confident that they can fulfill their end of the
contract for only $440M, so why ask for more?

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ChuckMcM
It is too bad that Blue Origin isn't in the list.I would much prefer that they
were in rather than two 'good-old-boys club' contractors and one new entrant.
The politics in this process which are really not serving either NASA or the
people of the US well, really suck.

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jsumrall
What ever happened to Orbital Sciences?

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zevets
Orbital isn't building man rated vehicles.

