Boeing chooses CST-100 launcher (or maybe not?)

[Dr Mordrid]

Primary launcher picked today, and to no ones surprise it's the Atlas V 412. The 412 model coding breaks down like this -
4 = 4 meter fairing (the spacecraft)
1 = 1 strap-on solid rocket booster
2 = 2-engine Centaur 2nd stage

CST-100 is launcher-agnostic so Falcon 9 can be a backup if Atlas V has to stand down.

http://boeing.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=1869

(artwork shows an Atlas V 422, so ignore 1 of the solids)

[paulw]

When are we going to get away from last centuries technology??

[TransformX]

When are we going to get away from last centuries technology??

When you design a large enough slingshot

[Dr Mordrid]

The laws of physics and chemistry are so far on the side of liquid boosters and capsules, with spaceplanes being best for medevac, if you need to land somewhere crossrange from the orbital plane, and delicate experiment return.

My concern with the Atlas V 412 is use of an SRB, which adds failure modes. These include a staging event, the possibility of it malfunctioning and taking the core booster with it (the Challenger issue), and it not being able to shut down if there's a pad abort of the core booster. Then there is cost; the Atlas V uses 2 Russian RD-180 engines of which we have bought 100 and used about half. These currently cost $10M each, but it's very possible the Russians will be upping their price to $25M - $30M each. That gets expensive, with Atlas V engine costs alone being more than the cost of an entire Falcon 9 which doesn't need SRB's.

There is still hope for newtech launchers though. Reaction Engines in the UK is testing a key tech for their SABRE dual mode engine this summer. It would power the Skylon spaceplane, a flyback booster that could take 20+ metric tons to orbit. SABRE breathes air which it liquifies on the fly to run hydrogen fueled rockets, then switches to stored liquid oxygen outside the atmosphere. A robotically flown launcher, it would be able to fly from regular runways and deluver either cargo or crew spacecraft to orbit.

SABRE could be a gamechanger, especially if someone transitions it from hydrogen to RP-1 as a fuel.

Skylon looks a lot like 2001's spaceliner.

[Dr Mordrid]

A Flight Global article has interesting tidbits that maybe Atlas V is just for the test phase -

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/boeing-details-bid-to-win-nasa-shuttle-replacement-370213/

Not: square [] brackets = my comments

Boeing has released crucial details of its commercial crew integrated capability (CCiCap) bid that it delivered to NASA on 23 March.

The company has twice won awards under the commercial crew development (CCDev) programme, predecessor to CCiCap, to work on its CST-100 capsule. CCDev was meant to stimulate development of vehicles to transport astronauts to the International Space Station.

"It's really in two phases," says John Mulholland, the capsule's programme manager, of the latest bid. "There's a 21-month base period where we'll accomplish our critical design review and a significant amount of risk reduction design testing, and we will culminate at the end of the option period with a two-crew flight test."

Mulholland confirms that Boeing will use a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V in 412 configuration, adding that human-rating the Atlas V is part of Boeing's CCiCap bid. Currently the Atlas is being human-rated by ULA. Under an unfunded Space Act Agreement (SAA) with NASA, ULA gets access to NASA's technical assistance, but no financial help. Boeing's formal inclusion of Atlas allows its human-rating progress to be funded milestones for the CST-100 programme.

Despite Boeing's relation to the Atlas - ULA is a joint Lockheed/Boeing business venture -- Mulholland confirms that discussions have been held with SpaceX [Falcon 9] and ATK [Liberty] for possible launches when CCiCap transitions to a services contract in 2016. Both SpaceX and ATK have submitted bids for CCiCap and compete with ULA for launch business.

[Falcon 9 or Liberty if/when it transitions to service flights? Must be the anticipated costs of Atlas V are high. IMO Liberty, a re-design of the failed NASA Ares I and regarded by most as a long shot, is a fig leaf for a possible background deal given the recent Boeing - SpaceX satellite deal.]

"NASA has requested a minimum of one milestone per quarter, and we've got a little bit more than one per quarter that we've estimated," says Mulholland. "And when we've looked at it, we've set milestones for every different aspect of the programme."

Boeing's CCiCap bid, if selected for the full, $500 million award, "gets us all the way through the two-crewed flight test, which would be our last certification milestone before we entered into the service phase", Mulholland adds.

NASA declines to comment on either the CCiCap bids or the selection dates, but several parties with knowledge of the situation expect award announcements by 1 August.