The numbers don’t lie—NASA’s move to commercial space has saved money

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[nimelennar]

"No private company has ever launched humans into orbit before."

Can anybody illuminate some on that?

In the past NASA contracted private companies to build, but NASA was the owner. Now, NASA states a spec and private companies design, build and own the finished product.

I get that, I'm looking for how launch responsibilities are different operationally on launch day today vs then.

If you want an answer in any detail, you might want to ask an astronaut.

 

[nimelennar]

I recently encountered some apparent old space supporters on Twitter and this seemed to be the last line of defence:

Is cheap > reliability and precision when the payload is irreplaceable and the cost of an expendable launch vehicle doesn’t even put a dent in the overall price whatsoever?

And

It’s not like it’s more efficient to go expendable. Or that reusability has Litterally zero benefits other than cost saving. Nah nah. Not that at all

I'm not sure the evidence agrees with them there.

Let's look at the numbers for that "the cost of an expendable launch vehicle doesn’t even put a dent in the overall price whatsoever" remark there.

NASA is paying $90 million per seat for Starliner, and $55 million per seat for Dragon. That's for four seats per launch, so $360 million per launch to Boeing/ULA, and $220 million per launch to SpaceX.

An Atlas launch, according to Wikipedia, is about $110 million, and a Falcon 9 launch (on a new booster) is $62 million.

So, of the $140 million extra that NASA has to pay per four-seat launch for Starliner over Dragon, $48 million (over 1/3 of the "Old Space Premium," and 13% of the total launch cost), is from having to launch on Atlas. I'd hardly call that "not even a dent in the overall cost."

 

[nimelennar]

Its amazing what a modest investment in space can achieve these days compared to the past. Safest U.S. launcher and spacecraft ever with full abort capability from pad to near orbit.

Interesting story at NSF about how the Dragon 2 is configured to steer an abort to different locations should it occur at different times in ascent to limit the possible recovery area footprint.

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2020/05 ... locations/

More photos:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahqpho ... 384169073/

So that's where they are keeping the FH side boosters...

Or are those just normal single stick f9s

According to the SpaceX subreddit, the boosters pictured are (from left to right) B1051, B1059, B1058, and B1060.

The FH side boosters were B1052 and B1053, so these aren't the side boosters.