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Originally posted by Flinx
They've been talking about this for years. They've been making designs for years...why don't they do it? In the time they've been trying to get that old, expensive deathtrap spaceshuttle ready to fly again, they could have built a new CEV.
Originally posted by iksmodnad
Remember he UFO also known as the flying "triangle" well look at the design of that ship and tell me what you think it would look like with lights on the bottom of it a night.
Originally posted by iksmodnad
I never said it was the UFO, I just said the shape of it may fit its description. Just trying to think out side the box.. sorry.
Originally posted by Murcielago
Originally posted by Flinx
They've been talking about this for years. They've been making designs for years...why don't they do it? In the time they've been trying to get that old, expensive deathtrap spaceshuttle ready to fly again, they could have built a new CEV.
Your to impatient. They could not build the CEV for the 2 1/2 years the Shuttle will have being grounded.
Aircraft and Spacecraft cannot be judged on the same scale as a new computer or new car, its all relative, The higher something costs the longer you have to use it.
Flinx
I'd be happy to live through 3 or so years with no space vehicle if at the end of that period they had a brand spanking new CEV.
Originally posted by Murcielago
Flinx
I'd be happy to live through 3 or so years with no space vehicle if at the end of that period they had a brand spanking new CEV.
I wouldn't be...Would you of prefered they just got rid of them when the Challenger blew up?
Were still gonna get the CEV, hopfully as early as 2010. Until then we need to focus on building the ISS, its our obligation to the international community.
NASA initially planned to select two teams from among the proposals submitted last week and award contracts of an unspecified amount for both to begin design work in August or September. Then in 2008, the agency would choose one contractor to actually build the vehicle, with the first flight with people aboard scheduled for 2014.
NASA's new administrator, Michael Griffin, found this scenario unacceptable and put the agency on notice he intended to shorten or eliminate the four-year transition time between shuttle and CEV.
Late last week, NASA notified Congress it intends to choose a single contractor to build the CEV early next year. The intention is to have the vehicle ready for service as early as 2010, when the shuttle stops flying.
While aerospace prime contractors Lockheed Martin and a partnership of Northrop Grumman and Boeing are eyeing the lion's share of CEV work, a consortium of entrepreneurs, which includes Rutan's Scaled Composites, is offering to build and operate a complementary system.
The team, headed by Reston, Va.-based Transformational Space Corp., or t/Space, claims its Earth-to-orbit transit system can be ready to fly by 2008.
The company, which already has received $6 million for study contracts from NASA, wants $400 million more to build what it calls the Crew Transfer Vehicle, which would travel only to and from low-Earth orbit.
Rutan's company would build the four-person capsule, which would be mounted on top of a booster rocket and air-launched after being dropped from a jet carrier. Upon release, the capsule's rocket motor would fire, propelling the craft to space.
The capsule's booster would be a beefed up version of a vehicle being developed by Nevada-based AirLaunch for the military's Falcon program, which is intended to demonstrate quick and inexpensive small launch system
Xeven
since all of Bush's other programs are becomming miserable failures
NASA went ahead and accepted the proposals from Lockheed Martin and the Northrop-Boeing team in early May but warned that NASA acquisition strategy for the CEV was bound to change.