What Bigelow is stating in no way guarantees what launch costs the providers will be able to accomplish, for instance the figures you quote are millions less than Bigelow shows at the link Marcel provided.

We have been through your theory that NASA is (for some reason) forcing SpaceX to underperform before.

You try to use it here to explain what was originally presented (by another SpaceX supporter) as a good thing.

If you insist on believing it, that is your privilege, but it does not answer the point that even granting all those questionable figures and assumptions the cost of the actual SpaceX CRS contract would still produce a per pound cost over 14 times the originally asserted $5,000/kg.

There is an old cliché – “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it will still be a pig.”

There is not enough lipstick in an entire Revelon Central Warehouse to make SpaceX look like it can fly cargo to the ISS for $5,000/kg. Which is what this whole conversation started about?

Continue applications if you wish, but my participation in this particular discussion is ended.

Bigelow Aerospace stated on more than one occasion that the cost for room and board on their facility will be 3 million per month. The costs that BA is showing on their website is for launch, 2 months room and board and return to earth. That would make the launch cost per seat 20.25 million for SpaceX and 30.75 million a seat for Boeing.

Thanks for the link. Although it is a Bigelow website the source of the figures appears to be “quotes” from SpaceX and Boeing (nice graphic of the CST-100 and Dragon docked to the Bigelow Habitat).

As per discussions in other postings it would best to take SpaceX quotes with a block of salt. At similar points in their cargo vehicle development they were talking delivery of about 13,000 lb. to ISS for $54M/launch (about $4,000/lb.), but when they actually signed a contract they agreed to deliver 44,000 lb. for $1.6B ($36,000/lb.). Do not be surprised if similar cost increases transpire.

Boeings $37M figure (I am assuming that the higher figure is Boeing’s) is also ambitious. Assuming that the crew size is 7 a breakeven point would be $260M/launch. If the new crew size number really is 5 that would become $185M/launch.

But even if granted your numbers your analysis still does not hold up. We are now more than three quarters of the way through the original contract period. That means they should have flown 9 missions and delivered approximately 33,000 lbs. by now. That means they are underperforming by 55% in terms of flights and (even using your up mass figures) 60% in terms of payload. That is the reason NASA was recently forced to extend the terms of the CRS contract, to allow SpaceX to attempt to appear to be meeting the original contract terms; without having to actually do so.

http://www.spacenews.com/article/civil-space/40059nasa-says-it-will-extend-private-iss-cargo-delivery-contracts-through-2017

You then go on to speculate on what future SpaceX CRS payloads will be. Using that “analysis” you come up with SpaceX delivering (however late) an extra 4,978 lb. This is very dubious, but again hypothetically granting you your very generous (to SpaceX) assumptions you managed to get the cost per kilogram all the way down to “only” $71,720/kg. That is “only” 14 times oldAtlas_Eguy’s 5,000/kg assertion that prompted my post.

CRS-1: 1,995 lb
CRS-2: 1,493 lbs
CRS-3: 4,605 lb
CRS-4: 4,885 pounds
Totals: 12,978 lbs
“The contract called for 12 flights to the ISS, with a minimum of 20,000 kg (44,000 lb) of cargo carried to the ISS”
4 is 1/3 of 12 and 3 times the average of 12,978 lbs is 38,934 lb.
Considering last 2 flight had twice as much payload, at the rate of 12 totaling 44,000 lb compared 4 totaling 12,978 lbs is not under performing. Or if NASA wants next 8 to be 4000 lb each that would be
32,000 lb and just over 44,000 lb total. If NASA want an average of 4500 lbs, than it’s 36,000 lb, And + 12,978 lbs is a total of 48,978 lb.
therefore requiring NASA to pay in additional amount for the + 4978 lb
which exceeds the minimum. And if SpaceX ends up delivering less than
44,000 lb, then SpaceX would not get the full amount of money.
And of course the amount delivered will be up to NASA who is the customer. Though the main cost is launch and capsule, rather than the difference of 1000 lb one way other the other, and if NASA wants less
than 44,000 lb there is probably a penalty for this in the contract [or there should be].
Or because Falcon 9 has enough capacity, NASA choosing low payload flights in the beginning gives NASA the option of getting maximum payload latter on and not pay for going beyond the minimum total amount which is to be delivered as part of the contract. Or NASA can choose to have 4,885 pounds deliver and not pay for the larger mass of this particular flight.

The basic premise of these make believe mars missions is an unshielded non-rotating spacecraft in which a human crew will be debilitated by radiation and zero gravity for over a year. If a year long ISS deployment is somehow meant to prove this is possible this is a sham; the LEO radiation environment is much less hazardous than interplanetary space.

We are not going even if the powers that be are willing to pay for it because it will not work. Radiation is square one and the failure to address it makes NASA just as much a dog and pony show as SpaceX. All this planning and “work” paid for by the taxpayer leaves out that little bit of reality that makes it worth paying for.

As for all this emphasis on LEO; it is not space. It has become a very high altitude domain beneath the Van Allen belts with such low drag that satellites can go in endless circles but that is all. It is not space. The Space Program effectively ended in 1972.

http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/opportunity-pricing.php

Marcel

I would be interested in knowing where you are getting the $26M to $37M figure

By the way did you notice (at least according to this CNN report) that crew size for the “Commercial Crew” vehicles has been reduced (it has previously been stated as 7) to 5 and Boeing (the “Dinosaur Space Company”) is the first to begin marketing the supposed extra seat (NASA would only use 4 seats) to private customers?

http://money.cnn.com/2014/09/18/technology/space-shuttle-nasa/index.html