Commercial/Private Space Industry Projects: News and Updates

Hole wrote:The russian military could use it. A flexible launch pad is not bad.

The communications and command stuff was from the 90´s, it had to be replaced anyway. And the Zenith is gone, too. No great loss.

PapaDragon wrote:

Hole wrote:The russian military could use it. A flexible launch pad is not bad.

The communications and command stuff was from the 90´s, it had to be replaced anyway. And the Zenith is gone, too. No great loss.

Military wouldn't go anywhere near this thing

They take their job seriously and unlike Roskosmos they have been demonstrating preference for dignity over the last decade or so

Hole wrote:Why? With militay equipment and personel on board there should be no problems.

Hole wrote:...Yeah, Roskosmos is so shitty. For the last 20 years they brought more people into space then the rest of the world combined.

KUBINKA /Moscow Region/, August 24. /TASS/. The floating spaceport Sea Launch, currently based at Russia’s Slavyanka port in the Primorye Territory, will be restored, which will require about 35 billion rubles (roughly $470 million), Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov told the media on the sidelines of the Army-2020 forum on Monday.

"Certainly, the Sea Launch will be restored. I had a discussion with the president on that score. I reported intermediate results achieved by the working group that was set up on my instructions," Borisov said.

He added that the budget of breathing a new life into the Sea Launch was estimated at about 35 billion rubles ($470 million dollars). It will be commercially successful if at least five launches are made a year.

"All this is possible," he said.

"A week ago, I returned from Vladivostok where I had walked about the Sea Launch and the ship that serves as the site for assembling and testing the payload. It is a unique structure unparalleled in the world. Some have plans for building something similar. It would be very silly of us, if we decided against restoring the Sea Launch and using its services. Technically all this is possible."

Borisov recalled that before the floating spaceport left its port Long Beach, California, the United States in accordance with its laws removed all equipment from the command ship and the floating platform.

"It’s mostly equipment responsible for positioning, based on GPS technologies. We will be able to replace it with GLONASS solutions. As for the launch system itself, in other words, the equipment needed for bringing the rocket to and placing it at the launch pad and automatically fueling the tanks, all this is done through Russian technologies," Borisov said.

In June, the CEO of Russia’s space corporation Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, said in his column in Forbes magazine that Russian specialists would have to exert considerable efforts to restore the floating spaceport Sea Launch to operation. He said that before its handover to the company S7 all space launch control equipment was dismantled. At the end of February, a co-owner of S7 and chairman of the company’s board, Vladislav Filyov, told Kommersant in an interview that the Sea Launch project, the command ship and the platform, redeployed to the Far East in March, had been frozen until things got better.

WASHINGTON — NASA has sharply increased the prices it charges commercial users of the International Space Station for cargo and other resources, a move that has left some companies confused and frustrated.

NASA announced Feb. 25 that it was revising the commercial marketing pricing policy it first published in June 2019 as part of a new low Earth orbit commercialization strategy. That policy, which set aside a fraction of station resources for commercial applications beyond research and development, included a price list for resources such as cargo to and from the station and crew time to carry out work.

In the statement, published with little fanfare on the agency’s website, NASA said it was updating that price list “to reflect full reimbursement for the value of NASA resources.” The decision to do so, NASA said, was based on “discussions with stakeholders, the current market growth, and in anticipation of future commercial entities capable of providing similar services.”

By removing the subsidy, the prices of those services went up significantly. The cost to transport one kilogram of cargo up to the station, known as “upmass,” went from $3,000 to $20,000. The cost to bring that one kilogram back down from the station, “downmass,” went from $6,000 to $40,000. One hour of crew member time, previously $17,500, is now $130,000.