“… SpaceX does not have a chance to fly humans into space! …” – I did not say this and I do not think this.

“… And you are right, Elon Musk is an arrogant businessman, …” – I did not say this and I do not think this.

Everyone is entitled to their opinions, but GDawg, refrain from telling me mine!

Not absolutely certain of this, but my best guess is that, with sufficient fuel on board to leave enough remaining to simulate what the residual fuel level would be on a real re-entry, a single-engined Grasshopper 2 vehicle probably either couldn’t get itself off the ground or couldn’t reach the high altitudes SpaceX is cleared to test at in New Mexico. Three engines preserves balanced thrust and gives enough performance to get the vehicle up high fast enough to make these planned high-altitude tests possible.

As SpaceX is closest of all CCDev competitors to doing so, this is obvious wishful thinking.

They care way to much about the $$ in their pockets to truly comprehend the demands of human spaceflight.

Need I point out – one more weary time – that it is your beloved Boeing that is threatening to shoot its own dog if further government funds are not forthcoming?

Although we all hated the red-tape of working directly under a government contract, SpaceX cannot seem to understand that it is an absolute necessity when sending humans on million ton rockets into SPACE!!

We, huh. And what’s with this “million ton” stuff? Are you actually old enough to have worked on the original Orion project or just someone who is units-of-measure-challenged?

It has and is moving operations outside of Florida to Texas, which in my opinion is a huge negative!!

SpaceX is moving nothing to Texas. It’s building a new launch facility in Texas. New! The factory is staying in Hawthorne and the existing launch facilities at Vandenberg and Canaveral will remain in use, shortly to be joined by the refitted LC-39A next door to Canaveral at KSC. Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.

There is a reason why one should not shoot rockets across the skies of our country… IF/WHEN something happens (which it did for them the other day), now you have massive amounts of debris falling into our backyards, on our roads and homes.

Apparently you are cartographically challenged in addition to your difficulties with units of measure. SpaceX’s new launch site is in Brownsville, down on the very southern tip of Texas near Mexico on the Gulf. Look it up. SpaceX will be launching over water from there just like they do in Florida and California. No hot, flaming shrapnel falling down on Grandma’s retirement condo I’m afraid.

Although I feel Boeing should be funneling some of their own money into the project, they have experience with human spaceflight and they also send millions of people throughout our world everyday. You cannot beat that kind of experience.

Boeing didn’t actually do much of that; companies Boeing bought out over the past 30 years did. The people from those companies who did those things are now mostly working elsewhere, retired or dead. The Boeing of today has less relevant experience than SpaceX does.

The value of Boeing’s alleged “institutional memory” can best be gauged by considering the hash its current management made of the 787 project. Boeing had developed a lot of large airplanes before, but choose to ignore most of its management history in going with an all-outsourcing model for 787. They got snake-bit big time. The people at Boeing today are just as much Johnny-Come-Latelies to human spaceflight as SpaceX is. The main difference is SpaceX is smart and not overconfident based on its reputation. Boeing is the opposite.

It is my opinion that Boeing will be awarded the main contract and I have a sneaking suspicion that Sierra Nevada may end up with a small piece of the pie too.

It is my opinion that Boeing is undeserving of further government support for their paper, plastic and plywood spaceship. I don’t entirely rule out the possibility of their remaining in the CCDev competition. But, if so, it will be for entirely political, and not engineering, reasons.

SpaceX and SNC should split the award more or less evenly. Boeing should be piped down the road.

Elon Musk is an arrogant businessman, he will build his vehicle without a NASA contract

>i>Quel horreur! Building something without a government contract!

Elon Musk is a confident, careful businessman. He will build Dragon V2 with or without a NASA contract, because there’s a market for it.

seems like he would prefer it that way.

He would plainly prefer to do it with a NASA contract.

Disagree about the path to a competitive Boeing booster though. Being already more expensive than even the problematical Atlas V, the Delta IV seems an unpromising basis for a SpaceX-competitive offering.

Also, the RS-25E doesn’t yet exist and, so far as I know, isn’t even being worked on seriously. Which is too bad as you are correct that a pair of notional RS-25E’s would give the existing Delta IV Medium a modest boost in thrust. If the RS-25E was also used for something besides the SLS core stage it, too, would at least marginally improve the godawful economics of that particular beast.

Adding a second RS-68 would double thrust and at least use an engine Boeing knows it can actually buy. But the Delta IV has lower structural margins than the Atlas V or Falcon 9. They fall below what NASA is willing to accept in a vehicle intended to boost people as well as cargo.

Bigelow is likely to be the dominant buyer of crew transport services as soon as 2018. I doubt a rocket less robust and more expensive than its competitors would be salable to his prospective clients, especially if NASA also gave it a thumbs-down.

Doubling Delta IV’s thrust, or even boosting it a bit with twin RS-25E’s, would reduce Delta IV’s structural margins still further absent a tip-to-toe beefing up. Doing this, on top of a re-engining project, would add still more development expenses that would have to be recovered in prices charged.

And then there is the whole reusability issue which no prospective SpaceX competitor can escape addressing in some way.

Boeing/ULA may still have what it takes to compete with SpaceX, but they would be far better off starting with a clean sheet of paper than with trying to fiddle the sow’s ear Delta IV design into a Falcon 9-beating silk purse.

I think Boeing is the modern Curtis-Wright, a major player that shriveled and died after failing to make a key transition. In C-W’s case it was from piston power to jets. In Boeing’s case it’s from old-school pork-space to actual commercial space.