SpaceX poised to be first with astronaut flights, beating Boeing
- by Ismael Spencer
- in Research
- — Aug 3, 2018
The first test flights for new spacecraft designed by commercial companies in collaboration with NASA to carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station from the United States are known as Demo-1 for SpaceX and Orbital Flight Test for Boeing.
Congress ultimately boosted NASA's overall budget for the fiscal year that began on October 1 to almost $20.7 billion, part of a defense spending binge that also benefited nondefense projects. Anyone now assigned to a space mission also won't be picked for the Boeing and SpaceX flights, NASA told Business Insider. While both companies had recently said they would fly their first test flights with astronauts on board by the end of this year, those flights are now scheduled for 2019. As part of the Commercial Crew Program's public-private partnership, both companies are fine-tuning their designs, integrating hardware, and testing their crew spacecraft and rockets to prepare for test flights.
SpaceX's craft - the Crew Dragon - will be launched into space atop the company's Falcon 9 rocket. The spacecraft that will fly the uncrewed flight test arrived in Florida last month after completing thermal vacuum and acoustics tests at NASA's Plum Brook Station in Ohio.
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If those flights are successful, the companies will be certified by NASA for crew rotation missions.
"I really have no visibility into SpaceX progress or the fidelity of the SpaceX schedule", he said.
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News 6 is at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston for the announcement Friday morning. Since the shuttle fleet's retirement in 2011, the only spaceship cleared for carrying people to the station has been Russia's Soyuz spacecraft, and the ticket price for NASA is in the range of $80 million a seat. Sometimes called the "Commercial Crew Cadre", those astronauts are seasoned veterans who've worked closely with Boeing and SpaceX on their new spacecraft and systems over the past three years.
Among the options being considered by NASA is to use the crewed flight test as a crew rotation flight by adding a third astronaut to the mission and extending its stay from two weeks to as long as six months.
Last week, Boeing confirmed that it had a problem with its launch abort system, which is created to ferry crews to safety in the event of an emergency.
The Expedition 56 crew has finished loading Dragon with sensitive research results and station gear for analysis and refurbishment back on Earth.
"The crew right now is actually working on integrated crew simulations on the flight systems", said Lueders. Both will be starting to show off their capsules with uncrewed flight tests by the end of the year. This test demonstrated the system's ability to land the spacecraft safely in the unlikely event of a low altitude abort.
