Posted on 07/31/2016 12:45:49 PM PDT by Jack Hydrazine
Artist’s concept of a SpaceX Crew Dragon on final approach to the International Space Station. Credit: SpaceX
NASA has ordered a second commercial crew ferry ship from SpaceX, NASA announced Friday, as the agency continues its on-going push to develop U.S.-built spacecraft to carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station, ending sole reliance on Russian Soyuz vehicles.
Not counting planned test flights, Boeing was awarded contracts last year to build two post-certification CST-100 “Starliner” ferry ships and the second order for a SpaceX piloted Dragon capsule completes the minimum number guaranteed under NASA’s Commercial Crew Transportation Capability program. The current contracts include options for up to four additional spacecraft from each company.
SpaceX, which already launches supplies and equipment to the station using unpiloted Dragon cargo ships, tentatively plans to launch its first Crew Dragon on an unpiloted test flight as early as May 2017, according to internal NASA schedules, with a piloted test flight to the space station a few months later.
Boeing hopes to launch its CST-100 on an unpiloted test flight in December 2017 with the company’s first piloted test flight in February 2018.
The CST-100 will be launched from pad 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket. SpaceX will fire its Crew Dragon capsules into orbit atop the company’s Falcon 9 boosters using a retired shuttle pad, complex 39A, at the Kennedy Space Center.
Assuming the test flights go well, NASA will be ready to press ahead with operational crew rotation missions using the four vehicles currently under contract.
“The order of a second crew rotation mission from SpaceX, paired with the two ordered from Boeing, will help ensure reliable access to the station on American spacecraft,” Kathy Lueders, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said in a statement. “These systems will ensure reliable U.S. crew rotation services to the station, and will serve as a lifeboat for the space station for up to seven months.”
Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX president and CEO, said the California rocket builder is making “great progress.”
“We appreciate the trust NASA has placed in SpaceX with the order of another crew mission,” she said in the statement, “and look forward to flying astronauts from American soil next year.”
Since the space shuttle’s retirement in 2011, NASA and its international partners have relied on Russia to launch crews to the space station and return them to Earth at a cost of more than $80 million a seat under current contracts with Roscosmos, the Russian federal space agency.
Up to this point, the station’s crew size has been limited by the number of astronauts and cosmonauts that can be carried up, three at a time, aboard Soyuz spacecraft. With two Soyuz vehicles docked at the station, a maximum of six crew members can be accommodated.
The CST-100 and Crew Dragon will typically carry four-person crews to the lab complex, boosting overall crew size to seven, “which will significantly increase the amount of crew time to conduct research,” Julie Robinson, chief scientist for the station program, said in the statement.
While the new U.S. spacecraft will end NASA’s sole reliance on Russia for transportation to and from the station, U.S.-sponsored astronauts will still fly aboard the Soyuz while cosmonauts will fly aboard the CST-100 and Crew Dragon.
That will ensure that at least one crew member from NASA and one from Roscosmos will be on board the station in the event of an emergency of some sort that might force one ferry crew to depart. At least one crew member from NASA and one from Roscosmos is required to operate the station’s U.S. and Russian systems.
Crew Dragon | In Orbit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1EB5BQpm7w
Crew Dragon | Interior
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjSb_b4TtxI
SpaceX Dragon V2 | Flight Animation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf_-g3UWQ04
We need more fake moon landings and Mars trips to keep NASA relevant. Talk about an expensive rat hole.
Nice to see some employment related to space again. NASA funded several of the hypersonic projects I worked on in the 90’s. I would truly like to stomp the guts out of the person who decided to turn NASA into a Muslim outreach program. Semper Fi.
I am lost on this. We have a 20 trillion dollar debt. Why are we spending od this nonsense . Lets get bare bones . NOW!!
“Why are we spending od this nonsense.”
When the Chinese or the Russians vaporize your ass from outer space, you will regret we didn’t spend on “this nonsense”.
What's next?
NASA orders? NASA, take your orders and take a hike. All you’ve done is spend, spend, spend and delivered stupid explorers that find nothing worth a damn.
What we want to know, is does the Moon have rare earth minerals? Did anyone find gold, silver, platinum, diamonds, uranium, copper or anything else of value anywhere?
What we want to know is why has not NASA used one of their landers to take samples and use microscopes to search for simple cell life forms? That would be a no–brainer. However, for NASA, all their brains are used to suck up the taxpayer dollar to line pockets and not real research. If aliens from another planet were to visit them, they would conclude there was no intelligent life on Earth.
Documentation, please, from other that whackadoodle websites.
You ain't seen nothing yet. Wait until NASA goes PC to the extreme and sends a muslim astronaut to the International Space Station, and he goes allahu akbar on them. They'll blame it on the others hurting his feelings because they're eating some pork.
I check on those wackadoodle sites every night and they make sense to me. They show a lot of pictoral evidence, even from the NASA official site, that shows that much of what NASA does is fakery, just to be “relevant” and impress Congressmen to keep the money flowing to the NAZIs who run the organization.
keep the money flowing to the NAZIs who run the organization
keep the money flowing to the NAZIs and Muzzie allies who run the organization
Still jumping up and down, yelling “Look at me...look at me!”, eh?
You are an embarrassment to the rest of us Redlegs!
“I check on those wackadoodle sites every night and they make sense to me. They show a lot of pictoral evidence, even from the NASA official site, that shows that much of what NASA does is fakery, just to be “relevant” and impress Congressmen to keep the money flowing to the NAZIs who run the organization.”
That’s a vague statement, but if you think the lunar landings were fake, you’ve been fooled.
It seems unlikely today, but in fact at one point America and the resolve and ability to land on the Moon. That’s where we should be focused now for a permanent colony, not Mars. Mars will still be there once we’ve developed real interplanetary spacecraft with some version of nuclear engines and real radiation shielding.
“I am lost on this. We have a 20 trillion dollar debt. Why are we spending od this nonsense . Lets get bare bones . NOW!!”
NASA is one of the best uses of public money. If you want to start towards a balanced budget, take a long look at the entitlement programs. They’re the big pigs.
As one who has spent some time at Redstone Arsenal while von Braun and his NAZI friends were there, he was a typical politician, always looking for ways to get money for his projects. No wonder Hitler didn’t trust him.
Well we are broke as hell. STOP SPENDING!!
“Well we are broke as hell. STOP SPENDING!!”
We are not “broke as hell”. The government takes in $2 trillion a year in revenue because our economy remains one of the strongest in the world. Once Trump takes office, it will become the strongest in the world, bar none.
The economy is largely a fiction. Most money today (including most of the debt you’re referring to) is nothing more than bits in a computer memory. If our debt is in some way a tangible problem, the government could easily write it off. Do you recall the proposal to mint “Obama coins” worth $1 trillion? Just a few of those would pay off the debt... ;-)
The bottom line is: government research is necessary, and provides tangible benefits - unlike the vast majority of government spending. DARPA and NASA are two entities that deserve MORE funding, not less. Cut the actual fat, like the food stamp program or the myriad regulatory entities that do little but stifle economic growth.
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