SpaceX Begins Training ISS Crews for Dragon Ops

I wouldn't personally read too much into Ms. Irvins' presence at Hawthorne. SpaceX is now a CRS partner and, barring a total FUBAR with Falcon-9, Cargo Dragon will be flying to the ISS by 2015. So, the AO needs to be familiarised with the vehicle. She is there because it is her job, not due to any support of the concept.

That said, if CCDev ends up partially filling the gap between shuttle and Orion (say possibly 2015/16 to ISS retirement), then NASA's astronauts are going to need to get used to Crewed Dragon, even if the only thing an astronaut needs to do when flying it is "hang on, this could get bumpy". :-p

The picture of the inside of Dragon C1 was interesting. You really get a good idea of the amount of space inside the thing. It shows how useful DragonLab could be as a Soyuz-style Orbital Module in post-ISS days.

Perhaps the most interesting dilemma for NASA is how to justify using commercial transport that does not meet NASA human rating requirements. NASA has sort of used a don't ask don't tell approach for the Russian parts of the space station and for the Soyuz spacecraft, but if they continue to use this approach, then someone should ask if NASA's requirements are too stringent for NASA or for anyone else. This needs to be addressed before NASA spends a fortune for another NASA human rated system. It may be that NASA's unreasonable requirements make it impossible for NASA to build anything at a competitive price.

Perhaps, equally importantly, the question has to be asked to what degree are NASA's human-rating requirements intended to edge out other providers? Are they really necessary or are they only there to edge out ULA and other third party launch service providers so that NASA can maintain its treasured monopoly on US-indigenous crew launch?

It has been frequently pointed out how stupid NASA will look if a CCDev vehicle beats Orion into orbit. This problem is neatly dealt with if NASA can point to some near-incomprehensible HR requirement document and say: "Ah, it may work, but it doesn't meet our requirements" and then the competitor goes away through lack of custom.