Commercial Crew Dates Slip Yet Again
NASA, SpaceX, and Being Update Commercial Crew Launch Dates
“Test Flight Planning Dates:
SpaceX Demo-1 (uncrewed): March 2, 2019
Boeing Orbital Flight Test (uncrewed): NET April 2019
Boeing Pad Abort Test: NET May 2019
SpaceX In-Flight Abort Test: June 2019
SpaceX Demo-2 (crewed): July 2019
Boeing Crew Flight Test (crewed): NET August 2019”
March for SX, April for Boeing. I’m not sure why I want to see SpaceX go first, particularly with a person in the
capsulespaceship, but I do.Because SpaceX is about the future while Boeing is a legacy of Old Space.
Maybe. There is something very attractive about the way the company tries and fails, learning from mistakes, publicly.
Because SpaceX are innovating and Boeing are Regressing !
So SpaceX conducting a water landing is progressing and Boeing doing a land landing is regressing?
Indeed. NASA screwed up the use of propulsive landing by SX- there’s no other explanation.
Well, propulsive landing really did seem way outside NASA’s comfort zone. They demanded a fourth parachute on manned Dragon (even though three on unmanned Dragon have worked just fine). Imagine how much flight testing NASA would have wanted before trusting manned Dragon with propulsive landings. SpaceX probably decided it just wasn’t worth it. Add in that manned Dragon needs parachutes in case of a launch abort anyway, and that they’ve gotten sea recoveries down pretty well now, it really should have been an easy decision.
Except for the salt exposure denying re-use.
Opps! Yes of course this is wrong. Thank you Mr. Thorn.
They’ve already re-used unmanned Dragons a few times.
Land landings certainly aren’t progress. The Soyuz capsule has done that for almost half a century. Boeing baselined disposable, essentially non-propulsive land landings from the start, and that’s no different from Soyuz. SpaceX wanted to do propulsive, reusable land landings, but the NASA safety and certification issues others have noted, gave up and went to the cargo Dragon water landing approach they had experience with. That’s also not progress, but at least they tried.
It also means the capsule will be used solely for NASA missions.
Not necessarily. It means there won’t be any used Dragon 2’s available for resale or rent. Anyone outside NASA would have to pay the full price of a new Dragon 2. That could mean they will be used solely by NASA, but not necessarily. Dragon would still be the only crew capsule on the market. I’m almost certain Soyuz and Shenzhou aren’t. Orion won’t be. So it depends on how much someone outside NASA is willing to pay.
Crew Dragon 2’s will be re-used for CRS 2 cargo missions. Re-use for NASA crewed missions would require a refurb procedure be developed and approved by NASA.
Meanwhile; non-NASA crew flights will be flown using the re-usable Starship, example being #bluemoon, which will use propulsive landings.
I’m not clear on what you’re saying. CST-100 is not disposable. It is designed for at least 10 flights each, with six month turnaround between flights. The CST-100 flying on the OFT in April-May will fly again on the second CST-100 manned flight.
One of them will be first, and one of them will be sustainable. Then add Orion, its first manned flight and will it be sustainable? How long will Soyuz continue? We can make assumptions but will have to check few years from now to see where these will be.
Soyuz is an interesting case and a very important player in the history of spaceflight. The Russians will update it from time to time, no doubt, and it will eventually fade into history. Where it belongs.
More likely NET May for Boeing according to NSF forum chatter.
Expected. Hopefully we won’t have another shutdown and that Venezuela takes care of itself and doesn’t cause us and Russia to start shooting at each other.
The late Walt Williams, a NACA/NASA pioneer, said, “You don’t get medals for on-time failures!” Too bad NASA didn’t remember that with Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia! It is much better for these important missions to get the kinks ironed out, and the paperwork filed correctly, then to rush into it!
Ad LEO! Ad Luna! Ad Ares! AD ASTRA!
Heads-up: trivial typo in the title on this story…
Boeing might like that new spelling.
In the 1990s, someone did a parody of one of their ads, with the spelling as “Boing” (as in the sound of something bouncing off the ground.) They were not amused.
I wonder what was their reaction to the Jerry Lewis comedy movie about stewardesses, “Boeing, Boeing”,
It’s clearly a race, yet nothing has been made of it amongst the three players. Wonder why.
If they say they are in a race and something goes wrong, they would get an incredible amount of blame for trying to rush. All the press releases and statements I’ve seen are pretty clear about two things. First, that their company would like to be first, but, second, safety is the priority and they are not rushing. Not trying to win a race at the expense of safety.
It’s the press that I would have expected to call it a race, not the participants.
That’s true, and it’s a bit surprising. I have see a few stories implying a Dragon versus Starliner race, sometimes even mentioning Orion as a contestant (yea, sure…) But those articles have been fairly rare and low key. The same it true about articles about a new Moon race, after the Chang’e 4 landing. The press isn’t having a field day with this angle, and you’re right, that’s is a little odd. Maybe they are having trouble with that spin since the principals aren’t providing good sound bites along those lines.
The moon race was preceded by the “missile gap”, don’t forget, so there was some kind of existing press awareness.
Or they just don’t get it.