SpaceX Slips Commercial Crew Launch Date Again
NASA’s Commercial Crew Program Target Test Flight Dates, NASA
“Boeing Orbital Flight Test (uncrewed): August 2018
Boeing Crew Flight Test (crewed): November 2018
SpaceX Demonstration Mission 1 (uncrewed): August 2018
SpaceX Demonstration Mission 2 (crewed): December 2018”
Hearing : Update on NASA Commercial Crew Systems Development
“January 17 2018, at 10 a.m. EST, the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology will hold a Subcommittee on Space hearing titled An Update on NASA Commercial Crew Systems Development. The purpose of the hearing is to examine the development of NASA’s two commercial crew systems, being built by Boeing and SpaceX, to service the International Space Station.”
GAO Reports Significant Delays in Commercial Crew Launch Dates (Update), earlier post (2017)
“At a Kennedy Space Center (KSC) press conference today in advance of SpaceX’s commercial cargo launch tomorrow, [Gwynne Shotwell] said the company’s response to GAO is “The [heck] we won’t fly before 2019.”
Given the record of both Space X and Boeing, I will put my money on Space X to be first in both areas despite Boeing being better financed with US tax dollars.
Could be. Although I hope neither company is trying to be first. Getting it right is what’s important. Realistically I think we are now looking at the first crewed flights in 2019 for both.
I agree. When I saw the quote from Shotwell, I thought that sounded a bit different from their approach with Falcon Heavy, which is one of low stress, low urgency, background effort, make sure things are right, no chance of Go Fever. But I guess her job seems to be partly promotion.
I don’t know why, but I thought SpaceX was significantly further along than the competition. Guess I was wrong. Boeing and SpaceX launch schedules are practically identical. Suppose we’ll just have to wait and see who actually hits their proposed launch dates. Commercial Crew sure has been a slow train coming.
Not necessarily. It’s quite possible that Boeing will slip too. We won’t know for sure until these things actually fly.
I believe SpaceX took two steps forward and now a step back. First they set out to develop a Dragon crew capsule that could do pinpoint retrorocket landings, parachute optional. It would’ve been necessary for the Mars runs. Now they have backed off the full landing capability = major rejig of the capsule and airframe
My understanding is that NASA vetoed the propulsive Dragon landing by adding too many expensive requirements because NASA preferred the legacy “We’ve always done it this way” parachute into the ocean. That forced Space X to invest in the BFR (Big Falcon Rocket) rather than a more capable Dragon.
Yes, NASA believes that a capsule requires a parachute to land safely. And since they are paying for it they dictate the design, just as in the old cost plus contract days.
Published rumors suggest that SpaceX did not plan to eliminate the parachutes, at least initially, but rather to use propulsive lift for the final few seconds of landing to bring the capsule to a soft pinpoint landing on land. Had the propulsive system failed the landing was described as still being survivable.
Hmm. Just because they opted out of retrorocket landing didn’t mean they had to abandon land returns altogether. I see that the Boeing CST-100 is designed for land return using airbags and parachutes.
Is there any obvious benefit to choosing an ocean over a land return design? Said another way, Can anyone say what is better about the SpaceX Crewed Dragon compared to Boeing’s CST-100?
Sure. One’s a lot cheaper. Guess which one?
It was customer NASA that decided vendor SpaceX should not use propulsive landing as the PRIMARY method , and thus diverted the Dragon to using water landings for any NASA crewed missions. But the capability to land Dragon on land sans parachutes is still present. The NASA requirement forced SpaceX to retool the capsulae ( again) , along with other considerations that SpaceX elected to pursue but I’m not privvy to.
If NASA agrees with their advisory committee’s recommendation against fueling Falcon after the astronauts board, I do not see how Spacex gets final approval. It is my understanding that if you fuel the Falcon with its superchilled propellants, and then load astronauts, the propellant will have warmed so much and the launch capability will be diminished. I do not know if they can still then make it to ISS and return the first stage. Who will give in? Spacex or NASA?
That isn’t the impression I got from the NAC recommendation. They said fueling after boarding wasn’t how NASA had done things in the past, and we know the way NASA has done things is safe. If memory serves, they didn’t rule out the SpaceX approach; they said its safety was unproven (and said or implied extra work was required to prove it.)
But that probably is the sort of thing delaying Commercial Crew. One of the things which made commercial resupply a success was _not_ forcing the service providers to follow the traditional, “that’s how NASA does things” process. Although SpaceX and Orbital ATK (soon to be part of Northrop Grumman) aren’t free to do whatever they want, the contracts are much more focused on providing a service specified by NASA, rather than doing so by following a process specified by NASA. That’s a level of control NASA may be reluctant to give up, when astronaut safety is involved.
Well, given the flight record to date of “commercial resupply” that was “[not forced] to follow the traditional, “that’s how NASA does things” process”, if those had instead been “Commercial Crew” launches, we’d have a number of additional dead heroes now. With that history, one can easily understand why “that’s a level of control NASA may be reluctant to give up”.
Realistically both crews would have likely been saved by the launch aborts systems. So there would not have been any dead heroes, just live ones with good stories to tell at the local watering hole.
Actually, no. It has not been established that either flight failure would have been survivable given the abort systems planned at the time. Possibly they would have gotten lucky, but there has not been a clear story that the failure detection systems would have detected either failure with sufficient warning time to activate an abort system in time to have survived the failure. Particularly in the case of the CRS 7 failure (since Antares does not have a commercial crew mission), assuming that the Dragon abort system would have made it survivable requires a lot of wishful thinking. Not that fatality was a complete certainty, but it was definitely an event outside the scope of planned abort capabilities. Had crew been on board during the launch pad fueling failure, it’s not clear that an abort would have been commanded in time there either.
An abort system is not meant to be a cure for an otherwise unacceptable level of safety and reliability. Just as having an insurance policy is not meant to be a substitute for meeting fire codes.
“An abort system is not meant to be a cure for an otherwise unacceptable level of safety and reliability.”
That isn’t clear at all, and I’m not sure how about your analogy to insurance and following fire codes. In that case, the fire causes the damage to be done, even if someone else will pay the bills. An abort system prevents the damage you are concerned about (loss of life). A more applicable analogy might be wearing a seat belt when in a car. That does reduce the risk of injury or death, and many people might consider driving on highways without one to be an “otherwise unacceptable level of safety.” Maybe this gets back to whether or not fault tolerant systems are acceptable.
ThomasLMatula has already made a comment about the abort systems. So I’ll make a more philosophical comment.
The exact details of how much or how little oversight NASA has are unclear and probably proprietary information. But it does appear NASA is handling it in a more hands-off and commercial resupply. That’s a matter of program-wide management philosophy. If the NAC, or the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) think that’s a problem, or if they think it’s incompatible with assuring the required 1:270 risk of astronaut loss, they can say so. Then the issue could be resolved at the appropriate level.
If they don’t object to that, more hands-off management philosophy, then they shouldn’t object to NASA following it. But what I see reported are fairly low-level objections, like boarding before fueling, or how well SpaceX has documented and tested its solutions to the COPS helium tank problem (which cause the Amos-1 loss.)
It almost seems like they are pointing out examples of how NASA isn’t handling this as business as usual, and ignoring the fact that not doing it as business as usual was the whole point. If they object to that approach, that’s fine but they should say so. If they don’t object, then they shouldn’t object to its implementation.
Yes, and it is that attitude that is dragging the problem out. NASA didn’t invent it, so you must prove to NASA is it a good idea. And NASA decides how much evidence you will need to provide.
The safety of the load-and-go procedure depends primarily on repeated testing in actual launches and elimination of failure modes by correction of any design or operational problems. The cause of the Cx-40 incident was reasonably well understood and is unlikely to be repeated, and the procedure is tested on every Falcon launch. The fueling-first approach requires the flight and closeout crew to remain for an extended time on the access level with the vehicle fully fueled and no way to perform an immediate egress, because the hatch is open and personnel are outside the vehicle. Load-and-go completes the vulnerable crew boarding procedure before fueling, and when fueling is started the launch abort system is already usable and the crew can escape in less than two seconds. It would be unfortunate indeed to abandon such an innovation simply because it isn’t the way things were done in the past.
Yea and of course Mr. Inactive, just like you, these people don’t use their real names.
Well, that’s because when it comes to information beyond what is officially disclosed in public, those who are in a position to know things are not in a position to speak, and those who are in a position to speak are not in a position to know things. Unless those who know things are willing and able to speak anonymously. One thing I think we all know is that your blog has long had a reputation as a place for those who know things to have a forum to speak anonymously.
Whether you intended it that way, I don’t know, but your blog does seem to have cultivated and benefited from that reputation over the years. However, calling commenters out for remaining anonymous could easily be construed to mean that this blog is no longer as implicitly welcoming of “insider discussion” as it had been reputed to be.
I don’t know what forum you are talking about. There is lots of criticism of SX here. It is also true that commenters here tend to be (unlike myself) actual experts, meaning that having facts straight matters.
Looks like the NASA Safety office and GAO will be testify about the dangers before Congress in a hearing. It will be interesting to hear their testimony on it.
Boeing promises a lot just to keep itself in the game. Their lobbyists and procurement maestros are second to none… silk ties and Gucci briefcases all.
Recall the huge program to modernize and unify all space based imagery for intelligence purposes…optical and radar and I presume SIGINT … so that all the service branches and the spook agencies could be on the same operational screen in real time. FIA—Future Imagery Architecture— the grand unification of space based intelligence . Boeing schmoozed their way to that contract in 1999 , even though Lockheed had the far better proposal albeit it for more money , but L-M had more actual hardware moxy . It was their strong suit; Boeing had to bluff. Eventually Boeing’s efforts destructed after massive cost overruns ( from $ 6 bn to $15 bn and climbing) and huge delays. Rumsfeld cancelled it in 2006 (07?) , yet Boeing recieved a $ 500 million cash kill fee as it was shown the door. The implosion of FIA was just one element of a longstanding pattern with Boeing . Neither the Pentagon nor NASA among others seemed to learn anything from the perils of the military-industrial (and aerospace ) complex that President Eisenhower warned us about so succinctly in his farewell address. Plus ca change….