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| A Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon attached at the SpaceX hangar at the Kennedy Space Center in January. |
Demonstration flight scheduled for Saturday won’t include crew but will test hardware reliability.
By Andy Pasztor Updated Feb. 28, 2019 9:01 p.m. ET
From the same Florida launchpad that blasted the first humans to the moon, NASA on Saturday will attempt a feat it hasn’t tried since the space shuttles were retired in 2011: send into orbit a spacecraft designed to transport astronauts.
The initial demonstration flight of Space Exploration Technologies Corp.’s Crew Dragon capsule won’t carry any people, but is intended to test life-support and other systems needed to start ferrying NASA astronauts to and from the international space station later this year.
The mission, which aims to link up with the space station, will feature a mannequin outfitted with sensors to simulate human responses and environmental changes inside the 16-foot-tall vehicle. Named Ripley after the character featured in popular “Alien” movies years ago, the lifelike figure will slouch among large touch screens resembling those on some car dashboards.
The trip will test electrical and communications equipment, as well as thrusters and even how much seats flex from acceleration forces. But after seemingly endless computer simulations and ground tests, launch officials predict that perhaps above all, the mission will prove how well the team functions in the unforgiving conditions of the heavens.
For America’s space program and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, the much-delayed flight comes after a slew of technical setbacks, ranging from problematic parachutes to balky oxygen generators to capsule leaks after splashdown.
The launch is more than three years late and Crew Dragon capsules don’t include all the features SpaceX originally envisioned, including totally automated flight-control systems or the capability to be reused after a voyage beyond the atmosphere. NASA still has significant concerns about whether the capsule sufficiently shields astronauts from orbital debris and micrometeoroids.
But if successful, the predawn blastoff scheduled from launchpad 39A at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center will mark a resurgence for America’s human space program, which for eight years has relied on buying rides aboard Russian rockets and capsules. The price, which has tripled in roughly a decade, now amounts to some $80 million a seat.
Since the National Aeronautics and Space Administration retired its space shuttle fleet due to cost and safety concerns, the focus has been on switching to commercially developed U.S. equipment.
But according to NASA officials and lawmakers on Capitol Hill, the overall cost also should take into account the loss of domestic launch options and diminished national pride.
Depending on how many trips U.S. replacement capsules will make annually, and the number of astronauts on board, NASA estimates the price tag of Crew Dragon flights at less than $60 million a seat.
More broadly, the agency and White House science advisers are betting the commercial crew program, to which NASA has committed roughly $7 billion so far, will usher in a new era for U.S. space ambitions.
Boeing Co. BA 0.15% is developing its own commercial vehicle, called the CST-100 Starliner, slated to conduct its first test flight without crew no earlier than April. Boeing and SpaceX both have crucial benchmarks to meet, including various emergency-abort tests to ensure crews can escape if a booster fails on the pad or during ascent.
So Long, Soyuz
As costs to send astronauts to space on Russia’s Soyuz have risen, SpaceX and Boeing are building alternatives for NASA.
If Saturday’s mission demonstrates hardware reliability—including successfully docking with the space station and returning safely less than a week later—it could help set the stage for NASA’s longer-term goal of promoting commercial operations in low-earth orbit.
Agency officials envision fostering similar public-private partnerships to create platforms around the moon, which could be jumping-off points for exploring the lunar surface and then deeper into the solar system.
Under that scenario, NASA “has an interest in buying access to space as a service,” rather than building and operating actual transportation systems, agency administrator James Bridenstine said at an aerospace-industry event last summer.
“We will buy that access and become one customer of many for a robust domestic launch market,” he recently told The Wall Street Journal.
In addition, federal oversight of Crew Dragon’s technical and budget issues has been less intense than for typical big-ticket NASA development projects.
It isn’t clear which company will earn the distinction of being the first to return astronauts to space from U.S. soil, though industry officials said some internal SpaceX projections have more than two of the company’s crewed flights occurring before December.
A reduced cadre of U.S. astronauts is slated to continue flying on Russian spacecraft during the transition. And in the event neither SpaceX nor Boeing meets current timetables, NASA has taken preliminary steps to reserve a pair of extra seats on Russian capsules for 2020.
Space experts inside and outside the government also have questioned the wisdom of SpaceX’s novel approach of loading supercooled fuel into its Falcon 9 rocket while astronauts are strapped into seats on top of it. After extensive discussions with the company, NASA’s leadership has agreed to the practice with some important caveats.
If Saturday’s flight and subsequent crewed demonstration missions by each company go well, it is still likely to take many months before astronauts will routinely climb into a new generation of vehicles.
“I guarantee everything will not work exactly right” Saturday, William Gerstenmaier, NASA’s top human-exploration official, told reporters at a briefing last week. “We want to maximize our learning.”
During a press briefing at the launch site Thursday, NASA officials revealed they had to resort to some last-minute negotiations to get the approval of Russia, one of the space station’s main partners, for the docking activities slated for Sunday. Partners have veto power over such maneuvers.
Responding to questions about various risks associated with the mission, NASA officials emphasized that government-SpaceX teams painstakingly analyzed overall safeguards and remaining hazards. “We understand the risks and have accepted them,” said Kathy Lueders, manager of the agency’s commercial crew program.
Reflecting the historic nature of the anticipated launch, Hans Koenigsmann, head of SpaceX’s flight reliability office, told reporters it promised to be the culmination of his 17 years of work developing an entirely new human-rated spacecraft.
NASA officials talked about the gradual process of crafting compromise solutions melding the agency’s historically rigid technical requirements and the company’s more nimble engineering culture. Describing Crew Dragon as the aim of SpaceX from the company’s inception, Mr. Koenigsmann said “I’m actually humbled at being at this point.”
Write to Andy Pasztor at andy.pasztor@wsj.com
Appeared in the March 1, 2019, print edition as 'SpaceX to Test Flight for Humans.'
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