Winning the space race with Boeing Space Systems’ CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, 47-year-old scientist-entrepreneur Elon Musk’s Dragon Spacecraft will be the first private space company to return to the International Space Station [ISS] since NASA’s last Space Shuttle flight lsnded July 21, 2011. NASA has spent $3.7 billion ferrying U.S. astronauts to the ISS at $70.7 million per seat, all because NASA didn’t have a replacement for the aging Space Shuttle. NASA announced yesterday that Musk’s Dragon Spacecraft blasts off on a Falcon 9 rocket in April 2019 for a two-man test-flight with Marine test pilot-astronaut Doug Hurley and Air Force test engineer Col. Bob Behnken. Boeing is expected to follow with its Starliner test flight on an Atlas V rocket with three astronauts, former Air Force fighter pilot Col. Eric Boe, retired Navy Cpt. Chris Ferguson and former Space Shuttle astronaut Nicole Aunapu Mann.
Expected to launch long-awaited manned space operations in 2018, NASA pushed back the launch date to April 2019, requiring SpaceX and Boeing more time to complete rigorous safety checks. When you consider NASA spent $3.7 billion to Russia ferrying astronauts 254 miles to the ISS, it’s about t time the U.S. returns to manned space operations. If it weren’t for Musk, NASA would be behind the Eight-Ball, waiting until some murky future for the Orion Spacecraft, expected sometime in a murky future. Though once touted as the next space vehicle, Orion may never get off the ground, especially with SpaceX and Boeing’s new spacecrafts. When you consider that the ISS is a $100 billion orbiting space laboratory, NASA dropped the ball not developing a replacement for the Space Shuttle. Spending $3.7 billion on Soyuz ferrying astronauts to the ISS was a costly venture.
If all goes well, Musk’s Dragon spacecraft and Boeing’s Starliner will replace Soyuz as the main vehicle for U.S. astronauts to the ISS. Musk has his sights set on the moon and Mars, opening up a new frontier for space dreamers. When Atlantis landed safely on Earth July 21, 2011, NASA’s space program was grounded, at least for manned space operations. Robotic space flights to Mars or distant planets don’t have the interest of manned space operations. Returning to crewed operations in April 2019 should galvanize NASA but especially private space companies like Boeing and Amazon.com Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin space company to develop usable spacecraft for commercial flights. Together with his Tesla electric car company, Musk has brought the best minds and engineers at SpaceX with generous NASA contracts making again manned space operations possible.
Without manned space operations since 2011, NASA’s grounded space program left the American public deflated. “Space has transformed the American way of life,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. NASA takes pride in helping SpaceX and Boeing with the federal government resources needed to build the next generations of manned spacecrafts. “For the first time since 2011, we are the brink on launching American astronauts on American rockets from American soil,” alluding to the shame of using Russian Soyuz spacecrafts to get to the ISS since 2011. NASA awarded SpaceX $2.6 billion and Boeing $4.2 billion in 2014 to develop the next generation of manned-and-unmanned space vehicles to service the ISS and beyond. Bridenstine, while reserving NASA’s Orion capsule, put his faith and cash into the private sector.
When you look at the design of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule or Boeing’s Starliner, it’s back to the acorn-shaped capsules that preceded the Space Shuttle. Whether admitted to or not, NASA’s Space Shuttle was too big, too cumbersome and too clumsy to sustain long-term manned space missions, resulting in the program’s 2011 cancellation. Spending $196 billion from 1977 to 2011, at a cost of $450 million per shuttle, the Shuttle program didn’t anticipate the kinds of efficiencies for sustained space travel. Russia stuck to the Soyuz capsule, similar but primitive designed compared to SpaceX’s Dragon and Boeing’s Starliner spacecrafts. Musk and Boeing got the new designs right, sleek, aerodynamic, truly space-age materials used to protect the crafts for the blistering heat of reentry from orbital space to the Earth’s atmosphere. Unlike the Space Shuttle, the new vehicles look space worthy.
Heading back into space, SpaceX and Boeing give today’s generation reason to dream again about manned space flights. Whether or not Musk or Boeing ever get to Mars, there’s plenty of work to be done ferrying astronauts to the ISIS and eventually back to the moon. Before that happens, NASA needs to prioritize its future missions.. When former President Barack announced April 16, 2010 that he wanted the next generation of NASA spacecraft to land on an asteroid, the space program went off the rails. It took Musk’s vision and determination to get space program back on the right track. Whether going to Mars is too ambitious is anyone’s guess. One thing’s for sure with Dragon and Starliner spacecrafts, the U.S. is heading back to the ISS and probably the moon. Setting up a permanent space station on the moon would be a logical complement to the ISS.
