Five, four, three, two, one, zero.
Ignition, liftoff of the Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon!
Go NASA! Go SpaceX! Godspeed, Bob and Doug.
In May, millions tuned in to watch NASA and SpaceX make
history. And so rises a new era of American space
flight, and with it the ambitions of a new generation
continuing the dream. The launch of SpaceX's Crew
Dragon capsule to the International Space Station,
marked the first time that NASA astronauts took off
from U.S. soil since 2011.
The event also represented the first time a
commercially designed and built spacecraft carried
astronauts, an achievement that SpaceX and Boeing had
vied for for years under NASA's Commercial Crew
Program. The program was structured as a multi-tiered
competition. The goal was to get private sector
companies to produce the most cost-effective,
innovative and safe way to get astronauts to the
International Space Station, under specific parameters
set forth by NASA. In the end, SpaceX and Boeing beat
out Sierra Nevada Corporation for the job.
The traditional aerospace industry, of course,
questioned startup companies like SpaceX.
A very senior executive of one of the competitors told
me that SpaceX will never fly.
Their rockets are put together with sealing wax and
chewing gum. We really had a very healthy competition.
For nearly a decade, SpaceX and Boeing have been neck
and neck building and testing their crew
transportation systems.
But SpaceX's successful launch in May, marked a major
milestone for the company, leaving Boeing to play
catch-up. The launch on May 30th is technically the
last test flight before NASA can certify Crew Dragon
for consistent, operational missions to the space
station. The test is scheduled to end on August 2nd
with the return of NASA's astronauts to Earth.
On the other hand, Boeing has yet to complete a
successful uncrewed test flight after it encountered
some issues last year.
I'm really quite overcome with emotion on this day.
So it's kind of hard to talk, frankly.
It's been 18 years working towards this goal, so it's
just hard to believe that it's happened.
The Commercial Crew Program was born out of a prior
initiative called the Commercial Orbital
Transportation Services Program, or known more
affectionately within NASA as COTS.
COTS began in about the mid-2000s, and it was simply a
push to see if private companies could develop
spacecraft and deliver cargo to the International
Space Station. Two commercial partners were tapped for
the job: SpaceX and Orbital ATK, a company now owned
by Northrop Grumman. COTS was a success and gave NASA
the confidence that it needed to expand the commercial
partnerships beyond ferrying cargo to ferrying
astronauts. This became a particularly pressing need
after NASA ended the shuttle program in 2011.
The program was initiated in order to reduce the cost
of spaceflight and to make it more routine.
And it was not doing that for the first couple of
years, only reaching four or five flights a year, at a
huge overhead of three to four billion dollars.
The shuttle program also suffered two tragic accidents,
the first in 1986, when the Challenger exploded just
over a minute into its flight, killing all seven crew
members. From mission control, s ilence.
Then the bland, chilling report, 'w e have a report
from the flight dynamics officer that the vehicle has
exploded. Flight director confirms that we are looking
at checking with the recovery forces to see what can
be done at this point.' The second in 2003, when the
shuttle Columbia broke apart upon reentry into Earth's
atmosphere, once again killing all seven astronauts on
board. After the shuttle program ended, you
essentially had a gap in the US capability to launch
its own astronauts.
And the only other entity in the world that had an
operating spacecraft capable of doing that was Russia.
Their Soyuz spacecraft became the cornerstone of our
ability to launch astronauts to the International
Space Station. And it was becoming an increasingly
expensive service.
Originally, those seats were around $20 million per
seat and now we're paying over $90 million per seat.
So over the last nine years, it has gotten very, very
expensive. And we're in a position now to say, look,
we want to continue the partnership on the
International Space Station.
But what we don't want to have is dependency.
And so what Commercial Crew gives us is an opportunity
to end the dependency and continue the partnership on
the International Space Station.
Under NASA's Commercial Crew Program, companies bid for
a fixed-price contract to build a vehicle to fly
astronauts to and from the space station.
Boeing and SpaceX won and were awarded $4.2 billion
and $2.6 billion, respectively.
This type of contract requires the companies to cover
any additional costs they incur during development.
But it also means that the companies retain the rights
to all of their intellectual property and are
therefore free to use it as they please after their
NASA contract ends.
Think of it like a space Uber or a space taxi.
The idea being, we're going to buy services, but we
expect those launch providers to go get customers that
are not NASA, which drives down our costs.
And we expect those launch providers to compete
against each other on cost and innovation and safety.
We did not want to have just one bidder for a number of
reasons. We know the competition really drives
innovation and one could also have a problem.
And you don't want to leave yourself with just one
source like we have throughout NASA's history.
So this is a way to make the program more robust.
Though SpaceX and Boeing both got the job, the race was
on to see who could put astronauts on the space
station first. SpaceX used the money to develop the
Crew Dragon capsule and Boeing used it to develop the
Starliner capsule.
Both capsules are designed to be reusable, with SpaceX
even recycling its rocket, the Falcon 9, which it uses
to launch Crew Dragon.
A report issued last year by NASA's Office of Inspector
General found that NASA expects to pay SpaceX an
average of about $55 million per seat and Boeing about
$90 million per seat for the six round-trip missions
to the ISS.
But Boeing and NASA both refuted the OIG numbers.
In a statement, Boeing said that the company will fly
the equivalent of a fifth passenger in cargo for NASA.
So the per seat pricing should be considered based on
five seats, rather than the report's four seat
calculation. Cristina Chaplain is a former Director at
the Government Accountability Office and was in charge
of auditing the Commercial Crew Program for Congress.
Boeing had the advantage of having a long history of
working with NASA, a long history with the shuttle
program and knowing how to do these kinds of
spacecraft. SpaceX was new to the game, and I think
their advantage was their flexibility, their speed,
their culture, that they could work in this
fixed-price, more commercial-like environment.
SpaceX also had the advantage of being able to apply a
lot of what it learned from building its cargo capsule
for NASA's COTS program to its Crew Capsule.
By the time it received its Crew Program Contract from
NASA in 2014, SpaceX had been ferrying cargo to the
space station for two years.
The Commercial Crew Program was initially slated to
launch astronauts to the International Space Station
in 2017, but early funding cuts and a number of failed
tests made that impossible.
One such setback for SpaceX happened in 2019, when its
Crew Dragon capsule blew up during a test of the
in-flight abort system.
SpaceX had also previously lost two Falcon 9 rockets,
one during a space station resupply mission in 2015.
Stunning explosion over the skies of Cape Canaveral
today. An unmanned rocket bringing supplies to the
International Space Station blew up just two minutes
into its flight. It's another setback for NASA and for
SpaceX, the company that will one day carry astronauts
into orbit. And another in 2016, that was supposed to
launch Facebook's $200 million satellite into orbit.
Boeing also struggled.
In 2018, a propellent leak was found in the engine of
the Starliner capsule during a launch abort test.
Then in 2019, the company hit a major speed bump with
its orbital flight test, an important milestone to
safely carry astronauts.
It didn't have any people on board, but what it was
supposed to do was launch, get to the space station,
spend a few days there and then come back.
Well, shortly after launching, they discovered an
anomaly with part of the timing system inside the
spacecraft itself and the engines fired at the wrong
time, putting it in the wrong orbit.
So they weren't able to reach the International Space
Station, falling short of the main priority of the
flight test. The incident changed how NASA viewed
Boeing. The agency even admitted that their prior
history with Boeing may have led them to give the
company more leeway in terms of oversight.
I would say in the software area, from a NASA
perspective, we may have been focused a little more on
SpaceX because they use a bit of a nontraditional
approach to their software development.
We had maybe more familiarity with the Boeing process
from those that had worked on the International Space
Station. Many of the team that did the software for
the International Space Station that was actually
working on the Starliner.
And so we maybe we just didn't quite take the time
that we needed to. NASA is now recommending that
Boeing make 80 changes to the Starliner before it's
re-tested later this year.
Just in general, the government is kind of waking up
across the space sector in terms of software.
It's very tricky.
And the government's not very successful in doing
software for space at this time.
SpaceX is in a really strong position to deliver for
NASA. They have a much faster timeline, I think that
they stick to reiterating on their technology because
Elon Musk came from the software side, right.
So Elon Musk, he was one of the founders of PayPal.
He's had Tesla.
He's had experience working in different industries
where he's not used to sitting, waiting around for,
you know, the federal government budgets, thinking
about milestones that could be impacted just based off
of politics. Though Commercial Crew missions have not
yet started, NASA, SpaceX and Boeing are already
seeing the benefits of such partnerships.
NASA estimates that this process saved the agency
somewhere between $20 billion and $30 billion of
taxpayer money because the method of contracting and
the efficiency of the companies to meet the milestones
that they were setting out to achieve was so much more
efficient than historically possible.
While NASA benefits from lower costs, SpaceX and Boeing
benefit from having a government agency foot the bill
for the building and development of systems that they
can use for other projects.
There was a day in the United States of America after
the space shuttles retired, where we had exactly zero
percent of the global launch for commercial
satellites. And of course, because NASA made these
investments into SpaceX and the Falcon 9 rocket, now
all of a sudden we've got about 70 percent of the
global commercial launch market.
If you look at SpaceX's revenue on the whole, NASA
makes up a significant portion of that because of the
development contracts they have awarded the company
over the years. While the bread and butter of their
business is their launch business, launching
satellites for companies, for the US military and
others, this is a very large chunk, to the tune of
hundreds of millions of dollars a year that comes from
NASA. But SpaceX is looking to expand.
The company has already signed a contract to fly three
tourists to the International Space Station using its
crew Dragon Capsule and Falcon 9 rocket.
Space currently makes up only about five percent of
Boeing's revenue, but with the company losing billions
due to the grounding of its 737 Max plane and its
stock price plunging due to the lackluster travel
demand among coronavirus, that could change.
There's going to be a lot more incentive for Boeing to
really deliver for NASA.
In the past, i f you think about what is the biggest
revenue generator for Boeing, I would doubt that NASA
provides a huge, huge contribution to their top line.
But now, as they ground more of the aircrafts and they
have to rethink their approach to the whole airline
industry, space is definitely a bigger opportunity for
them. And the opportunities to work with NASA will
certainly continue.
Right now, in space, w e've got commercial resupply.
We've got commercial crew now and eventually we're
going to have commercial space stations themselves.
We want to be one customer of many customers and we
want our providers competing on cost and innovation
and safety. NASA's already partnering with the private
sector for another venture, getting people to the moon
by 2024. In April, the agency awarded contracts to
SpaceX, Blue Origin and Dynetics to begin development
of lunar landers.
Boeing also bid, but was not awarded a contract.
We're going to blaze the trail, always with the intent
to eventually commercialize as quickly as possible.
Once that's done at the moon, then we go to Mars.