On Sunday, May 31st, 2020, a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying astronauts Robert Behnken
and Douglas Hurley docked with the International Space Station.
This was a tremendous accomplishment for SpaceX and NASA, giving the United States the capability
of launching its own astronauts, and no longer relying on its Russian partners.
This was the 5th time that US astronauts went into orbit on a new kind of space vehicle,
following in the footsteps of Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and the Space Shuttle.
The flight was originally supposed to take off on Wednesday, May 27th, but the unpredictable
Florida weather forced a last-minute scrub, rescheduling the launch for Saturday.
Although there were thunderstorms on the horizons, the weather above the Cape Canaveral launch
site was good enough to launch.
The astronauts put on their SpaceX-manufactured pressure suits, hopped into their Tesla Model
X shuttle, and made the short trip to Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center.
This is the same launchpad that Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin used for
their Apollo 11 launch to the Moon in 1969, not to mention 11 other Apollo missions and
82 Space Shuttle launches.
Behnken and Hurley (I refuse to say Bob and Doug with my Canadian accent), rode the elevator
up to the 25-meter walkway.
They were strapped into their seats and waited for the rest of the countdown.
This time there were no delays.
At 3:22 pm, Eastern Time, the SpaceX Crew Dragon lifted off the pad, carrying the astronauts
into space.
The upper stage separated from the booster stage, which returned and landed on SpaceX’s
floating drone ship.
The upper stage continuing the climb up to their orbital altitude, and then Crew Dragon
began its 19-hour journey to meet the International Space Station.
As the spacecraft was approaching the station, Hurley announced that they had named the spacecraft
Endeavour.
They docked to the station at 10:16 am Eastern Time on Sunday and were welcomed on board
to become the newest members of Expedition 63 by NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian
cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner.
This entire mission will be an end-to-end test of the SpaceX transportation system,
demonstrating the launch, in-orbit, docking, and landing of the Crew Dragon system.
It’ll allow for NASA certification of the launch system as part of the Commercial Crew
Program.
The decision to shift away from the Space Shuttle was made 15 years ago, when NASA administrator
Mike Griffin set aside $500 million of the agency’s budget to help develop a new privately-built
spacecraft system.
Originally called the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) demonstration, it was initially
awarded to SpaceX and Rocketplane-Kistler in 2006.
Unlike other NASA spacecraft development, funds were only awarded as the contractors
completed milestones, and unlike other programs, NASA wouldn’t take ownership of the vehicles
and infrastructure they produced.
The developers were encouraged to get private financing for their projects and were free
to market their services to other clients.
Just a year or so into the project, Rocketplane-Kistler was unable to meet its obligations for the
commercial program and was forced to withdraw.
In 2010, NASA developed a new program called the Commercial Crew Program, providing contracts
to Boeing, SpaceX, Sierra Nevada, Blue Origin, United Launch Alliance and Paragon Space Development
for spacecraft and launch vehicles and equipment.
Because of the dangerous design of the Space Shuttle, the vehicle was retired in 2011,
leaving the United States with no way to carry astronauts to the International Space Station.
They turned to Russia, with its Soyuz capsules to provide the service, paying upwards of
$80 million per seat for a trip to the station.
Development of Commercial Crew continued, with the final vehicles becoming Space’s
Crew Dragon vehicle and Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner.
When NASA announced that they would be hiring private firms to provide the launch services,
Roscosmos director Dmitry Rogozin said it was more likely they’d get the job done
with a trampoline.
That’s why SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced this week that the “trampoline is working”.
Under this new program, NASA would be paying Boeing $90 million per seat for Starliner
launches and $55 million per seat to SpaceX for Crew Dragon flights.
From 2015 through 2020, we saw tests of both Starliner and Crew Dragon, as they tested
out their pad abort systems, and Crew Dragon tested its in-flight abort system.
In March 2019, Crew Dragon was the first to reach the International Space Station with
its DM-1 flight, delivering supplies but no astronauts, and then safely returning 5 days
later.
Boeing’s flight test happened in December 2019, but the spacecraft failed to reach the
required orbit to dock with the International Space Station.
It did return safely back to Earth, but NASA will require Boeing to conduct more tests
before it’s able to carry humans.
And so, this week’s launch was the culmination of almost 15 years of effort by SpaceX to
deliver on the promise of human spaceflight.
Now that Crew Dragon has successfully delivered astronauts to the International Space Station,
what comes next?
I’ll get to that in a second, but first I’d like to thank:
James Osgerby Bren Ehnebuske
Jacob Mandy Slutsker
Matt
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What comes next?
Space is now building US Crew Vehicle-1, also known as Crew-1.
This will be the first fully operational Crew Dragon flight, carrying 4 astronauts to the
International Space Station as early as August 30th, 2020.
It’ll be commanded by Michael Hopkins, and joined by Victor Glover, JAXA’s Soichi Noguchi,
and Shannon Walker.
And assuming that goes well, we should see regular NASA flights for the foreseeable future.
The next flight, Crew-2, is expected to head to the station in 2021.
SpaceX is also free to provide orbital services to anyone who wants it, and recently, Space
Adventures announced that they would be using Crew Dragon for various tourist flights to
space.
An upcoming mission will carry 4 passengers into orbit, at a higher distance than private
citizens have ever gone.
And future paying tourists will fly Crew Dragon to the privately built Axiom Space Station
module, due for launch in 2024.
Boeing is working through a long list of fixes to its Starliner CST-100 vehicle, and they’re
expected to make another test flight around October 2020.
If that goes well, we should see a crewed flight happen in the first quarter of 2021.
I know it feels a bit like a step back, Crew Dragon on top of its Falcon 9 looks very similar
to the original Mercury or Gemini rockets that launched the earliest US astronauts to
space half a century ago.
And this is after the United States’ 3-decade adventure with the Space Shuttle, which was
designed to be largely reusable.
But this time it’s different.
NASA didn’t design and build this rocket or capsule, they’re purchasing flights from
a commercial provider, at a significant discount from what they were paying for Russian Soyuz
flights.
The booster rocket returns to the launch pad after each flight, and the entire system is
80% reusable.
The system is safer, more reusable, more economical, and should drive the costs of spaceflight
down, freeing up budget for, oh, I don’t know, sending humans to the Moon at the same
time.
Seriously though we really are seeing a brand new era in human spaceflight.
An exciting next step before we get to the dream of fully reusable rockets like SpaceX’s
Starship.
What do you think?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
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Both Crew Dragon and Starliner depend on their abort systems for keeping astronauts safe
on the pad and while they’re climbing up to orbit.
We did a whole episode on the history of abort systems which you might enjoy.
And you can watch that now.