WHEN CHRIS FERGUSON commanded
the final space shuttle mission in July 2011,
he and his crew members left behind something
on the International Space Station: a
small American flag that had flown on the
first shuttle mission three decades earlier.
“It will hopefully maintain a position of
honor until the next vehicle launched from
U.S. soil brings U.S. astronauts up to dock
with the space station,” Ferguson explained
in a call with President Obama during
the mission. “I understand it’s going
to be sort of a ‘capture the flag’ moment
here for commercial spaceflight,” Obama
responded. As the director for crew and
mission operations at Boeing, Ferguson is
one of the leaders of that company’s effort
to develop and operate a spacecraft to carry
NASA astronauts to the space station—and
capture that flag. Boeing is competing with
SpaceX for that privilege, and both are racing the clock
to get those vehicles
flying
before a NASA contract
with
Russia runs out. Much more than scheduling
is
at stake. If spaceflight
can
escape the
hothouse
of government
contracting
to become a
truly
commercial enterprise,
price
competition
may
at last bring costs
down
to earth. And 2017
may
see some crucial steps
taken along that
path.
NASA’S COMMERCIAL
Crew Program dates back
a decade, when the agency
began helping aerospace
companies to develop
commercial cargo vehicles.
Rather than doing this
under a typical government
contract, with NASA
designing the spacecraft
and a contractor building
it, NASA sought to have
the companies create
spacecraft on their own.
NASA would provide financial
and technical support,
and the agency would later
buy cargo-delivery services
rather than purchase
the spacecraft themselves.
That effort, known as
Commercial Orbital Transportation
Services (COTS),
included an option to
provide ferry services for
crew. Although SpaceX
described how it could satisfy
that option in its COTS
proposal, NASA chose
not to select it, deciding
to focus on the cargo services
it knew it needed
once the shuttle retired.
Under the COTS program,
SpaceX and Orbital Sciences
Corp. (now Orbital ATK) both eventually
developed
vehicles, which
are
now transporting supplies,
experiments,
and
other
equipment to and
from
the station.
As
part of a broader
shake-up
of the agency’s
plans
for human spaceflight,
NASA
announced
in
2010 that it was moving
ahead
with development
of
crew transportation
systems
using the same
approach
as it did with
COTS.
The agency made
a
series of awards to several
companies,
including
Boeing
and SpaceX,
to
support early development
of
key technologies
for
those vehicles.
In
September 2014,
NASA
issued the final
set
of contracts to Boeing
and
SpaceX—contracts
with
a combined value of
US
$6.8 billion. Besides
completion
of the vehicles,
those
contracts also
include
two test flights for
each
company, one with
and
one without a crew,
and
as many as six missions
each
to ferry two people at
a
time to and from the station.
And
both companies
have
been hard at work.
Boeing’s
CST-100 spacecraft,
called
the Starliner,
and
SpaceX’s Crew
Dragon
spacecraft, a.k.a.
Dragon
v2, look remarkably
similar.
Unlike the
shuttle,
both are capsules
that
will launch atop rockets.
Both
are designed to
carry
up to seven people,
although
NASA anticipates
sending
only four at a time;
the
companies may use the
additional
seats for other,
commercial
missions.
There
are, however, considerable
differences.
The
CST-100
will launch atop an
Atlas
V from United Launch
Alliance
(a joint venture of
Lockheed
Martin and Boeing).
This
same rocket has
flown
some 60 consecutive
successful
missions since
its
introduction in 2002.
“It’s
not unlike a stock
Atlas
V,” Ferguson says of
the
CST-100’s launch vehicle.
The
rocket will feature a
few
differences, such as the
use
of an upper stage with
two
engines instead of one,
and
the addition of a system
to
detect imminent failures,
which
will be linked to the
capsule’s
abort system,
allowing
it to escape in the
event
of a problem.
On
its return to Earth,
the
CST-100 will go where
no
NASA capsule has gone
before:
dry land. While
the
Mercury, Gemini, and
Apollo
capsules all splashed
into
the ocean, the CST-100
will
touch down on land,
using
retrorockets, parachutes,
and
airbags.
That
strategy is important
for
Boeing because
it
intends to reuse each
CST-100
spacecraft up to
10
times. “We felt we really
needed
to land on land
to
get reusability,” says
John
Mulholland, Boeing’s
CST-100
program manager.
Splashing
down in
the
ocean, he says, creates
problems,
such as salt water
getting
into the capsule and
corroding
components.
In
addition, touching
down
on land makes it easier
and
faster to reach the
crew,
using trucks and helicopters,
much
as Russia
does
on its Soyuz landings.
Unlike
Boeing’s capsule,
SpaceX’s
Crew Dragon will
launch
on a rocket of the
company’s
own design,
the
Falcon 9, which has
flown
nearly 30 times
since
entering service
in
2010. A Dragon cargo
spacecraft
failed during
a
launch, and a Falcon 9
exploded
on the launchpad
this
past September.
The
Dragon spacecraft
itself,
however, has performed
well
on its cargo
missions
to the International
Space
Station. Moreover,
SpaceX
designed the
Dragon
from the beginning
to
be capable, with
modification,
of carrying
people
as well as cargo.
“A
big difference
between
Crew Dragon
and
the cargo Dragon is
that
we’ve added these
SuperDraco
thrusters,”
says
Benjamin Reed,
director
of crew mission
management
at SpaceX.
Those
thrusters, mounted
on
the side of the capsule,
will
serve as the abort system
for
the spacecraft. The
company
tested this equipment
in
May 2015, when a
Dragon
capsule flew off its
Florida
launchpad using
only
its SuperDraco thrusters,
splashing
down a short
distance
offshore.
But
SpaceX has additional
plans
for those
thrusters.
Initial Crew
Dragon
missions will
splash
down in the ocean,
just
as the cargo version
of
Dragon does today.
According
to Reed, splashdowns
shouldn’t
prevent
the
capsule from
being
reused. “Our team
has
some of the world’s
experts
in parachute landing
and
water recovery,”
he
says. SpaceX plans to
start
reusing the cargo version
of
the Dragon spacecraft
in
the coming year.
Ultimately,
though,
SpaceX
plans to use the
Crew
Dragon’s SuperDraco
thrusters
to allow a powered
landing
on a pad after
descending
by parachute.
Reed
says SpaceX will first demonstrate that “propulsive
landing” capability
on later cargo missions:
“We’ll get very comfortable
with flying and doing propulsive
landing with cargo
first, and then crew.”
The two companies
run their programs differently.
Boeing makes
extensive use of partners.
It is leasing a hangar at
the Kennedy Space Center
previously used to refurbish
space shuttles, turning
it into an assembly
plant for CST-100 capsules.
Boeing also hired NASA’s
Mission Operations Directorate,
which runs the
iconic Mission Control
Center in Houston, to
take on a similar role for
CST-100 flights.
SpaceX, on the other
hand, is doing just about
everything itself. It’s building
both the capsule and
rocket, and it will also
handle mission control for
its crewed missions, using
a facility at its headquarters
in Hawthorne, Calif.,
which currently runs
cargo Dragon missions.
“We’re not just building
a crewed Dragon,”
says Reed. “We’re building
a whole system that
needs to be certified to fly
humans safely.”
SINCE NASA AWARDED
contracts to Boeing and
SpaceX in 2014, both companies
have been busy
developing their respective
spacecraft. That work
has included parachute
and other landing-system
demonstrations, SpaceX’s
pad abort trial in 2015, and
various other tests.
But schedules have
slipped. NASA originally
hoped to have commercial
crew vehicles ready
to fly by the end of 2015.
Spending cuts by Congress,
though, prompted
both by skepticism about
the program as well
as tightening budgets,
pushed that target to the
end of 2017.
And this past September
NASA’s Office of Inspector
General warned that
more delays were likely.
The problem was no longer
caused by money issues—
Congress was now fully
funding the program—but
by technical ones.
“Notwithstanding the
contractors’ optimism,
based on the information
we gathered during
our audit, we believe it
unlikely that either Boeing
or SpaceX will achieve certified,
crewed flight to the
ISS until late 2018,” the
report concluded.
When the report came
out, Boeing’s schedule had
already slipped by a few
months, with a crewed test
flight planned for early
2018. “We’ll be ready for
flight services by the middle
of 2018,” Ferguson said
in mid-September.
A month later, Boeing
announced it was delaying
its schedule by half a year.
That crewed test flight, previously
planned for February
2018, is now scheduled
for August 2018, with the
first operational mission
expected in December 2018.
Boeing blamed the delay
on problems with aerodynamic
loads on the Atlas V
created by the CST-100 capsule,
as well as other snafus.
“We’ve gone through
a lot of hurdles on our
technical development,”
Mulholland said in mid-
October, after Boeing
announced the schedule
change, adding he was
optimistic that the company
could keep to the
new schedule.
SpaceX has been more
circumspect about its
timetable. This past July,
according to official NASA
schedules, the company
said it planned to carry
out an uncrewed test flight
of its Crew Dragon in May
2017, followed by a crewed
test in August 2017. That
schedule, though, predated
the Falcon 9 pad
explosion that is delaying
many missions, including
those test flights.
And in mid-December,
NASA announced that
SpaceX was delaying its
uncrewed demonstration
flight until November
2017 and its first crewed
flight until May 2018. So no
astronauts will fly in the
coming year.
NASA is feeling the pressure.
It needs to have at
least one company ready
to start flying astronauts
to the space station by the
end of 2018, when its contract
to use Russia’s rockets
for those flights expires.
Extending the contract
with Russia is not an option,
says William Gerstenmaier,
NASA associate administrator
for human exploration
and operations. “They
require a three-year lead
time,” he says, meaning it’s
too late now to purchase
seats on Soyuz flights for
missions in early 2019.
Will Boeing and SpaceX
be ready to fly by the end
of 2018? “It’s still feasible,”
Gerstenmaier says.
The future of the station
depends on one or the
other capturing that flag.
The commercialization of
spaceflight requires that
both companies, and others
besides,
join the fray.
No comments:
Post a Comment