NASA is expected to
announce its choice for one or more private astronaut taxis any day now, and
SpaceX aims to be ready if its name is called.
The California-based commercial spaceflight firm continues to
make strides with its entry in NASA's commercial crew
competition,
a seven-passenger capsule called Dragon. Indeed, SpaceX has already met most of
the milestones laid out in the most recent round of NASA funding, which is
known as CCiCap (Commercial Crew Integrated Capability), and plans to have all
the boxes ticked by January, company representatives said.
"Pretty soon we'll be left with only the two big-ticket
items, if you will, of the whole CCiCap program, which are the abort
tests," former astronaut Garrett Reisman, head of SpaceX's commercial crew
program, said late last month during a presentation with NASA's Future In-Space
Operations working group.
"We have a pad abort test planned, and an in-flight
abort test planned," Reisman added during the Aug. 27 talk. "The pad
abort test is on track for November of this year, and the in-flight abort test
is currently scheduled for January."
The United States lost the ability to transport its own
astronauts to and from the International Space Station when NASA's space shuttle fleet was grounded in 2011. Ever since, the nation has been dependent
on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to provide this service — for about $70 million per
seat, in the most recent contract.
NASA's commercial crew program is designed to change this
situation by encouraging the development of homegrown private spaceships. The
agency wants at least one American astronaut taxi to be operational by 2017.
The commercial crew competition kicked off in 2010 and is now in
the home stretch, with the final contract — known as Commercial Crew
Transportation Capability, or CCtCap — expected to be awarded sometime this
month.
Four companies remain in the running: SpaceX, aerospace veteran Boeing with its CST-100
capsule,
Sierra Nevada with the Dream Chaser space plane, and the secretive Blue Origin,
which is developing its own Space Vehicle. More than one of these firms could
get a contract, agency officials have said.
"NASA has not specified a set number of awards under
CCtCap," NASA officials wrote in a blog post last
month. "In late August or September, the agency will select the company or
companies that will build an operational space transportation system."
SpaceX:
Crucial safety tests coming
SpaceX's upcoming abort tests are crucial. They'll show how the Dragon spacecraft — an upgraded, manned version of the capsule already flying
robotic cargo missions to the space station for NASA —could respond in the
event of a problem during launch.
Both tests will take place at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station
in Florida. In November's pad abort trial, Dragon will sit atop a truss
structure rather than an operational Falcon 9 rocket, which SpaceX uses to
launch the robotic capsule on cargo flights.
If all goes according to plan, Dragon's onboard thrusters will
lift the capsule away from the pad, as could be required in the event of a
launch malfunction.
"We're going to have a crash-test dummy inside and a
prototype seat, so we'll get data from that," Reisman said. "We're
going to have a very flight-like propulsion system as far as everything that
goes into the abort, including the avionics, which are going to be identical to
the avionics we plan for the flight vehicle."
The in-flight test will take things a big step further, mounting
Dragon to a modified Falcon 9 and attempting to demonstrate the capsule's abort
system at altitude.
Big plans in
space
SpaceX wants to win the NASA commercial crew contract, of
course. But ferrying people to and from low-Earth orbit is just one step along
the road for the company and its ambitious founder and CEO, billionaire
entrepreneur Elon Musk.
"The goal of the company is to make human civilization
multiplanetary," Reisman said.
"To do that, he [Musk] wants to create revolutionary space
technologies that will enable, eventually, a large number of people to have a
self-sustaining presence on Mars," Reisman added. "Everything we do
is vetted by whether or not it enables us to get further towards accomplishing
that goal."
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