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NASA Commercial Crew Program for Space Station Faces Delays, Report Says (reuters.com)
Plans to launch the first NASA astronauts since 2011 to the International Space Station from the United States look set to be delayed due to incomplete safety measures and accountability holes in the agency's commercial crew program, Reuters reported Wednesday, citing a federal report released on Wednesday. From the report: SpaceX and Boeing Co are the two main contractors selected under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's commercial crew program to send U.S. astronauts to space as soon as 2019, using their Dragon and Starliner spacecraft respectively. But the report from the Government Accountability Office said the issues could cause delays in the launch of the first crewed mission from U.S. soil by a private company and could result in a nine-month gap in which no U.S. astronauts inhabit the ISS.
No decision either way has been made. The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel has listed several hazards that need to be mitigated, whether by changing loading order or through other means (and, speaking informally, members of the panel suggested other methods were completely possible). A decision is "expected shortly", but that was two months ago and I couldn't find anything newer, so either "shortly" doesn't mean what it normally does, or the decision was not made widely known.
This is pure politics, with ULA buying its way to the top with political "contributions".
The USAF recently completed a bid process for launching secret missions and SpaceX won the bidding.
https://www.space.com/40978-sp...
"This is the fifth competitive procurement under the current Phase 1A of the EELV program since SpaceX entered the market to challenge ULA. The $130 million award for the Falcon Heavy launch is considerably lower than the average $350 million price tag for Delta 4 launches. "
https://fee.org/articles/compe...
"One of the keys to SpaceX’s success has been its ability to substantially undercut the prices of its competitors. While SpaceX lists its Falcon 9 rocket starting at $62 million a flight, the US Air Force budgeted $422 million for a single ULA flight in 2020."
In time competition will bring the competitors together. SpaceX will raise it prices and the ULA will have to cut their to compete. The ULA will switch from using Russian RD-180 engines to the BE-4 engine Bezos is developing, but hasn't begun engine qualification testing and doesn't plant to till 2019. Meanwhile, the ULA has ordered, and Russia will supply by the end of 2018, TWO new batches of the Russian RD-180 engine.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news...
Those engines make the ULA dependent on the Russians and pose a security threat to the US.
Amazingly, NASA says the ULA is "ahead" of SpaceX! Only in NASA and the ULA's political dreams. I wonder how much money changed hands for NASA "insiders" to claim the ULA is "ahead" of SpaceX when SpaceX builds and supplies every part of their American made Falcon9 and Falcon Heavy, engines included.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Update: An AC pointed to this article:
https://arstechnica.com/scienc...
This makes it clear that certification comes after the first test crewed launch, and is likely to be in the late 2019/early 2020 time frame.
The report shows when NASA believes Boeing and SpaceX will each have completed a single non-crewed test flight, a test flight with crew, and then undergo a certification process to become ready for operational flights. This is known as the "certification milestone."
So this is about when the second crewed flight of each capsule can happen. Possibly the first (test) crewed flight won't go to the space station.
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