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.

Comments

Last I checked...

[jnaujok]

...SpaceX is still scheduled for an unmanned crew dragon test in August, mid-flight abort/escape test in October, and first manned flight in late December. (Source: Spaceflight Now's Luanch Schedule)

The first flight article just left the Plum Brook test center bound for Florida and mating to a Falcon 9 Block 5.

I fail to see where SpaceX is behind on this. Now, if you want to look at Boeing, last I heard the first flight article has yet to even finish being built, much less undergone vacuum, vibration, and cold testing like the Crew Dragon has.

But, hey, their capsule only costs the taxpayer 50% more than the Dragon, and was started 4 years earlier.

Curtailing Musks cash cow?

[seoras]

I read this interesting piece yesterday "The War on Tesla, Musk, and the Fight for the Future".
Quote: "people with 10,7 billion dollars bet against Tesla stand to utterly lose their shirt".

Musk doesn't seem too bothered because, quote: "Musk can create contracts at will from SpaceX (and, to a lesser extent, Boring Company). SpaceX is on a roll and flush with cash." and this "Musk can sell off a portion of his SpaceX stake to personally bail out Tesla. There’s a massive demand for buying into SpaceX that hasn’t been able to be filled because it’s privately held. And Musk has shown repeatedly throughout his history that he isn’t, if anything, afraid to go personally “all in”."

I wonder how much Musk is relying on US Government contracts to keep his cash cow nice and fat if it needs to be slaughtered for Tesla?

Of course the other reason for this will be to allow Boeing to catch up but who'd pass up the chance to kill two birds with one stone.
I'd expect more to follow this If I'm right. I hope not.

Re:NASA internal estimates confirm conclusion

[Jerry]

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.