SpaceX's first launch of astronauts slips to December

James Dean
Florida Today
On May 30, 2014, at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, CEO Elon Musk unveiled a mockup of the Crew Dragon capsule it will use to fly astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

Correction: An earlier version of this story mistakenly referred to Russia's Soyuz as the only spacecraft able to fly humans to and from orbit. China can launch its taikonauts into orbit; only the Soyuz flies astronauts and cosmonauts to the International Space Station.

Prospects for astronaut launches from the Space Coast this year dimmed with SpaceX’s confirmation Thursday that it would not be ready to fly test pilots before December.

That’s a four-month slip from the most recent public schedule, presented to a NASA advisory group last month.

The delay potentially puts Boeing, whose target dates have not changed, back in front in the race to be the first private launcher of astronauts to the International Space Station.

Boeing is targeting November for its two-person test flight.

In a short blog post Thursday, NASA said both SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner capsules “are nearing the final stages of development and evaluation.”

But the complexity and risks inherent in any human spaceflight system mean the revised schedule — released a week before a congressional hearing reviews the progress of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program — remain at high risk of slipping into 2019.

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Nearly a year ago, asked about government watchdog audits warning of such a slip, SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell replied, "The hell we won't fly before 2019.”

Even astronauts don't launch into orbit from U.S. soil this year — for the first time since the final shuttle mission in 2011 — the Space Coast will likely witness hugely important first test flights of the crew capsules without astronauts on board.

Both Boeing and SpaceX have circled this August as the timeframe for those demonstration missions.

That reflects another four-month slip from SpaceX, which was previously targeting April.

"SpaceX continues to target 2018 for the first demonstration missions with and without crew under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program," the company said in a statement Thursday. "In 2017, significant progress was made towards the production, qualification and launch of Crew Dragon — one of the safest and most advanced human spaceflight systems ever built — and we are set to meet the additional milestones needed to launch our demonstration missions this year.”

SpaceX will launch the Dragon atop Falcon 9 rockets from Kennedy Space Center’s pad 39A. Boeing will fly Starliners on top of United Launch Alliance Atlas V rockets from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Once those missions without crews are completed and reviewed, SpaceX plans to fly a test flight with two NASA astronauts on board the Dragon, while Boeing will fly one NASA astronaut and one its own astronauts on the Starliner.

Boeing’s astronaut is presumed to be Chris Ferguson, a former shuttle astronaut who is the company's director of Starliner crew and mission systems.

NASA in 2015 named four astronauts as its Commercial Crew “cadre” training for both test flights: Bob Behnken, Eric Boe Doug Hurley and Sunita Williams.

But NASA has not announced which astronauts are assigned to which test flight, an announcement the space agency has previously said to expect about a year before the flights.

After the test flights are completed and NASA certifies the two systems as safe, the companies will begin launching four-person crews to the ISS — increasing its normal occupancy from six to seven — and returning them home.

NASA in 2014 awarded Boeing and SpaceX contracts worth up to $4.2 billion and $2.6 billion, respectively, to fly six ISS missions.

Continued delays to the commercial crew launches could force NASA to buy more seats on Russian Soyuz spacecraft, which currently provide humans' only ride to and from the ISS. Those seats run more than $80 million each.

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 or jdean@floridatoday.com. And follow on Twitter at @flatoday_jdean and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/FlameTrench.