SpaceX demo flight a month away, will be “especially dangerous,” Musk says

SpaceX is about a month away from launching its first commercial crew mission, the company's founder, Elon Musk, tweeted this weekend. This will be a demonstration flight, without humans on board.

Officially, NASA had been holding to a January 17 launch date, but that has become untenable due to ongoing work to resolve technical issues, two sources said, as well as the partial government shutdown. More than 90 percent of the space agency's employees are presently furloughed during the shutdown, which is affecting the agency's ability to make final approvals for the launch. Some key government officials are continuing to work on the program without pay.

This is a critical flight for both the company and NASA. Success with this uncrewed demonstration flight would put SpaceX on track toward becoming the first private company to launch humans into space. For NASA, it would return the capability to put its own astronauts into orbit and aboard the International Space Station. It is also a risky mission, as this rocket and spacecraft have never flown together before in this configuration.

Musk himself made this clear in response to a question about the countdown for this flight, replying, "Yes, will be extremely intense. Early flights are especially dangerous, as there’s a lot of new hardware."

NASA, which has worked exceptionally hard to drive down that risk and remains SpaceX's most important customer, likely did not appreciate this comment. The agency has pushed providers to develop a spaceflight system that has a 1-in-230, or lower, probability of "loss of mission." One agency official Ars spoke with Sunday said it was not helpful to build up gladiatorial anticipation about these first flights when humans are involved.

“Risk is inherent”

However, one former space shuttle program manager who led the program after the space shuttle Columbia disaster told Ars in an email that Musk is just stating the obvious.

"First flights of new space vehicles carry inherent risk," said Wayne Hale, who is now a consultant and a member of NASA's Advisory Council. "Test is better but has limitations, too. It is never possible to test the entire integrated system in the complete flight environment. Ground tests and partial environment tests provide some confidence, but there is no test like an actual flight."

SpaceX has some advantages in that it has flown the Falcon 9 rocket dozens of times, and it has flown an earlier version of the Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station 16 times. However, for crewed flights, SpaceX has dramatically changed Dragon, including moving the solar panels from wings to a configuration in which they are built into the spacecraft.

The company and NASA plan to learn from the upcoming test flight and then send astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken into space on the second mission, perhaps sometime later this summer.

"I think it is impossible to fly a new vehicle without learning something significant that you did not expect," Hale said. "Second flights are only slightly less risky. Mr. Musk is definitely well advised to lower expectations. Risk is inherent to this business and it would be foolish not to acknowledge it. But the biggest risk is staying home and not trying."

Listing image by SpaceX