Why NASA Is Upset With Elon Musk Massive Rocket
The Crew Dragon has never flown a person into space. Musk is showing off his shiny new spaceship. It has never flown a person into space in its Crew Dragon. As part of a plan to carry giant crews into deep space, the company is showing off its much bigger, much shinier cousin: the Starship, built in Boca Chica, a coastal village at the southeastern tip of Texas. NASA's administrator is angry. Even though the Crew Dragon, which is a capsule for carrying cargo and crew into space on top of a Falcon 9 rocket, is still very much in the works, it's well behind schedule. After being awarded a NASA contract, the company said it would deliver an operational vehicle that astronauts could fly in. That hasn't happened yet. The Crew Dragon was used to complete one uncrewed mission to the International Space Station. It was going to launch a crewed mission later in the year.
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The first crewed mission was put off when the Crew Dragon capsule exploded. On Sept. Musk told that the Crew Dragon would be ready to carry astronauts into space in three to four months. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told that he wasn't convinced, and that he expected NASA to buy more seats on the Russian capsule. Bridenstine undermined a much-ballyhooed Musk presentation of the completed Starship prototype with a critical tweet.
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I am looking forward to the announcement. The Commercial Crew is behind schedule. The same level of enthusiasm is expected to be focused on the investments of the American taxpayer. He referred to the NASA-funded Commercial Crew Program that is tasked with these joint government-private partnerships for crewed space transportation. Crew Dragon is the answer to a problem that began after NASA retired its space shuttle program. At the time, the space agency didn't have a vehicle that could carry people and supplies to the International Space Station. Russian vehicles have been used by NASA to travel to the International Space Station. If the vehicle works as intended, it could serve Musk's stated goal of permanent settlement on Mars.
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It wasn't built to fulfill any NASA goals or contracts, won't launch from NASA facilities, and appears to have been funded by a Japanese billionaire looking to hitch a ride to the moon. The future of American low Earth orbital operations was given over to the Commercial Crew program, which contracts with private companies to build spaceships that can ferry both people and supplies to and from low Earth, as well as transporting people on more distant missions to the moon and beyond. The private companies were hired by NASA to act as taxi services under the theory that they could operate more efficiently than the agency.
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The Space Launch System (SLS), a giant, heavy-lifting rocket, designed in-house at NASA, is scheduled to form the backbone of crewed missions beyond low Earth orbit: a moon base, trips. Bridenstine has supported both of these projects. Vice President Mike Pence said in March that NASA wants to return to the moon and land the first woman on the lunar surface by 2024. E. If Trump were to win a second term, it would be the end of his presidency. In NASA's new vision, the first step in establishing a permanent station at the moon's south pole will be the 2024 mission. SLS's near-term prospects may not be as bright. NASA's Office of the Inspector General reported in October that SLS is behind schedule.
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According to Spaceflight Now, Bridenstine said in March that if the system isn't up to the task in time, NASA might rely on commercial rockets for a lunar mission. But that was before the Crew Dragon capsule exploded. According to SpaceNews, there have been concerns about the Crew Dragon's parachutes. Crew Dragon should be as cheap and efficient as promised in theory. The per-seat cost is less than the $85 million NASA spends for each person ferried into space in a rented spot aboard a cramped Russian ship. The Dragon is a scaled-up version of the little, round, flat-bottomed capsule that has dominated the design of spaceships for decades. For years, Musk has talked about his vision for a vehicle to accomplish more or less what NASA has wanted to achieve with SLS, but on an even grander scale. And on Friday night. He showed off the prototype on the field where it had been assembled. At 30 feet (9 meters) across and a full 160 feet (50 m) tall even before mounting on its booster rocket, the giant is an idea of how to do deep-space travel. The entire assembly can be mounted on a not-yet-constructed Super Heavy rocket and stand over 115 m tall. In its final form, Starship will be able to carry at least 100 tons of cargo into low Earth orbit. It is expected to be able to land on the moon and return to Earth.
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It has been suggested that the company will carry up to 100 people, though cramped quarters would be a problem. The crew capsule of the Apollo era was small and never carried more than three people at a time into space. The primary crew vehicle for the first stage of planned SLS missions is expected to have a maximum crew capacity of six. The Russian capsule maxes out at three. Bridenstine might have been happier to see Musk standing in a field in front of his giant, shiny new rocket ship telling the world it would perform a 12-mile (19 kilometer) test if Crew Dragon were on schedule and offering NASA a way into space without pricey, embarrassing Russian assistance. It's cheap, big enough for a long-haul mission, and built by engineers who can ignore NASA's conservative, plodding culture. A far cry from the sterile hangars where NASA constructs its multiyear projects, the spaceship was put together in a few months out in the open. It doesn't have a booster rocket yet, which means it doesn't have life-support systems, the equipment needed to keep humans alive and well on the craft. Thursday was Bridenstine's day. The two had talked on the phone. According to Musk, Crew Dragon takes up just 5% of the company's resources.
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