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Making History: NASA and SpaceX Launch Astronauts to Space!

New Spaceship Prepares To Blast Off And Make History Ahead of tomorrow's flight the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with Crew Dragon spacecraft sits on the launch pad at Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Bill Ingalls/NASA


NEWS PROVIDED BY NPR  May 26, 2020 11:12 AM ET


ST. LOUIS, May.26, 2020 /MateFit/ -- Almost 40 years have passed since the last time NASA astronauts blasted off into space on a brand new spaceship.

News Making History NASA and SpaceX Launch Astronauts to Space By Teatox Co
Now, as NASA looks forward to Wednesday's planned test flight of the SpaceX Crew Dragon with a pair of astronauts on board, some in the spaceflight community have a little bit of déjà vu.

The first space shuttle, Columbia, flew on April 12, 1981. Crowds gathered in Florida to watch this strange new spacecraft. It looked more like an airplane than the familiar bell-shaped capsules of the Apollo moon missions.

Wayne Hale's wife woke him up for the shuttle launch and he watched it on television in his bedroom, where he'd been trying to get a little sleep after working a prelaunch shift at Houston's Mission Control. He'd just come to NASA a few years before, and he says that a lot about that time was not so different from now.

"The substantially similar thing is that we've been waiting too long without being able to send Americans into orbit from America," says Hale, who went on to be a flight director for dozens of shuttle missions and head of the shuttle program.

Almost six years went by between the last flight of an Apollo spacecraft and the first space shuttle launch. "I remember a lot of talk about, 'Well, we should never be in the position as a nation again of not being able to send astronauts into space for this long,' " Hale says.


Left: Columbia Mission Commander John W. Young and pilot Robert L. Crippen during training on Columbia's flight deck in 1981. Right: The interior of the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft.
NASA/SpaceX
This time around, though, NASA has been waiting even longer — almost nine years.

NASA retired its space shuttles in 2011. Since then, it has been paying for seats on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft to get its astronauts to the International Space Station. That means American astronauts have been launching from Kazakhstan.

Meanwhile, the space agency has been partnering with companies such as SpaceX and Boeing to help them build their own space vehicles. The idea was that NASA would focus on more ambitious missions like a return to the lunar surface, while letting space companies basically operate a taxi service to the nearby station.

One of them — the SpaceX Crew Dragon — is finally ready to blast off with people on board. And some in the space industry think this historic launch marks the start of a revolution for space travel.

That's because folks outside of NASA will be able to fly on these space taxis, too, if they can afford the fare, opening up space as a more accessible travel destination. Already there's talk of Tom Cruise riding a SpaceX capsule to the station to shoot an action movie.


The SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft is prepared for its first crewed launch from American soil. It arrived at the launch site on Feb. 13.
SpaceX
Here again, history is repeating itself. Hale says the reusable space shuttle was supposed to transform space travel in a similar way.

"We were going to take Walter Cronkite. My goodness, we were going to have journalists in space. We were going to take entertainers," he recalls. "We were going to take John Denver into space."

All of that ended with the Challenger disaster and the deaths of all on board, including teacher Christa McAuliffe. The shuttle was more dangerous and more expensive than originally planned, and it flew far less often than NASA had hoped. The agency had to shelve its vision of bringing up lots of ordinary people.

"Let's hope that this new generation of spacecraft really work out to be safe enough where we really can do that," says Hale.

The safety of SpaceX's capsule and rocket is better understood than the shuttle was at its start. SpaceX had a successful test flight to the station and back with no people on board — except after it had docked to the station, when astronauts on board the outpost opened the hatch and went inside.

The company also checked out the safety system for astronauts by deliberately destroying one of its rockets and checking to ensure that the capsule escaped without harm.


The first orbital mission of the space shuttle lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center on April 12, 1981.
NASA
Nothing like that was true for the space shuttle. NASA had never launched anything like it before sending it up with two astronauts: veteran John Young and rookie Robert Crippen.

On Wednesday afternoon at 4:33 p.m. EDT, from the very same launch pad, the SpaceX vehicle is scheduled to carry up another pair of astronauts: Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken.

"It's probably a dream of every test pilot school student to have the opportunity to fly on a brand-new spaceship and I'm lucky enough to get that opportunity," says Behnken.

Hurley says that during their time in the astronaut corps, they both had an opportunity to interact with the first space shuttle flyers. He recently saw Crippen at an event in Texas a few years ago, and they talked about that first shuttle launch.

"I think one thing that really registered with me with what Bob Crippen said was, you know, 'We were so focused on flying the mission, flying the vehicle, and executing and not making a mistake,' " says Hurley.

That's the kind of intense focus Hurley has to have, even in the midst of a pandemic that has NASA begging people not to gather in crowds to watch as they've done in the past for the shuttle.


A Crew Dragon launch escape demonstration which occurred earlier this year.
SpaceX
Both Behnken and Hurley have flown on the space shuttle — in fact, Hurley was on its last mission. The shuttle had a cockpit crammed full of switches and dials, but the more modern SpaceX capsule is controlled with a sleek touchscreen.

"Growing up as a pilot, my whole career, having a certain way to control a vehicle," says Hurley. "This is certainly different."

And when the duo returns to Earth, they'll splash down in the ocean rather than coasting to a stop on a landing strip.

They will, however, be carrying some familiar cargo: an American flag. It flew on the first shuttle mission and the last. It has been hanging at the space station for years, just waiting for a crew to launch from the U.S. and bring it back home.

==xx==

Everything you need to know about SpaceX's historic astronaut launch By Jackie Wattles, CNN Business

Updated 4:36 PM ET, Tue May 26, 2020
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Cape Canaveral, Florida (CNN Business)The stakes have never been higher for Elon Musk's SpaceX. On Wednesday, the company will attempt to launch two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station in a mission called Demo-2.

It will mark the first time in history that a commercial aerospace company has carried humans into Earth's orbit. NASA and space fans have waited nearly a decade for this milestone, which will usher in the return of human spaceflight to US soil.
The launch of SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft is moving forward despite the Covid-19 pandemic, which has shuttered both private and government operations across the US. NASA says it must carry on with the mission in order to keep the International Space Station, a giant orbiting laboratory, fully staffed with US astronauts.
The space agency's top official, Jim Bridenstine, also said he hopes this launch will inspire awe and uplift the general public during the ongoing health crisis.
Why is this important?
The United States hasn't launched its own astronauts into space since the Space Shuttle Program ended in 2011. Since then, NASA's astronauts have had to travel to Russia and train on the country's Soyuz spacecraft. Those seats have cost NASA as much as $86 million each.
But the space agency chose not to create its own replacement for the Shuttle. Instead, it asked the private sector to develop a spacecraft capable of safely ferrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station — a controversial decision considering that NASA had never before outsourced the development of a human-rated spacecraft. The thinking was that commercial companies could drive down costs and spur innovation, and NASA would have more time and resources to focus on exploring deeper into the solar system.
In March, SpaceX and NASA teams executed a full simulation of launch and docking of the Crew Dragon spacecraft, with NASA astronauts Bob Behnken (left) and Doug Hurley.
In March, SpaceX and NASA teams executed a full simulation of launch and docking of the Crew Dragon spacecraft, with NASA astronauts Bob Behnken (left) and Doug Hurley.
In 2014, NASA awarded two contracts: $4.2 billion for Boeing to build its Starliner vehicle, and $2.6 billion to SpaceX, which planned to create a crew worthy version of the Dragon spacecraft that was already flying cargo to and from the International Space Station. NASA had already put money toward SpaceX's development of the Dragon spacecraft used for transporting cargo. The space agency has said Boeing received more money because it was designing the Starliner from scratch.
Boeing recently suffered a significant setback when a Starliner capsule malfunctioned during a key uncrewed test flight. But if SpaceX can carry out this mission, it'll be a major win for NASA, which has been pushing for more commercial partnerships.
Not to mention, NASA won't have to ask Russia for rides anymore.
When and where is liftoff?
NASA and SpaceX are currently targeting Wednesday at 4:33 pt ET for liftoff from Florida's Kennedy Space Center in Brevard County, Florida. If bad weather or technical issues get in the way, NASA has May 30 and May 31 down as backup days.
As of Monday evening, there looked to be about a 60% chance of favorable weather conditions. On launch day, officials will evaluate weather at six hours, four hours and 45 minutes before launch.
The rocket will take off from "Pad 39A," a historic site that has been the starting point of missions dating back to the Apollo era, including the first moon landing in 1969. SpaceX is currently leasing the launch pad from NASA.


CNN and other news networks will also be sharing live updates on TV and online.
Is it safe to launch during the pandemic?
According to NASA, yes.
The astronauts have been in strict quarantine together, and extra precautions are being taken to keep everything clean.
NASA, SpaceX and military personnel will need to gather in control rooms to support the launch, and they've implemented additional safety measures, such as changing control rooms when a new shift begins so that the other room can be deep cleaned.
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Only a few dozen members of the press will be able to attend the launch, NASA has said, and Kennedy Space Center will not welcome any visitors.
NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine and SpaceX chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell have also implored the public to follow the launch on television in order to prevent crowds of spectators from triggering a Covid 19 outbreak. Some local officials are also asking spectators not to gather on nearby beaches or other public viewing sites.
Elon Musk, SpaceX's CEO, has faced steep criticism over his online comments about the coronavirus. He's repeatedly expressed his belief that the United States' coronavirus response is overblown and shared misinformation about its threat.
Who is flying to space?
Two veteran astronauts: Robert Behnken, 49, and Douglas Hurley, 53.
They work for NASA, but they've worked closely with SpaceX and have been trained to fly the Crew Dragon capsule, which will become only the fifth spacecraft design — after the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Space Shuttle vehicles — that NASA has certified as safe enough for humans.

NASA astronauts Bob Behnken, left, and Doug Hurley have spent years learning how to operate SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule.
Behnken and Hurley both began their careers as military test pilots and have logged hundreds of hours piloting supersonic jets. They also both flew on previous Space Shuttle missions. When NASA selected them for this mission in 2018, it continued a long lineage of military test pilots who were deemed to have the "right stuff" for groundbreaking moments in human spaceflight history.
NASA wants to keep Behnken and Hurley on the space station until another Crew Dragon capsule is ready to send more people on its next mission.
The astronauts told reporters last week that they're expecting to spend one to three months in space. The maximum length is 110 days, according to NASA.
When Behnken and Hurley return home, they'll board Crew Dragon, journey back through the atmosphere while the vehicle deploys parachutes and then land in the Atlantic Ocean.
What is Crew Dragon?
It's a gumdrop-shaped capsule that measures about 13 feet in diameter and is equipped with seven seats and touchscreen controls.
Crew Dragon and the astronauts will ride into orbit atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, and the astronauts will board the vehicle the day of launch using an aerial "crew access arm." After the rocket fires the Crew Dragon into the upper atmosphere, the spacecraft will separate and fire up its own thrusters to begin maneuvering toward the space station.
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The Crew Dragon capsule is fully autonomous, so the astronauts will mostly need to just monitor the systems and keep in touch with mission control unless something goes awry.
Despite Behnken and Hurley riding with a couple empty seats on board, they're not planning to bring extra luggage. Behnken told reporters last week that they're only taking along a few "small items" — though, it's not yet clear what those items are.
The astronauts will spend about 19 hours aboard the spacecraft before arriving at the International Space Station.
And yes, the Crew Dragon does have a toilet — just in case. Details about how it works have not been publicized. But one astronaut who worked on the Crew Dragon program said he has seen the design and said the accommodations are "perfectly adequate for that task."
What is the International Space Station?
The International Space Station has orbited Earth for two decades. The United States and Russia are the station's primary operators, but 240 astronauts from 19 countries have visited over the years.
Rotating crews of astronauts have staffed the ISS continuously since the year 2000, allowing thousands of scientific experiments to be carried out in microgravity. Research has included everything from how the human body responds to being in space to developing new medications.
The International Space Station (ISS) is seen from NASA's space shuttle Endeavour after the station and shuttle began their post-undocking separation May 29, 2011.
The International Space Station (ISS) is seen from NASA's space shuttle Endeavour after the station and shuttle began their post-undocking separation May 29, 2011.
Typically, about six people stay on the space station. But right now there are only three: NASA's Christopher Cassidy and Russia's Anatoli Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner.
What will this cost?
Seats on Russia's Soyuz launches have cost NASA up to $86 million each and $55.4 million on average over the past decade, according to a 2019 report from NASA's Office of the Inspector General.
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That same report estimates that Crew Dragon seats will cost NASA about $55 million each. But those are estimates based on a contract that doesn't clearly define the per-seat cost and only accounts for the first six missions.
A new analysis from the nonprofit Planetary Society, which promotes science and space exploration, suggests that, overall, NASA's commercial crew program is a bargain compared to previous human spaceflight programs in the United States.
Is Crew Dragon safe?
Both SpaceX and NASA have had to sign off on Crew Dragon's development throughout every major testing milestone. And this mission will be no different.
Last week, NASA conducted a "launch readiness review," which was meant to ensure that all the stakeholders are comfortable moving forward.
Any time a spacecraft leaves Earth there are risks, and there are no perfect measurements for predicting them.
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But NASA does try: SpaceX is required to ensure that Crew Dragon has only a 1 in 270 chance of catastrophic failure, based on one metric the space agency uses. There have been numerous attempts to calculate what the risk was for a given Space Shuttle mission. Ultimately, out of 135 missions, there were two Shuttle tragedies — a failure rate of about 1 in every 68 missions.
It should also be noted that Crew Dragon's previous uncrewed trip to space gives it more experience than other US spacecraft had before humans were allowed on board. The Space Shuttle, for instance, was never taken on an unmanned test drive.
Crew Dragon is also equipped with a unique emergency abort system designed to jettison astronauts to safety if something goes wrong.
How will this affect the United State's relationship with Russia?
Officials in both countries have held up their symbiotic relationship on the ISS as a beacon of post-Cold War cooperation. But tensions have climbed since the early 2010s, and that has occasionally extended into the countries' space partnership.

Expedition 60 crew members Andrew Morgan of NASA, Aleksandr Skvortsov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos and Luca Parmitano of ESA in front of their Soyuz MS-13 spacecraft in July 2019.
But the ISS has survived other geopolitical tensions. US astronauts and Russian cosmonauts are still working closely together.
NASA officials said Russia and Japan, another ISS partner, both joined discussions for a Crew Dragon safety review last week.
How difficult was it for SpaceX to reach this point?
SpaceX's relationship with NASA has evolved dramatically over the years. In the 2000s, SpaceX first few rocket launch attempts failed, and the company was nearly bankrupt in 2008 before it managed to safely launch one of its early Falcon 1 rockets into orbit. After that, NASA took a chance on the upstart and awarded SpaceX a $1.6 billion contract to fly cargo to the space station using a new capsule, Dragon, and rocket, dubbed Falcon 9.
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SpaceX and NASA have worked closely — and sometimes awkwardly — together ever since. Their partnership has survived two failed SpaceX Falcon 9 missions: One in 2015, when a rocket hauling 5,000 pounds of cargo to the space station exploded on the way to orbit. In 2016, another Falcon 9 rocket blew up while sitting on a Florida launch pad, destroying a $200 million telecom satellite.
But the vast majority of the 80-plus Falcon 9 missions that SpaceX has launched so far have gone off without a hitch.
A setback in development of the Crew Dragon spacecraft came last year, when SpaceX was conducting a ground test of the vehicle's emergency abort engines went explosively wrong.
SpaceX worked for months to reconfigure the Crew Dragon design and clear it with NASA before those abort engines performed flawlessly in a January test flight.
Will Crew Dragon make another trip?
One of SpaceX's main goals is to bring down the costs of launching objects into space by reusing hardware.
Dragon capsules that fly cargo, for example, have been used up to three times.
And since 2015, SpaceX has managed to safely land a Falcon 9's first-stage booster, the largest part of the rocket that gives the initial thrust at liftoff, dozens of times.
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The rocket used for this week's mission will be brand new, but SpaceX will attempt to recover the rocket's first-stage rocket booster by landing it on a seafaring drone ship after launch.
Each Crew Dragon spacecraft could also make multiple trips to space, the company has suggested.
SpaceX's most ambitious reuse efforts will be with Starship — a gargantuan spacecraft currently in the early stages of development. Musk hopes that every piece of that vehicle, and the giant rocket booster that will vault it into space, will be reusable.
Starship is at the core of Musk's long-term plan for SpaceX: Sending humans to live on Mars.

==XX==

SpaceX and NASA are ready to launch astronauts. Here's the 10-year journey it took to get here. By Mike Wall 

It hasn't been easy, but human spaceflight never is.

NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behknen perform a launch dress rehearsal inside their SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft
(Image: © SpaceX)
SpaceX's epic first crewed launch has been a decade in the making for NASA.

On Wednesday (May 27), a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to rise from Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, sending astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley toward the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a Crew Dragon capsule. The mission, called Demo-2, will be the first orbital crewed flight to launch from U.S. soil since NASA's space shuttle fleet retired in July 2011.

And Crew Dragon is indeed a successor to the shuttle — one of two successors, in fact, along with Boeing's CST-100 Starliner spacecraft. Both capsules have been developed with funding from NASA's Commercial Crew Program, which got up and running in 2010.

Related: SpaceX's historic Demo-2 astronaut launch: Full coverage

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NASA's plan back then was to have at least one private American crewed spaceship flying by 2015. That timeline would limit the nation's total dependence on Russian Soyuz spacecraft — the only astronaut taxi left after the shuttles' grounding — to four years.

It's taken a bit longer than that, of course. But the delay isn't terribly surprising in retrospect, considering that an orbital crewed vehicle had never before been developed via such a public-private partnership.

"There were a lot of skeptics back in the day, and a lot of uncertainty about whether or not this model was a good idea even," former NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman, a professor of astronautics practice at the University of Southern California, told Space.com.

"You had government, industry and NASA administration all, at various different times, looking like they were going to shut this down," said Reisman, who worked for SpaceX from 2011 to 2018. He served as the company's director of crew operations during the latter part of that run and remains a consultant to SpaceX today.

A new paradigm
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The groundwork for commercial crew was laid in 2006, with the establishment of NASA's commercial cargo program. This project ended up nurturing two operational robotic ISS resupply craft, SpaceX's cargo Dragon and the Cygnus vehicle, which is built by Northrop Grumman. Dragon made its first trip to the ISS in 2012, and Cygnus followed suit the next year. Both are still flying today.

Commercial cargo served as a model for commercial crew, Reisman said. The latter program awarded its first contracts in 2010, doling out a total of $50 million to five companies: Blue Origin, Boeing, Paragon Space Development Corp., Sierra Nevada and United Launch Alliance (ULA).

These "CCDev-1" deals — the program was then known as Commercial Crew Development — aimed to encourage the maturation of a range of human spaceflight technologies. Paragon got money to work on key aspects of a life-support system, for example, and ULA's funding was intended to help human-rate its workhorse Atlas V rocket.

SpaceX's first Crew Dragon to carry astronauts and its Falcon 9 rocket stand atop Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center ahead of a planned May 27, 2020 launch.
SpaceX's first Crew Dragon to carry astronauts and its Falcon 9 rocket stand atop Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center ahead of a planned May 27, 2020 launch. (Image credit: SpaceX/Elon Musk via Twitter)
The next funding round, CCDev-2, was announced in April 2011. These deals were richer, awarding a total of $270 million to Blue Origin, Boeing, Sierra Nevada and SpaceX. Boeing got $92 million to work on Starliner, and SpaceX received $75 million to aid development of Crew Dragon.

The money got bigger still with the Commercial Crew integrated Capability (CCiCap) contracts, which were announced in August 2012. Sierra Nevada received $212 million to continue work on its Dream Chaser space plane, and Boeing and SpaceX got $460 million and $440 million, respectively.

The final cull came two years later, and NASA didn't end up putting all of its eggs in one basket. In September 2014, the agency announced that Boeing and SpaceX had won Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) deals, which covered final development work on their spaceflight systems as well as six operational crewed flights to and from the ISS. Boeing's deal was worth $4.2 billion, and SpaceX got $2.6 billion.

"I think it was a wise decision to pursue two suppliers for launch services," space policy expert John Logsdon, a professor emeritus of political science and international affairs at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs in Washington, D.C, told Space.com. "That decision will pay off."

Related: SpaceX 'uphill battle' on the road to historic 1st crew launch

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Bumps in the road
Around the time the CCtCap contracts were awarded, NASA officials said they wanted at least one of the new private astronaut taxis to be operational by late 2017.

That didn't happen, of course. Funding shortfalls may have contributed to the delay; over the years, Congress has repeatedly given less money to Commercial Crew than the White House asked for in federal budget requests. Technical challenges have played a role as well. Spaceflight is hard, after all, and human spaceflight is especially so.

For instance, SpaceX looked poised to launch Demo-2 last year. In March 2019, Crew Dragon visited the ISS for the first time, acing an uncrewed, eight-day mission called Demo-1. But a month later, that same capsule exploded during a ground test of its launch-abort system. The schedule moved to the right, obviously, as SpaceX investigated the cause of the mishap (a faulty valve) and made some design changes to ensure it won't happen again.

Boeing has experienced some bumps in the road as well. Starliner launched on its version of Demo-1, called Orbital Flight Test (OFT), in December 2019. But things didn't go as planned. The capsule suffered a glitch with its timing system and got stranded in an orbit too low to allow a rendezvous with the ISS. Starliner will refly OFT before carrying astronauts, and it's not clear when that makeup mission will lift off.

But all that being said, Crew Dragon is now sitting atop its Falcon 9 rocket on the launch pad, waiting for Behnken and Hurley to ride it into history.

And Demo-2 will will be just the beginning, if all goes according to plan. For example, SpaceX sees the mission as a key step toward a bold future in which the company helps humanity colonize Mars, among other ambitious exploration feats.

For its part, NASA wants Demo-2 to kick off a new era of public-private exploration that allows the United States to accomplish great things in the final frontier. For instance, the space agency is also relying heavily on private industry in its Artemis program of lunar exploration, which aims to land two astronauts near the moon's south pole in 2024 and establish a sustainable human presence on and around the moon by 2028. (SpaceX is one of three companies that just received funding to develop a lunar landing system for Artemis.)

Demo-2 "will be a reminder of the US aspiration to lead the development of the space frontier," Logsdon said. "It will remind us of what we could be doing and, in my view, should be doing."

But we can't take NASA's exploration goals for granted, he stressed. After all, history books are full of grand space dreams that withered on the vine, and only time will tell if the momentum generated by Demo-2 will last.

"Is there a national will to continue down the path [laid out by] this mission and the progress on Artemis?" Logsdon said. "Is the country serious about this?"

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