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EdwardHeisler

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Registered: 2017-09-20

Posts: 357

SpaceX Poised to Be First with Astronaut Flights, Beating Boeing

SpaceX Poised to Be First with Astronaut Flights, Beating Boeing
SpaceX plans to fly Demo-2, its first crewed test flight, in April 2019, while Boeing’s Crew Test Flight is now slated for mid-2019.
Bloomberg | Aug 03, 2018

Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is set to beat Boeing Co. in the battle to be the first company to ferry American astronauts to the International Space Station.

SpaceX plans to fly Demo-2, its first crewed test flight, in April 2019, while Boeing’s Crew Test Flight is now slated for mid-2019, according to a new schedule that NASA released Thursday. Both dates are later than the companies had been targeting.

NASA awarded both companies a combined $6.8 billion in September 2014 to revive the U.S.’s ability to fly to the orbiting lab without buying seats on Russian Soyuz capsules -- berths that cost about $80 million apiece.

NASA will announce which astronauts will fly with Boeing and SpaceX at an event Friday at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft will blast off atop United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket, while SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft will travel on the company’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket.

Last month, the Government Accountability Office warned that the companies were slipping on their schedules toward NASA certification, with Boeing reaching that milestone in December 2019 and SpaceX a month later. It’s possible neither company will be ready to fly astronauts until August 2020, the GAO said in its report.

Part of Boeing’s delay arose from a propellant leak in June during a launch-abort engine test in New Mexico. Those engines are designed to power up if the launch rocket suffers a mishap and would eject the Starliner crew capsule to a safe distance.

“We are confident we found the cause and are moving forward with corrective action,” including some design changes, Boeing said this week.

The companies see launching astronauts as a step toward a near-future in which space travel reaches beyond low-earth orbit. Proving that SpaceX can safely fly NASA personnel would put Musk, the company’s chief executive officer, closer to his ultimate goal of carrying human colonists to Mars.

Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg has goals that are no less lofty. In speeches, he’s fond of predicting that the first person to step foot on the Red Planet will get there in a Boeing rocket.

https://www.industryweek.com/companies- … ing-boeing

SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 28,825

Re: SpaceX Poised to Be First with Astronaut Flights, Beating Boeing

I think the little valve issue is being over blown as its just a simple fix to ensure that valves and fuel mix will not continue to do it. With its attempt being pushed back into 2019...

The crews with the right stuff...
NASA just announced the first 9 astronauts to fly SpaceX and Boeing's brand-new spaceships — here's who they are

Bio's are near the end of article...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nasa-names … o-station/

The astronauts named to fly to the International Space Station aboard the first four flights of new Boeing and SpaceX crew ferry ships (left to right): Sunita Williams, Josh Cassada, Eric Boe, Nicole Mann, Chris Ferguson, Doug Hurley, Bob Behnken, Mike Hopkins and Victor Glover. Mann, Cassada and Glover are space rookies while the rest are shuttle-station veterans

All of which I hope this is just the beginning and not a status quo of what has been started.