Five, four, three,
two, one, zero.
Ignition, liftoff of the Falcon
9 and Crew Dragon!
Go NASA! Go SpaceX!
Godspeed, Bob and Doug.
In May, millions tuned in to
watch NASA and SpaceX make
history. And so rises a
new era of American space
flight, and with it the
ambitions of a new generation
continuing the dream. The
launch of SpaceX's Crew
Dragon capsule to the
International Space Station,
marked the first time that
NASA astronauts took off
from U.S. soil since 2011.
The event also represented
the first time a
commercially designed and
built spacecraft carried
astronauts, an achievement that
SpaceX and Boeing had
vied for for years
under NASA's Commercial Crew
Program. The program was
structured as a multi-tiered
competition. The goal was
to get private sector
companies to produce
the most cost-effective,
innovative and safe way to
get astronauts to the
International Space Station,
under specific parameters
set forth by NASA. In the
end, SpaceX and Boeing beat
out Sierra Nevada Corporation
for the job.
The traditional aerospace
industry, of course,
questioned startup companies
like SpaceX.
A very senior executive of
one of the competitors told
me that SpaceX
will never fly.
Their rockets are put together
with sealing wax and
chewing gum. We really had
a very healthy competition.
For nearly a decade, SpaceX
and Boeing have been neck
and neck building and
testing their crew
transportation systems.
But SpaceX's successful launch in
May, marked a major
milestone for the company,
leaving Boeing to play
catch-up. The launch on May
30th is technically the
last test flight before NASA
can certify Crew Dragon
for consistent, operational missions
to the space
station. The test is scheduled
to end on August 2nd
with the return of
NASA's astronauts to Earth.
On the other hand, Boeing
has yet to complete a
successful uncrewed test flight
after it encountered
some issues last year.
I'm really quite overcome with
emotion on this day.
So it's kind of
hard to talk, frankly.
It's been 18 years working
towards this goal, so it's
just hard to believe
that it's happened.
The Commercial Crew Program was
born out of a prior
initiative called the
Commercial Orbital
Transportation Services Program,
or known more
affectionately within NASA
as COTS.
COTS began in about the mid-2000s,
and it was simply a
push to see if
private companies could develop
spacecraft and deliver cargo
to the International
Space Station. Two commercial
partners were tapped for
the job: SpaceX and Orbital
ATK, a company now owned
by Northrop Grumman. COTS was
a success and gave NASA
the confidence that it needed
to expand the commercial
partnerships beyond ferrying
cargo to ferrying
astronauts. This became a
particularly pressing need
after NASA ended the
shuttle program in 2011.
The program was initiated in
order to reduce the cost
of spaceflight and to
make it more routine.
And it was not doing that
for the first couple of
years, only reaching four or five
flights a year, at a
huge overhead of three
to four billion dollars.
The shuttle program also
suffered two tragic accidents,
the first in 1986, when
the Challenger exploded just
over a minute into its
flight, killing all seven crew
members. From mission
control, s ilence.
Then the bland, chilling report,
'w e have a report
from the flight dynamics officer
that the vehicle has
exploded. Flight director confirms
that we are looking
at checking with the recovery
forces to see what can
be done at this point.' The
second in 2003, when the
shuttle Columbia broke apart
upon reentry into Earth's
atmosphere, once again killing
all seven astronauts on
board. After the shuttle
program ended, you
essentially had a gap in
the US capability to launch
its own astronauts.
And the only other entity in
the world that had an
operating spacecraft capable of
doing that was Russia.
Their Soyuz spacecraft became
the cornerstone of our
ability to launch astronauts
to the International
Space Station. And it
was becoming an increasingly
expensive service.
Originally, those seats were
around $20 million per
seat and now we're paying
over $90 million per seat.
So over the last nine years,
it has gotten very, very
expensive. And we're in a
position now to say, look,
we want to continue
the partnership on the
International Space
Station.
But what we don't want
to have is dependency.
And so what Commercial Crew
gives us is an opportunity
to end the dependency and
continue the partnership on
the International
Space Station.
Under NASA's Commercial Crew
Program, companies bid for
a fixed-price contract to build
a vehicle to fly
astronauts to and from
the space station.
Boeing and SpaceX won and
were awarded $4.2 billion
and $2.6
billion, respectively.
This type of contract requires
the companies to cover
any additional costs they
incur during development.
But it also means that
the companies retain the rights
to all of their
intellectual property and are
therefore free to use it
as they please after their
NASA contract ends.
Think of it like a space
Uber or a space taxi.
The idea being, we're going
to buy services, but we
expect those launch providers to
go get customers that
are not NASA, which
drives down our costs.
And we expect those
launch providers to compete
against each other on cost
and innovation and safety.
We did not want to have just
one bidder for a number of
reasons. We know the
competition really drives
innovation and one could
also have a problem.
And you don't want to
leave yourself with just one
source like we have
throughout NASA's history.
So this is a way to
make the program more robust.
Though SpaceX and Boeing both got
the job, the race was
on to see who could
put astronauts on the space
station first. SpaceX used the
money to develop the
Crew Dragon capsule and Boeing
used it to develop the
Starliner capsule.
Both capsules are designed to
be reusable, with SpaceX
even recycling its rocket, the
Falcon 9, which it uses
to launch Crew Dragon.
A report issued last year
by NASA's Office of Inspector
General found that NASA expects
to pay SpaceX an
average of about $55 million
per seat and Boeing about
$90 million per seat for
the six round-trip missions
to the ISS.
But Boeing and NASA both
refuted the OIG numbers.
In a statement, Boeing said
that the company will fly
the equivalent of a fifth
passenger in cargo for NASA.
So the per seat pricing
should be considered based on
five seats, rather than
the report's four seat
calculation. Cristina Chaplain is
a former Director at
the Government Accountability Office
and was in charge
of auditing the Commercial
Crew Program for Congress.
Boeing had the advantage of
having a long history of
working with NASA, a long
history with the shuttle
program and knowing how to
do these kinds of
spacecraft. SpaceX was new to
the game, and I think
their advantage was their
flexibility, their speed,
their culture, that they
could work in this
fixed-price, more
commercial-like environment.
SpaceX also had the advantage of
being able to apply a
lot of what it learned
from building its cargo capsule
for NASA's COTS program
to its Crew Capsule.
By the time it received
its Crew Program Contract from
NASA in 2014, SpaceX had
been ferrying cargo to the
space station for
two years.
The Commercial Crew Program
was initially slated to
launch astronauts to the
International Space Station
in 2017, but early funding cuts
and a number of failed
tests made that impossible.
One such setback for SpaceX
happened in 2019, when its
Crew Dragon capsule blew up
during a test of the
in-flight abort system.
SpaceX had also previously lost
two Falcon 9 rockets,
one during a space station
resupply mission in 2015.
Stunning explosion over the
skies of Cape Canaveral
today. An unmanned rocket
bringing supplies to the
International Space Station blew
up just two minutes
into its flight. It's another
setback for NASA and for
SpaceX, the company that will
one day carry astronauts
into orbit. And another in
2016, that was supposed to
launch Facebook's $200 million
satellite into orbit.
Boeing also struggled.
In 2018, a propellent leak was
found in the engine of
the Starliner capsule during
a launch abort test.
Then in 2019, the company hit
a major speed bump with
its orbital flight test,
an important milestone to
safely carry astronauts.
It didn't have any people on
board, but what it was
supposed to do was launch,
get to the space station,
spend a few days there
and then come back.
Well, shortly after launching,
they discovered an
anomaly with part of the
timing system inside the
spacecraft itself and the engines
fired at the wrong
time, putting it in
the wrong orbit.
So they weren't able to
reach the International Space
Station, falling short of the
main priority of the
flight test. The incident
changed how NASA viewed
Boeing. The agency even
admitted that their prior
history with Boeing may have
led them to give the
company more leeway in
terms of oversight.
I would say in the
software area, from a NASA
perspective, we may have been
focused a little more on
SpaceX because they use a
bit of a nontraditional
approach to their
software development.
We had maybe more familiarity
with the Boeing process
from those that had worked
on the International Space
Station. Many of the team
that did the software for
the International Space Station
that was actually
working on the Starliner.
And so we maybe we just
didn't quite take the time
that we needed to. NASA
is now recommending that
Boeing make 80 changes to
the Starliner before it's
re-tested later this year.
Just in general, the government
is kind of waking up
across the space sector
in terms of software.
It's very tricky.
And the government's not
very successful in doing
software for space
at this time.
SpaceX is in a really
strong position to deliver for
NASA. They have a much
faster timeline, I think that
they stick to reiterating
on their technology because
Elon Musk came from
the software side, right.
So Elon Musk, he was one
of the founders of PayPal.
He's had Tesla.
He's had experience working
in different industries
where he's not used to
sitting, waiting around for,
you know, the federal
government budgets, thinking
about milestones that could be
impacted just based off
of politics. Though Commercial
Crew missions have not
yet started, NASA, SpaceX
and Boeing are already
seeing the benefits
of such partnerships.
NASA estimates that this
process saved the agency
somewhere between $20 billion
and $30 billion of
taxpayer money because the
method of contracting and
the efficiency of the companies
to meet the milestones
that they were setting out to
achieve was so much more
efficient than
historically possible.
While NASA benefits from lower
costs, SpaceX and Boeing
benefit from having a government
agency foot the bill
for the building and development
of systems that they
can use for other projects.
There was a day in the
United States of America after
the space shuttles retired, where
we had exactly zero
percent of the global
launch for commercial
satellites. And of course,
because NASA made these
investments into SpaceX and the
Falcon 9 rocket, now
all of a sudden we've got
about 70 percent of the
global commercial
launch market.
If you look at SpaceX's
revenue on the whole, NASA
makes up a significant portion
of that because of the
development contracts they have
awarded the company
over the years. While the
bread and butter of their
business is their
launch business, launching
satellites for companies, for
the US military and
others, this is a very large
chunk, to the tune of
hundreds of millions of dollars
a year that comes from
NASA. But SpaceX is
looking to expand.
The company has already signed
a contract to fly three
tourists to the International
Space Station using its
crew Dragon Capsule and
Falcon 9 rocket.
Space currently makes up only
about five percent of
Boeing's revenue, but with
the company losing billions
due to the grounding of its
737 Max plane and its
stock price plunging due
to the lackluster travel
demand among coronavirus,
that could change.
There's going to be a lot
more incentive for Boeing to
really deliver for NASA.
In the past, i f you
think about what is the biggest
revenue generator for Boeing, I
would doubt that NASA
provides a huge, huge contribution
to their top line.
But now, as they ground more
of the aircrafts and they
have to rethink their approach
to the whole airline
industry, space is definitely
a bigger opportunity for
them. And the opportunities to
work with NASA will
certainly continue.
Right now, in space, w
e've got commercial resupply.
We've got commercial crew
now and eventually we're
going to have commercial
space stations themselves.
We want to be one customer
of many customers and we
want our providers competing
on cost and innovation
and safety. NASA's already
partnering with the private
sector for another venture, getting
people to the moon
by 2024. In April, the
agency awarded contracts to
SpaceX, Blue Origin and
Dynetics to begin development
of lunar landers.
Boeing also bid, but was
not awarded a contract.
We're going to blaze the
trail, always with the intent
to eventually commercialize as
quickly as possible.
Once that's done at the moon,
then we go to Mars.
