- [Man] And liftoff of Endeavor.
- Since the Space Shuttle's
retirement in 2011,
the United States hasn't
had the capability
to transport crew to orbit.
Instead, we've been relying
on the Russian Soyuz
for almost a decade while we
rush to develop alternatives.
The commercial crew providers
are now on the verge of
completing development
of the two crewed low
Earth orbit spaceships:
Crew Dragon and the
Boeing CST-100 Starliner.
And today, we'll be
comparing them head to head.
(upbeat electronic music)
And this episode is sponsored
by me, ineedmore.space/shop.
And if you wanna help support me
doing more of this type of storytelling,
just pick up a shirt.
It would really mean a lot,
and I do try really hard
to make shirt designs
that I think people would
like to wear around.
So, if you wanna support
more episodes like this,
please consider buying a shirt
from ineedmore.space/shop.
Back to the episode.
After the Constellation program,
NASA's replacement for the Space Shuttle,
collapsed because of a variety of reasons,
the United States crewed
exploration program
was left with the SLS and
the Commercial Crew Program.
NASA would focus on
deep space exploration,
while private industry would take over
low Earth orbit transportation.
NASA would help develop
and fund the capsules
and then become their customers
to buy flights on these
capsules as needed.
The companies were then free
to sell commercial flights
on these capsules to private customers,
tourists, corporations, or even countries
that lacked their own crewed
spaceflight capability.
NASA would gain autonomous
access to the ISS
from the US again
and the space flight
companies would raise profits
and fund development
of better space technology and services.
It was a win-win situation.
The investment paid off and
the companies ended up creating
two amazing modern crew capsules.
- [Man] And liftoff, the rise of Starliner
and a new era in human spaceflight.
- First, let's take a look at
Boeing's CST-100 Starliner.
It's a capsule with a
truncated cone shape,
similar to other historic US capsules.
It's a bit larger than
the Apollo command module,
but smaller than the
next-generation Orion,
being developed by Lockheed Martin.
The capsule can carry
up to seven passengers
to low Earth orbit,
although NASA will use
it in a configuration
that has four seats and some
cargo-carrying capability.
The Starliner features an interior
similar in design characteristics
to Boeing's commercial aircraft,
specifically the 787 Dreamliner.
It has a full range of manual
controls and large displays
that display a ton of crucial data.
However, this will be largely unused
because the capsule is designed
for autonomous operation
and will be able to rendezvous and dock
with the International
Space Station all by itself.
At IAC 2019, I did have the pleasure
of sitting in a Starliner simulator
and docked the ship on my very first try
after a quick explainer by a Boeing rep.
I did notice that the control interface
clearly had Space Shuttle heritage
down to the same exact switch
models flown on the orbiters.
It was good to see manual
toggle switches available
in case of emergency.
The capsule itself features
a ton of new innovations
that truly make it a
21st-century spacecraft,
such as a completely weldless design
with interlocking parts.
This ensures consistency
and eliminates a large
part of the unreliabilities
introduced by welding.
It also has 12 reusable
command module thrusters
for maneuvering.
It also has a separate service module.
A sheet of static solar
panels are mounted at the base
to power the spacecraft's
electronic subsystems.
It has a lot of thrusters onboard,
built by Aerojet Rocketdyne,
including 20 OMV thrusters,
which are used for
supporting orbital maneuvers
and attitude control in case
of a low-altitude launch abort
and 28 RCS thrusters for maneuvering
and providing reboosts to the
International Space Station.
It also includes the
pusher-style launch abort system,
or LAS, powered by the
four RS-88 Bantam engines.
They use hydrazine, a
hypergolic propellant.
And although it is admittedly very toxic,
it ensures an instant
startup from the engines
that carry the capsule to safety
in case of an anomaly during the launch.
The tanks carrying the
hydrazine and hydrogen tetroxide
are also present within
the service module.
The service module's attached
during the entire course
of the spacecraft's mission
and separated and just before reentry,
exposing the crew module's heat shield.
It then burns up in the Earth's atmosphere
and is expended with every flight.
Starliner's landing sequence
begins with the de-orbit burn and reentry.
After slowing down because
of the atmospheric drag,
while being stabilized
by the onboard thrusters,
it deploys its drogue parachutes
and ejects the heat shield before landing,
exposing the airbags.
The main parachutes deploy,
slowing it down further,
and the airbags inflate to
provide a soft touchdown
on the sandy desert expanse
of the US Army's White
Sands Missile Range.
- [Woman] Two, one, launch.
- Now, let's look at SpaceX's capsule.
By 2010, SpaceX had developed
the uncrewed Dragon capsule
for cargo transport to the
International Space Station
under NASA's CRS contract.
This had been an extremely critical
as well as lucrative deal for SpaceX
and allowed them to fund the
rest of their development.
The next logical step was
to scale this proven design
for an Earth orbit capsule
that can safely deliver and return cargo
in a crew transportation vehicle
for NASA's commercial crew program.
The initial prototypes of the capsule
were simply the Dragon 1 design
with added thruster pods
for the launch abort system.
This, however, was not the final design.
On the 30th of May, 2014,
Elon unveiled the Dragon 2 capsule,
also known as Crew Dragon, and
it went something like this.
(audience cheering)
The capsule was a sleek
black-and-white pod
that looks like something
out of a sci-fi movie,
a lot like this.
Now, the interior was
spacious and uncramped.
The seats were minimalistic.
Four massive touchscreens
folded down from the top
with all of the controls available
and telemetry presented
in neat animations.
It was a 21st-century spaceship.
But it wasn't just a facelift.
SpaceX, in their typical fashion,
had done something entirely
insane with their new project.
The thruster pods wouldn't
just provide an abort mode.
Instead, they'd be capable
of propulsively landing the capsule
anywhere on the planet and beyond
with considerable precision.
New engines called the SuperDracos
were under development,
powered by hydrazine
and completely 3D-printed out of Inconel.
Eight of these highly-throttleable
hypergolic engines
would enable the powered
descent and landing.
The control surfaces of Dragon
2 are largely touchscreen
with very few physical switches.
Now, there are many
benefits to this design.
For instance, as the operations
of Crew Dragon evolve,
they can do updates to control interfaces
by just a software patch
rather than physically
reconfiguring switches and dials,
adding cost and complications.
The drawback, well, for now, at least,
is largely using unproven
technology and touchscreens
for essential spaceflight functions,
but I'm sure that's something
that will be part of spaceflight's future.
I'm not worried.
SpaceX is planning to use the
Dragon 2/Crew Dragon variant
for a mission to the Martian surface.
They called it Red Dragon.
The Red Dragon capsule will
be launched on a Falcon Heavy
into a trans-Mars injection trajectory.
It would then aerobrake
into Mars's atmosphere
and land propulsively.
It would carry experiments,
payloads, or even rovers
to preemptively scout
mission sites in the future.
However, things changed
drastically for Dragon's future.
The landing legs that
popped outta the heat shield
proved to be difficult to qualify
for NASA's crew safety requirements.
They weren't massive fans
of the propulsive landing method either
and preferred traditional parachutes
as the primary landing method.
SpaceX had been counting on NASA's support
for Red Dragon development
and possibly contracts
for lander missions.
Without any prospects of landing
Dragons on Earth or Mars,
SpaceX stopped development
for the propulsive
landing technology for it.
Instead, they decided to
accelerate development
on their larger next-gen Martian rocket,
which eventually became Starship.
Dragon would now use
parachute systems to land.
The SuperDraco engine
would simply be used now
as the abort engines.
The capsule would splash down in the ocean
like the older Gemini and Apollo capsules.
And unlike the Starliner,
it won't be reused for crewed spaceflight.
However, it will still be modified
to be used as a cargo resupply
ship for the CRS-2 contract
and replace the existing Dragon 1 fleet.
You might also have noticed something
that looks very much like a service module
on the Crew Dragon, but in fact it is not.
It's called the trunk and it
really has four main jobs,
the first job being to
hold the solar panels,
the second to hold the radiators
that help keep the spacecraft cool,
the third being the place that
the winglets are mounted to
in the event of a launch abort scenario,
and the fourth and, which, in my opinion,
one of the most fascinating aspects of it
is an unpressurized cargo hold,
very much like what the Space Shuttle had,
which allows Crew Dragon
to bring supplies,
exterior modules, or
experiments to the Space Station
that would be accessed via the Canadarm.
An American flag was flown
on the very first Space
Shuttle mission, STS-1,
on the orbiter Columbia in April 1981.
When Atlantis flew the
final shuttle mission,
STS-135, in July of 2011
to the International Space
Station its fleet helped build,
it carried the same flag
and left it onboard.
The next crew to fly to
the ISS from American soil
would retrieve this flag
and return it to Earth
as a symbolic gesture.
This has fueled a race
between the two companies
to get to the ISS first; a
capture-the-flag, if you will.
This race, however, has been characterized
by a ton of unexpected
development challenges
for both the providers.
In July 2018, Boeing's Starliner
was undergoing tests in its abort systems
when the hypergolic propellant
began leaking from the spacecraft
because of a series of faulty valves.
This was a critical issue
and delayed the orbital test
flight by more than a year.
During the pad abort test early in 2019,
one of the three main parachutes
just failed to deploy.
This was a cause for concern,
but the test was still
declared as a success.
However, the anomaly that occurred
during its orbital flight test
is quite a serious setback.
The capsule was launched into
a lower-orbital trajectory
instead of a stable orbit so
that if an anomaly occurs,
their crew can easily de-orbit
using the onboard thrusters,
rather than having to be stuck in orbit.
After separation, the capsule
was supposed to perform
a series of orbit-raising burns
to get it to the ISS and rendezvous.
The capsule, named Calypso,
portrayed as Atlas's
daughter in Greek mythology,
lifted off on top of United
Launch Alliance's Atlas V rocket
in a new N22 configuration,
which performed normally,
N22 meaning N for no-fairing,
two solid rocket motors,
and two Centaur upper-stage engines.
After a successful separation, however,
it began firing its thrusters quite a bit,
leading to a rapid fuel consumption.
A subsequent investigation
revealed that the
capsule's onboard computers
had picked up the wrong
mission-elapsed time from the Atlas.
And as a result, it's clock
was delayed by 11 hours.
It thought that it was in the middle
of performing an orbit-raising burn,
even though the main
engines weren't firing,
and began using its thrusters
to keep the capsule stable.
It also happened to be
between two tracking
and data relay satellites,
which meant it could
not receive its commands
from the ground.
When controllers finally
regained communication
with Starliner, it had
lost way too much fuel.
It wouldn't be able to reach the ISS,
and docking was outta the question.
It was in an off-nominal
orbit with weird parameters
and was eventually de-orbited
and brought back down to Earth.
The reentry and landing was successful.
Now, this was an embarrassing flaw
for a craft that cost billions to develop.
However, Boeing's astronauts do seem eager
to test the capsule out
on its crewed flight.
Now, SpaceX has had its
own share of problems,
with abort systems and parachutes.
Now, once the propulsive
landing program was canceled,
parachutes became the
primary landing mode.
However, a test in 2019 had
shown undesirable results,
and so the parachutes
had to undergo a redesign
and NASA required 13 drop
tests to qualify them.
Now, the orbital flight test
for SpaceX had gone perfectly.
The capsule launched perfectly
on a Falcon 9 Block 5,
docked with the ISS,
had a massively successful
series of livestreams
featuring an absolutely
adorable Earth plush,
and returned its passenger,
a test dummy called Ripley
wearing a SpaceX suit, safely to Earth.
However, the most concerning
failure came after this.
The DM-1 capsule from this mission
was undergoing some thruster
tests at Cape Canaveral.
Then, it suddenly exploded.
(explosion booming)
A red nitrous plume of nitrous tetroxide
billowed into the sky and
could be seen from all around.
A video of the incident leaked,
showing the capsule get ripped apart
from an internal explosion,
making it a very sensational
and public failure.
An investigation began,
looking for the probable cause.
And after a few months,
it was revealed that it
had a very specific source.
Turns out, the video wasn't
the only thing that had leaked.
A faulty check valve allowed
some nitrogen tetroxide
to flow the wrong way
and form a slug of sorts.
When the system was pressurized
with the helium prior to ignition,
the slug as accelerated straight
into the titanium valve,
damaging it and igniting it,
which led to the explosive failure.
The valve has since been
replaced with a burst disc
and the system has since been verified
by the inflight abort
test, which was awesome!
Now, let's note that SpaceX
received $2.6 billion
to develop Crew Dragon,
while Boeing received $4.2
billion to develop Starliner.
Now, Boeing defended this
by saying that SpaceX
had an already-flying cargo capsule
that they were just modifying
into a crewed version,
while they had to start from scratch.
Now, SpaceX had chosen to perform
additional testing on its systems,
while Boeing's route
involved more simulations
and paperwork for
qualifying onboard systems.
This represents a fundamental distinction
between their approaches,
and possibly the effects are
reflected in their failures.
If Boeing had performed
more real-world testing,
a simulation error such as
a clock issue on Starliner
may have been avoided.
Similarly, if SpaceX had
spent a little bit more time
qualifying their parts,
they would have noticed
that putting titanium
near nitrogen tetroxide
isn't the best idea and
is a known failure mode
that has affected spacecraft in the past.
Oh, and if you're flying on
Dragon, you get to wear this.
And if you're flying on
Starliner, you get to wear this.
So, now that we've gone
over both spacecraft,
let's go over some of
their technical specs
that you will probably find interesting.
The SpaceX Crew Dragon has the ability
to carry seven astronauts
to low Earth orbit,
but NASA's opting for four
or even three seats to the
International Space Station
because they want more
room for pressurized cargo.
It can survive on its own in
low Earth orbit for one week
or 210 days docked to the
International Space Station.
It can carry 6,000 kilograms
or 13,000 pounds to orbit,
as well as bring 3,000
kilograms or 6,600 pounds back.
It can have up to 1,300 cubic
feet of unpressurized space
with the extended trunk.
That is a lot more
opportunity to carry cargo.
Boeing's Starliner has some
very similar attributes
to the SpaceX Crew Dragon.
For free flight, it can
survive up to 60 hours
in low Earth orbit, not
as long as Crew Dragon,
but still a few days,
plenty of time to get to the
International Space Station
or any other point in low Earth orbit.
Once docked to the Space Station,
it can stay up there for 210 days
because it enters a passive mode.
It can also carry up
to seven crew members,
with NASA also again doing
three or four crew members
to the International Space Station,
taking that extra space for cargo.
And it has no uncompressed storage area.
The crewed flight tests
for both of these capsules
are coming up soon.
The US will have its own
crewed spaceflight capability again,
opening up many more
possibilities for missions.
Apart from the missions to the ISS,
we may be seeing them used for
a variety of other purposes.
Maybe foreign governments will
be interested in buying seats
for their crews to low Earth orbit.
Maybe there will be transport
researchers or tourists
or engineers to private space
stations in low Earth orbit.
Maybe we will see them
being used to transport crew
to cyclers heading to
the moon or even Mars.
So, who knows?
I'm just excited to see crews
launching from Cape Canaveral
on American spaceships again.
So, what do you think about
the commercial crew program?
Who do you think has a better chance
of reaching the International
Space Station first:
Dragon or Starliner?
(test pattern humming)
Wait, Boeing's gonna do what?
Okay, okay.
Well, this is what happens
when you film a video
a month before it goes out.
Turns out, Boeing needs
to read a million lines
of their software to
re-certify their spacecraft
for human or crewed spaceflight,
and that's likely gonna push
back first crewed launch,
I know, roughly probably about a year.
So, I think it's pretty safe to say SpaceX
is gonna win the
capture-the-flag competition.
But this is actually a
really good teachable moment
we can talk about right now.
This is one of the reasons why
NASA wanted multiple providers
for the commercial crew
program, for events like this.
If you look back to the Columbia
and the Challenger accidents,
when the Space Shuttle was down,
it basically just shut down
the entire human space
operations for NASA.
That's because they
had one launch vehicle.
One of the things NASA and
their international partners
learned from the Space Shuttle
is that you need multiple
options for access to space,
which is why it's been so valuable
to have the Cygnus resupply
craft, the SpaceX cargo Dragon,
the Russian Progress vehicle,
and the Japanese vehicle,
which escapes my memory.
But regardless, you need multiple options
for access to space,
and the same thing needs to be for crew.
And NASA was hoping that in the event
that something happened
on a Boeing spacecraft,
they'd still have a SpaceX spacecraft
to still be able to
access the Space Station
on a regular basis and vice-versa.
God forbid something happened
with the SpaceX Crew Dragon,
they still had Starliner to lean on,
as well as the Russian Soyuz.
So, you'd go from one
way to access the station
with human crews to three.
So, now we're missing Starliner.
It's gonna take a while and Boeing
is very aware of their mistake.
But I was gonna put a poll
about which one do you think's
gonna win to the Space Station
or win the capture-the-flag,
but I think we know who's
gonna win that race.
But I still have hope for Being.
And anyways, let's get
back to the episode.
(test pattern humming)
Let me know in the poll above.
Now, let's have a
discussion in the comments
about the commercial crewed spaceflight
and if you think it's the right way
for missions to go farther into space.
Do you think NASA made the right choices
all those years ago or do
you still miss the shuttle?
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
If you wanna learn more
about space history
and just see cool space stuff,
feel free to follow me on Twitter.
I'm @TJ_Cooney.
And please feel free to subscribe
and just follow me on my
space storytelling journey
here on I Need More Space.
I can't wait to see what's coming ahead.
Thank you for watching and
I'll see you guys next time.
Bye.
(light upbeat music)
