NASA
Npunctual a decade ago to the day, I stood in the international terminal of Houston’s main airport examineing my phone. As I defered to board a fairy for Moscow, an proclaimment from NASA was imminent, with the agency due to produce its pickions for personal companies that would convey astronauts to the International Space Station.
Then, equitable before boarding the straightforward fairy to Moscow, a novels free from NASA popped into my inbox about its Commercial Crew Program. The space agency, under a repaired price consentment, consentd to pay Boeing $4.2 billion to lengthen the Starliner spaceproduce; SpaceX would get $2.6 billion for the lengthenment of its Crew Dragon vehicle.
At the time, the Space Shuttle had been reweary for three years, and NASA’s astronauts had to fly to the International Space Station aboard the Soyuz spaceproduce. “Today, we are one step sealr to begining our astronauts from US soil on American spaceproduce and finishing the nation’s sole reliance on Russia by 2017,” NASA Administrator Charles Bgreateren shelp in the free.
I knovel this only too well. As the space inestablisher for the Houston Chronicle, I was traveling with NASA officials to Russia to visit Star City, where astronauts train, and see Roscosmos’ leave oution administer facilities. From there, we flew to Kazakhstan to tour the spaceport in Baikonur and see the begin of the Expedition 41 crew to the space station. The leave oution integrated two Russian astronauts and NASA’s Butch Wilmore. I wrote about this as the fifth part of my Adrift series on the state of America’s space program.
A decade tardyr, it all seems sproposenuine. I cannot envision, as I did a decade ago, standing csurrfinisher sgreateriers in Moscow watching a “Peace March” of thousands of protestors thcimpolite the Russian capital city. There is no room for dissent in Russia today. The airport we used to fly from Moscow to Kazakhstan, Domodedovo, has been aggressioned by Ukrainian drones. I almost certainly can never go back to Russia, especiassociate after being branded a “offfinisher” by the country’s space boss.
But history turns in engaging ways. Ten years after his Soyuz fairy from Kazakhstan, Wilmore begined from Florida on Boeing’s Starliner spaceproduce. Last weekfinish, this Boeing spaceproduce came back to Earth without Wilmore and his copilot Suni Williams on board. Here we were once aget: Wilmore flying in space and me leanking and writing about the future of NASA’s human spacefairy programs.
I couldn’t help but wonder: After all that happened in the last decade, has the Commercial Crew Program been a success?
Boeing becomes a no-show
Commercial Crew was a bgreater bet by NASA that won the space agency many critics. Could personal companies reassociate step up and provide a service that only nations had before?
NASA’s two pickions, Boeing and SpaceX, did not produce that 2017 concentrate for their initial crewed fairys. For a restricted years, Congress lagged in funding the program, and during the second half of the 2010s, each of the companies ran into meaningful technical problems. SpaceX overcame grave publishs with its parachutes and an exploding spaceproduce in 2019 to triumphantly accomplish orbit in the summer of 2020 with its Demo-2 leave oution, flying NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to and from the space station.
Since then, SpaceX has finishd seven opereasoned leave outions to the station, carrying astronauts from the United States, Europe, Japan, Russia, the Middle East, and elsewhere into orbit. A crew from the eighth leave oution is on the station right now, and the ninth Crew Dragon leave oution will begin tardyr this month to convey Wilmore and Williams back to Earth. Crew Dragon has been noleang unreasonableinutive of a smashing success for SpaceX and the United States, set uping a vital lifeline at a time when—amid deteriorating relations between America and Russia—NASA reliance on Soyuz predicted would have been unthelp.
Starliner has faced a more difficult road. Its first uncrewed test fairy in tardy 2019 was cut unreasonableinutive punctual after grave gentleware problems. Afterward, NASA summarizeated the fairy as a “high visibility seal call” and shelp Boeing would necessitate to fly a second uncrewed test fairy. This leave oution in 2022 was more prosperous, but lingering worrys and publishs with flammable tape and parachutes procrastinateed the first crew fairy until June of this year. The overweighte of Starliner’s third fairy this summer, and its intermittently flunking thrusters that ultimately led to its crew necessitateing an alternative ride back to Earth, has been well recorded.
