SpaceX in 2009 as vice president of
astronaut safety and mission assurance,
says safety stems mostly from a vehicle’s
design. Bowersox, who flew four space
shuttle missions as well as the Russian
Soyuz, says that at NASA the shuttle’s
complexity required a large organization
to manage the risks. “People started to
think that that’s the only way you can
operate. And I have to say that I
would’ve been in that boat if I hadn’t
been sent off to train in Russia,” where the
workforce is much smaller. Because the
Soyuz is far simpler than the shuttle and
includes an escape system, he says, it is
safer despite the inevitable human errors.
Dragon follows the same design
philosophy.
Human-rating the Dragon will require
development and flight tests of a launch
abort system, which could cost nearly a
billion dollars. Before astronauts are
allowed to fly it, NASA will subject the
craft to an intensive review. Lindenmoyer,
the commercial crew program manager,
thinks Musk and his team can meet the
agency’s standards. “Everybody has a
perception of SpaceX, what they must
not be doing,” he says. “But when you
get in there and you’re shoulder to
shoulder with them, you quickly learn that
that is not the case. Believe me, I was
skeptical at first. Do they follow all those
standards for quality and safety? Yes,
they do. They absolutely do.”
Many of Lindenmoyer’s NASA colleagues
remain skeptical—even some who have
visited SpaceX. “There’s quality control in
development, and then there’s quality
control in production,” says one agency
senior manager who asked not to be
named. “The history of launch vehicle
development suggests that design issues
might crop up in the first or second
launch, but it’s the process problems that
start to show up on the sixth, the seventh,
and the eighth launch.” Noting that so far
Musk’s team has launched only two
Falcon 9s, this skeptic asks, “How does he
ever get to a rate—you know, he’s talking
about flying a dozen, two dozen times a
year? And as they fly their vehicle, how
long before they have a major accident?
And are they able to sustain a major
accident and still be a viable company?”
Musk appears undaunted by these
worries, maybe because he’s already
thinking ahead to bigger ones. He says
he is committed to turning Falcon 9 into
“the first fully and rapidly reusable rocket”
because, he says, that accomplishment is
key to making spaceflight affordable and
routine. To cut the cost of getting to orbit
to just $100 per pound, Musk says, “you
need to be able to launch multiple times
a day, just like an airplane. And it’s got to
be complete, so you can’t be throwing
away a million dollars of expendable
hardware every flight either.” Musk has
targeted reusability from the start. Merlin
engines, for example, are designed to fly
tens of missions—provided you can get
them back. An animation on SpaceX’s
Web site shows how that might happen:
Cast-off Falcon 9 stages reenter the
atmosphere at between 17 and 25 times
the speed of sound, then use their own
guidance systems and engines to fly
back to the launch site, where they land
upright on deployable legs. A test
program called Grasshopper is already in
the works at SpaceX’s Texas facility. No
one can predict how many years it might
take to achieve full and rapid reusability,
but Musk says, “it’s absolutely crucial. It’s
fundamental. I would consider SpaceX to
have failed if we do not succeed in that.”