through NASA’s Commercial Crew
Program.
“Everything we do [at NASA]
is integrated. We have to have
commercial crew [for] a viable low
Earth orbit infrastructure – a place
where we can do testing – for
example with what’s going on at the
ISS today.”
“And in the out years you are going
to be doing the same type of work.
But it’s not going to be on the ISS.”
“After 2024 or maybe 2028, if we
extend it again, you are going to see
the people on commercial vehicles.
There are going to be other stations
or other laboratories. But they won’t
be NASA operated laboratories.
They will be commercially viable and
operating laboratories.”
Private
NewSpace
ventures
represent a revolutionary departure
from current space exploration
thinking. But none of these
revolutionary
commercial
operations will happen if we
don’t have reliable and cost
effective human access to
orbit from American soil with
American rockets on American
spaceships.
“We need to have our own
capability to get our crews to
commercial crew is really, really, really
important,” Bolden emphasized.
The ongoing crises in Ukraine
makes development of a new U.S.
crew transporter to end our total
reliance on Russian spaceships even
more urgent.
“Right now we use the Russian
Soyuz. It is a very reliable way to get
our crews to space. Our partnership
with Roscosmos is as strong as it’s
ever been. So we just keep watching
what’s going on in other places in
the world, but we continue to work
with Roscosmos the way we always
have,” Bolden stated.
The latest example is the recent
successful launch of the new three
man Russian-U.S.-German Expedition
40 crew to the ISS on a Soyuz.
Of course, the speed at which
the U.S. develops the private human
spaceships is totally dependent on
the funding level for the Commercial
Crew program.
www.RocketSTEM .org
Unfortunately, progress in getting
the space taxis actually built and
because the Obama Administration
CCP funding requests for the past few
years of roughly about $800 million
have been cut in half by a reluctant
U.S. Congress. Thus forcing NASA to
to 2017.
And every forced postponement
to CCP costs U.S. taxpayers another
$70 million payment per crew seat
to the Russians. As a result of the
congressional CCP cuts more than
one billion U.S. dollars have been
shipped
to
Russia
There are going to be
other stations or other
laboratories. But they
won’t be NASA operated
laboratories. They will be
commercially viable and
operating laboratories.
instead of
spent on
building our own U.S. crew transports
– leaving American aerospace
workers unemployed and American
manufacturing facilities shuttered.
I asked Bolden to assess NASA’s
new funding request for the coming
way through Congress.
“It’s looking better. It’s never
good. But now it’s looking much
better,” Bolden replied. “If you look
at the House markup that’s a very
positive indication that the budget
for commercial crew is going to be
pretty good.”
The pace of progress in getting our
crews back to orbit basically can be
summed up in a nutshell.
“No Bucks, No Buck Rogers,” Chris
Ferguson, who now leads Boeing’s
crew effort, told me in a separate
interview for RocketSTEM.
The Boeing CST-100, Sierra Nevada
Dream Chaser and SpaceX Dragon
‘space taxis’ are all vying for funding
in the next round of contracts to
be awarded by NASA around late
summer 2014 known as Commercial
Crew
Transportation
Capability
(CCtCap).
All three company’s have been
making excellent progress in meeting
their NASA mandated milestones in
the current contract period known
as Commercial Crew Integrated
Capability initiative (CCiCAP) under
the auspices of NASA’s Commercial
Crew Program.
Altogether they have received
more than $1 billion in NASA funding
under the current CCiCAP initiative.
Boeing and SpaceX were awarded
contracts worth $460 million and
$440 million, respectively. Sierra
Nevada was given what amounts
million.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk just
publicly unveiled his manned
Dragon V2 spaceship on May
29.
Boeing’s Chris Ferguson told me
that assembly of the CST-100 test
article starts soon at the Kennedy
Space Center.
one or more of the three competitors
will be chosen later this year in the
next phase under CCtCAP to build
the next generation spaceship to
ferry astronauts to and from the ISS.
safety of the new crew transporters,
the CCtCAP contracts will specify
that “each awardee conduct at least
spacecraft can dock to the space
station and all its systems perform as
expected.”
Concurrently, NASA is developing
the manned Orion crew vehicle for
deep space exploration. The state-ofthe-art capsule will carry astronauts
back to the Moon and beyond on
journeys to asteroids and one day
to Mars. However, commercial crew
spacecraft are critical to establishing
the low Earth orbit infrastructure that is
required for deep space exploration.
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