Yesterday, members from the Commercial Crew program at NASA met to talk openly about the steps both SpaceX and Boeing will take on their route to taking astronauts to the ISS. The conference gave us a better understanding of what lies ahead for both companies, and the timelines they plan to follow.
If you wish to watch the conference in full, do so by playing the video above. Otherwise, here's what we learned yesterday:
BOEING
SPACEX
OTHER
If you wish to watch the conference in full, do so by playing the video above. Otherwise, here's what we learned yesterday:
BOEING
- CST-100 Critical Design Review will be completed in March 2015.
- The CST-100 pad abort test will be performed in Feb 2017.
- The uncrewed test will be in April 2017, and followed shortly after by the crewed flight test July 2017.
- The first services mission is currently scheduled for Dec 2017.
SPACEX
- The Dragon spacecraft will perform a pad abort in the next month or so, with the in flight abort later this year.
- The uncrewed test will take place in late 2016, and the crewed test as soon as possible in 2017.
OTHER
- Average seat cost under commercial crew contracts will be around $58 million per seat, which is much lower than $70 million for the Soyuz.
- Bolden mentioned the ISS would most likely be deorbited sometime around 2024. He hinted at the possibility of a Bigelow space station. This supports the idea that from 2024 onwards, NASA will be focusing further afield than low Earth orbit.