Elon Musk’s SpaceX is the conductor and NASA the customer as businesses begin chauffeuring astronauts to the International Space Station.
NASA’s newest test pilots, Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, are launching from home turf with SpaceX presiding over the countdown. The Russian launch site in Kazakhstan is out of the way and out of sight. Launching crews again from Florida is sure to fire up the public, Logsdon noted. It will be just the fifth time NASA astronauts strap into a spanking new U.S. space system for liftoff — following Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and shuttle. NASA owned and operated all those spacecraft, built by contractors to NASA’s precise specifications. The commercial crew program, by contrast, calls for private businesses to handle and own it all, with input and oversight by NASA.
As liftoff looms, the two are hesitant to consider their place in space history. “It seems premature until we’ve pulled it off,” Behnken said. While disappointed Boeing is trailing, Ferguson said he’ll cheer Hurley and Behnken from the sidelines. The SpaceX duo will lay claim to a small U.S. flag that flew on NASA’s first and last shuttle flights, and was left on the station by Ferguson and Hurley for the first commercial crew to arrive.
Wayne Hale, a retired space shuttle flight director and program manager who serves on the NASA Advisory Council, views SpaceX’s upcoming astronaut flight as an experiment with lessons carrying over to Artemis, NASA’s new-generation, moon-landing effort.
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