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The winding road of the United States towards self-sufficiency in manned spaceflight has taken another turn.
Saturday, April 20, a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule experienced an anomaly when testing its SuperDraco exhaust engines, designed to protect astronauts from danger in an emergency at launch.
No one was injured, but the capsule – which carried out a successful unmanned demonstration mission at the International Space Station (ISS) last month – may have suffered serious damage.
Related: The SpaceX laboratory test on the crew Demo-1 in flight test in pictures
This spacecraft was to conduct a flight test this summer, an unarmed test of these SuperDracos that will pave the way for SpaceX's first crewed flight to ISS for NASA. So, if this crew dragon can not go, these key milestones could be significantly repelled.
A delay would hardly be unprecedented; the launch schedule of US astronauts from US soil has shifted to the right several times in recent years.
Fill the shoes of the shuttle
The United States has been unable to bring people into orbit without assistance since July 2011, when NASA's space shuttle fleet was withdrawn after 30 years of service. Since then, NASA has bought seats aboard the Russian Soyuz satellite for more than $ 80 million each at current prices. (Virgin Galactic has played two space flights with crew since December 2018but SpaceShipTwo from this company is a suborbital vehicle.)
This dependence was always going to be temporary. NASA began funding commercial crew activities in 2010, with the aim of stimulating the development of private taxis for astronauts who would fill the shuttle's shoes. The following year, NASA allocated nearly $ 270 million to four companies for this type of work: SpaceX, Boeing, Blue Origin and Sierra Nevada.
At the time, the stated goal was to operate at least one American private vehicle carrying a crew by the end of 2016.
In 2014, Boeing and SpaceX stood out with multi-billion dollar awards from NASA's commercial crew program. Boeing has received $ 4.2 billion to develop CST-100 Starliner capsule, and SpaceX hung $ 2.6 billion for Dragon Crew. At the time, NASA had stated that the goal was to ensure that at least one of these capsules was operational by the end of 2017.
The first scheduling errors occurred mainly because Congress did not allocate sufficient funds to the commercial crew, NASA officials said. And Boeing and SpaceX have both experienced technical problems recently, which has resulted in longer delays.
Related: Crew Dragon and Starliner: look at the next astronaut taxis
Problems on the test bench
Boeing, for example, had planned to conduct an unprepared test mission on the ISS – the equivalent for this company of the latest edition of SpaceX. Demo-1 flight – in August 2018.
But in June of last year, a problem occurred during a Starliner launch engine crash test. Shortly after, Boeing officials announced that the company was postponing the test mission, known as the Orbit Flight Test (OFT), in late 2018 or early 2019.
The OFT was quickly reoriented for March 2019, then April, May and finally August. Boeing officials attributed the latter shift to potential conflicts with the launch by another mission of Cape Canaveral Air Force Base in Florida this spring. Starliner would have had just a two-day window in May to get up and go out, and that was too tight for comfort.
The OFT will perform after a full test of Starliner's launch abandonment system. This "buffer abort test" is expected to take place this summer.
Boeing still plans to conduct its first crew test flight to the ISS before the end of the year, representatives of the company said. Effectively, NASA Commercial Crew Schedule "end of 2019" list as the current target date.
SpaceX was aiming to launch its flight drop tests in June. If it had gone well, a crewed demonstration mission on the ISS, called Demo-2, could have taken off in July. Saturday's anomaly will certainly affect the target dates, but it is too early to speculate.
"There will inevitably be delays, because apparently, the capsule and the test bench have been lost," said John Logsdon, expert in space policy, professor emeritus of political science and international affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University in Washington. DC
"But I think it's safe to expect to have a little more information before you start talking about whether it's weeks, months, or years." , he told Space.com.
Part of the company
Logsdon also pointed out that such setbacks are not really surprising. they come with the development territory of a new crewed spaceship.
"We have already taken this route," he said. "We have to remind people that we had broken engines during the development of the shuttle, and obviously we had the Apollo 1 fire. "
(This fire, which occurred during a launch test on January 27, 1967, is one of NASA's greatest tragedies.It cost the lives of astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee.)
NASA officials made the same remark, pointing out that Saturday's unfortunate event offered a chance to make Crew Dragon a better and safer vehicle.
"That's the reason we're testing," NASA chief Jim Bridenstine said in a statement. "We will learn, make the necessary adjustments and move forward safely with our commercial crew program."
There is another lesson here too – that the Apollo 1 fire, the losses of the shuttles Challenger and Columbia and other air disasters struck us.
"It's proof that it's hard to send people into space," Logsdon said. "I think it's important to take a deep breath, evaluate what has actually happened and fix it, because we have to regain the ability to throw people."
Mike Wall's book on the search for extraterrestrial life, "Over there"(Grand Central Publishing, 2018, illustrated by Karl Tate), is out now. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
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