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Home , Commercial Crew Program, Doug Hurley, Eric Boe, Expedition 61

SPACE PASSING CST-100 Starliner THE TORCH > NASA’S SPENDING ON IS APPROACHING $9 BILLION

> CADRE BEGINS MISSION SIMULATIONS AND TRAINING

Irene Klotz Cape Canaveral and Houston Seating for seven Flexible cabin design his month, Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner Spacecraft 1, Five crew plus two crew Accommodates mix a partly reusable capsule designed to ferry people to equivalent of cargo shown of crew and cargo Tand from (LEO), will ship out from a refurbished processing hangar the company leases at (KSC) and head to White Sands, , for a key test of the spacecraft’s ability to lift off from a failing rocket and parachute to safety. Later this summer, Starliner Spacecraft 2 hits the road for El Segundo, , where it will be put into a Boeing environmental chamber for thermal, vacuum, acoustics and radio-interference/compatibility testing. CST-100 Starliner But it is Starliner Spacecraft 3 that sets Boeing’s count- down clock ticking. The spacecraft, comprising a reusable Launch vehicle adapter pressurized crew compartment and disposable service and 70-in. skirt module, is due to launch aboard a United Launch Alliance Emergency detection system and software (ULA) Atlas V for an unmanned test run to the Internation- forward adapter al Space Station (ISS). Officially, the milestone remains on NASA’s calendar for August, but the flight more likely is Common Centaur six months away. Dual-engine Similar activities are underway at Hawthorne, Califor- Centaur two nia-based SpaceX, which is manufacturing six upgraded Centaur RL-10A-4-2 Dragon capsules for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program aft stub adapter (CCP), an ongoing effort to parlay taxpayer investment, 400-series NASA technical and safety expertise and use of govern- interstage adapter ment test facilities with private-sector designs and money to develop commercial services. The first Dragon 2, earmarked for an unmanned demon- Atlas booster stration flight, is assembled and being prepared to ship to NASA’s Plum Brook Station in Sandusky, Ohio, for thermal vacuum tests. After that, the capsule will head to for launch aboard a rocket. “It’s really exciting to see that vehicle buttoned up now,” says Garrett Reisman, SpaceX senior advisor and former NASA astronaut. Two solid rocket boosters Like Boeing’s unmanned Orbital Test Flight, SpaceX’s Demo Mission 1, also officially slated for August, is moving toward year-end. Crewed test flights, officially on the calen- dar for November and December of this year, likewise are Aft transition expected to slip. “I think we’re going to get the unmanned structure demo flights probably by the end of the year, maybe a little New systems and heat shield after that . . . and then the crew demo missions next year. Legacy RD-180 engine Those are really going to dictate how the rest of that mani- fest goes,” says Suni Williams, one of four NASA TOP: BOEING CONCEPT; BOTTOM: ULA CONCEPT

58 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JUNE 18-JULY 1, 2018 AviationWeek.com/awst SpaceX Dragon serving as test subjects and sounding boards for the Boeing and SpaceX development, test and operations teams. The unmanned and crewed test flights are intended to pave the way for NASA certification of the systems for ISS crew-rotation missions licensed by the FAA, which oversees commercial U.S. spaceflight. “By doing the FAA licensing for crewed missions, we’ve established the beginning of this government-commercial framework for these providers to eventually have licensed missions on their own, independent of NASA capabilities,” says CCP Manager . The clock is ticking—buying rides from Russia is not an option for flights beyond 2019. NASA has purchased flight services for four more crew rotation missions, end- ing with the return of the crew in late 2019. In addition to spacing out the remaining flights, NASA is mulling other options to ensure continued U.S. presence on the station if Boeing or SpaceX are not ready to take over crew ferry flights by late 2019. One plan would extend the Boeing Commercial Crew test flight beyond a planned two-week stay at the station. The agency also is assessing whether there is a need to add an- other NASA crewmember on the flight tests. “We’re backed into a corner now,” says NASA Adviso- Seating for up to seven Emergency escape system ry Council member Wayne Hale, a former deputy admin- istrator and manager. “The whole Commercial Crew thing is an experiment for NASA. It is totally different than anything NASA has done before with human spaceflight, in the sense that it requires NASA to SpaceX Falcon 9 give up a certain amount of control. But it went from being an experiment to being the primary path to keep people on Dragon capsule the space station.” with SuperDracos for abort modes The U.S. Government Accountability Office said in Jan- uary it anticipates SpaceX will reach flight certification in Dragon trunk December 2019 and Boeing in February 2020. Despite the with aerodynamic delays—caused by early budget shortfalls and later techni- stability fins cal challenges—the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel says it has found no evidence that NASA is making decisions that comprise safety. “I think NASA wanted people who had experience with loss of a space shuttle as a part of the initial crew cadre,” says astronaut , who is assigned to the CCP program along with colleagues Williams, and Doug New helium Hurley. pressurization Behnken and Hurley were waiting for Columbia on the bottles throughout Block 5 includes KSC runway on Feb. 1, 2003, when the shuttle broke apart more than 100 design changes during atmospheric reentry 16 min. before touchdown, kill- ing the seven crewmembers. “We saw all that first-hand, and we’re able to relay those messages to both of the [CCP] providers,” Behnken says. NASA requiring seven “When we travel to Florida with a team, we look for op- successful Block 5 portunities to get them into the Columbia room so they can flights configured for be exposed to what that brings to your psyche,” he adds, Commercial Crew prior referring to a room on the 16th floor of KSC’s Vehicle As- to Demo Mission 2 sembly Building where debris from the accident has been preserved.

FROM CARGO TO CREW Aft transition CCP evolved from NASA’s successful efforts to establish two structure legs for independent U.S. cargo lines to the space station, now oper- and heat shield rapid reuse, though ated by SpaceX and Northrop Grumman’s newly acquired NASA contract calls Orbital ATK division, renamed Northrop Grumman Inno- for all-new boosters and capsules vation Systems. A third freighter owned by Sierra Nevada Corp. is scheduled to join the ISS fleet in 2020. SPACEX CONCEPTS

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signed the bottles, and NASA is conducting independent testing. The agency also is requiring seven successful flights of the Falcon 9, configured the way it would be for ISS crew-rotation missions, including the new COPV, before it will clear astronauts to fly on Demo Mission 2, SpaceX’s first crewed test flight. The first new COPV is expected to fly on Demo Mission 1, the unmanned test flight, later this year. Gaining into the COPV operation sets the stage for more technical reviews of SpaceX’s controversial plan to load crew before fueling the rocket. “It’s different from the way we did it on shuttle. . . but when you start thinking about it, there are some real big advantages,” SpaceX’s Reisman says. “When I got in the shuttle for both of my flights, we approached with not only our six- or seven-person shuttle crew but also with a whole horde of additional personnel, the ground crew. The shuttle was full of hydrogen and ox- ygen, and we were continuing to flow propellants at that time. So we were all, including the ground crew, exposed to that hazard.” U.S Marine colonel (ret.) with civil engineering B.S. Falcon 9, in contrast, can be fueled in 30 min., with the >5,000 hr. in >25 aircraft. F/A-18 fighter pilot, . flight crew strapped inside the capsule, the emergency Astronaut Class of 2000, flew STS-127, STS-135. armed and ground support teams Former NASA operations director in Star City, Russia. evacuated. “The way NASA approaches a problem like this “The thing that we can do the most to help is to push is very methodical and rigorous, and by the use of hazard redundancy . . . to push that the human-vehicle interface reports and a safety review process,” Reisman says. “We look will trap and reduce errors.” carefully at all the hazards involved in a process like this— and there’s a very extensive one written about this topic— and then we look at how we would we control them. . . . We

The Commercial Crew investments began modestly enough with $50 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act divided among five companies: Blue Or- igin, Boeing, Paragon Space Development, Sierra Nevada and United Launch Alliance. A second round of Commercial Crew Development contracts, worth a combined $270 mil- lion, followed in 2011 and added SpaceX to the mix. With another $1.2 billion in NASA funds, the next phase pared down the competition to Boeing, SpaceX and Sierra Nevada. In September 2014, Boeing and SpaceX won a fi- nal round of fixed-price Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contracts, worth $4.2 billion and $2.6 billion, respectively, with the goal of flying astronauts to the ISS aboard U.S. vehicles by the end of 2017. The contracts cover two test flights—one uncrewed, one crewed—and up to six, post-certification, ISS crew-rotation missions. NASA declined to say how much it has paid Boeing and SpaceX so far, citing proprietary restrictions, but an inspec- tor general audit released in April determined that between 2010 and the end of 2017, NASA spent a total of $8.5 billion on Commercial Crew activities. Meanwhile, NASA is spend- ing more than $3 billion a year to develop the deep-space U.S. Navy captain with engineering management M.A. >3,000 hr. in >30 aircraft. Helicopter combat pilot, test capsule and heavy-lift rocket pilot, instructor. Astronaut Class of 1998, flew ISS Expedition under traditional cost-plus-award-fee contracts. 14/15, /33. Former ISS Commander. Though far more limited in the fixed-price CCtCap con- “We talk to the technicians and engineers who are doing the tracts, NASA has the option of asking Boeing and SpaceX work and tell them what it’s like to be in space, our back

for additional data and testing as needed. The agency also grounds, lessons learned from Columbia . . . to bring home

can conduct its own tests, such as what it is doing with the the fact that people are going to fly on their spacecraft.” composite overwrapped pressure vessels (COPV) SpaceX uses in the Falcon 9 helium pressurization system. A COPV burst during preparation for a prelaunch static hotfire in

2016, destroying the rocket and its payload. SpaceX rede- TOP: KIM SHIFLETT/NASA; BOTTOM: SPACEX

60 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JUNE 18-JULY 1, 2018 AviationWeek.com/awst 2015 May 2018 April Commercial Crew Eight SuperDraco engines boost a SpaceX SpaceX makes its 14th cargo run to the Crew Dragon spacecraft away from Space ISS under its Commercial Resupply Ser- Program Timeline Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air vices-1 contract with NASA. Force Station in an emergency pad abort 2010 February simulation. NASA invests $50 million of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds for the Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program to stimulate private-sector efforts to develop and test safe, reliable and cost-ef- fective crew spaceflight services. Contracts

awarded to , Boeing, Paragon NASA Space Development Corp, Sierra Nevada SPACEX Corp. and United Launch Alliance. Boeing’s 2018 May July Commercial debut of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 share is $18 million. SpaceX does not win 2015 Block 5 booster, which has been upgraded an award. NASA selects four astronauts to serve as test pilots for the Commercial Crew to meet NASA and U.S. Air Force safety and reliability requirements, as well as ful- April program (from left: Bob Behnken, Suni 2011 Williams, Eric Boe and ). fill SpaceX’s business plans for rapid reus- NASA awards nearly $270 million in a ability. NASA is requiring seven successful second round of CCDev contracts to Blue launches of Block 5 vehicles, configured Origin, Boeing, Sierra Nevada and SpaceX. the way they will be for Commercial Crew Including contract options added later, flights, before the first astronauts fly. Boeing’s CCDev2 award is for $113 million and SpaceX’s is $75 million.

2012 August To continue development of systems, NASA NASA awards Boeing, Sierra Nevada and SpaceX Commercial Crew Integrated Ca- 2017 August pability (CCiCap) Space Act Agreements SpaceX unveils for verification and validation tests. Includ- spacesuit for ing added work, Boeing and SpaceX are Dragon-2 fliers. awarded $480 million each. Sierra Nevada receives $228 million. December SPACEX Boeing, SpaceX and Sierra Nevada each SPACE X receive $10 million Certification Products 2018 February Contracts to develop data products, in- Boeing conducts first in a Future cluding engineering standards, tests and series of reliability tests An American flag delivered to the ISS by analysis of crew transportation system of the CST-100 Starliner the final space shuttle crew in July 2011 designs to meet NASA’s flight safety and flight drogue and main will remain aboard until the next crew to performance requirements. parachute system in launch from the U.S. retrieves it for return Yuma, . to Earth. The flag was flown on STS-1. 2014 September NASA NASA awards fixed-price Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) 2018 March contracts worth $4.2 billion to Boeing and SpaceX conducts $2.6 billion to SpaceX to build and operate first of several para- crew transportation systems. The contracts chute system qual- cover two test flights and up to six opera- ification tests in tional missions. The goal was to have as- Mojave, California. tronauts flying on U.S. spacecraft by 2017. SPACE X NASA

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go through it line by line with NASA. I can tell you they are ure, and what procedures to follow for various emergency getting more and more comfortable with all the controls we scenarios. “We had to go through this process of first the have in place and also looking at the advantages.” paper design and then the hardware design. Now, we’re just The so-called “load-and-go” fueling plan is one of two starting to see sims in both companies, starting to poke at hot-button topics for ISS crew-rotation flights using Falcon the operational aspects,” Williams says. “Once we’re divid- 9 boosters. The other is the rocket’s autonomous flight ter- ed, then we’re really going to get to know how to use the mination system, which would be used to destroy a booster spacecraft.” veering off-course. The Atlas V and heritage U.S. boosters “The vehicles now have to go through the testing that gets rely on Air Force range safety personnel to initiate a de- them to the pad . . . and we’re going to find problems. That’s struct sequence. The new system, which made its operation- just the nature of the beast,” adds Boe. “Our challenge is to al debut during a Falcon 9 launch in February 2017, not only quickly work those problems out, but in a safe manner . . . . I’m actually very impressed by how far we’ve come.” NASA is counting on the success of the program not only to keep the space station fully staffed and expand commer- cial use of space but also to explore less expensive, faster ways to expand human presence beyond LEO. For example, the agency intends to partner with companies for lunar ex- ploration and development. “The biggest thing in this program has been the teams learning to work together in a new development environ- ment, not the traditional cost-plus, NASA-owned design,” says John Mulholland, who oversees CST-100 Starliner de- velopment for Boeing. “NASA had to embed themselves and get comfortable from an insight and verification standpoint without that design ownership.” “The government wanted something commercial, as close to off-the-shelf as you could get it, that would free up the taxpayer money to do other great things that NASA wants to do in space,” adds Hale, a consultant with Boulder, Col- orado-based Special Aerospace Corp. “It’s an experiment, and we’re all waiting to see if it is going to be a success. The jury is still out.” c

U.S. Air Force colonel (ret.) with electrical engineering M.S. 6,000 hr. in >50 aircraft. Fighter pilot. F-15, UH-1N helicopter test pilot. Astronaut Class of 2000, flew STS-126, STS-133. Former Deputy Chief Astronaut.

“[Sometimes] you ask questions and they’ll say, ‘Hmm, I hadn’t thought about that.’ There’s no one book you could go read that tells you everything the vehicle can do because it’s all coming together.”

more than halves the number of range support personnel needed for launch but provides more time for a booster to potentially correct its trajectory and save the mission. For crewed flights, SpaceX plans to include some type of vehicle warning system. “It’s still being designed and vetted,” says Hurley. “Like many things in developmental programs, it’s a series of gives-and-takes and back and forth ,but they’re getting there.” Hurley and the cadre, which have been working with the Boeing and SpaceX teams for three years, have not yet been U.S. Air Force colonel with mechanical engineering Ph.D. assigned to specific missions, focusing instead on influenc- >1,500 hr. in 25 different aircraft. Test pilot, F-22 Combined Test ing vehicle and systems development at both companies. Force. Astronaut Class of 2000, flew STS-123, STS-130. Former “We are touching anything that literally the astronaut will Chief Astronaut. touch—the suits, the seats, the displays, how things are laid “The challenge of change is a good thing. When we get into out in the cabin—and we’re working with and influencing this mode of, ‘Hey, we’re just going to do it the status-quo parts of that design as much as we can,” Williams says. way and let’s just keep executing it,’ that’s not a good way. The astronauts also push the companies to think about That’s not exploration.” how to handle equipment problems such as a sensor fail-

TOP: BOEING; BOTTOM: SPACEX 62 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JUNE 18-JULY 1, 2018 AviationWeek.com/awst