On December 20, an Atlas V rocket carried Boeing’s new Starliner capsule into the Florida sky on its way to the International Space Station. But Starliner never arrived. A timing error left the capsule in the wrong orbit, and the necessary adjustments meant that it could couldn’t safely make a rendezvous with the station. Two days later, after an abbreviated flight, Starliner touched down at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico. It was a safe end to the flight, and had any astronauts been on board, they would have made the trip without issue. But it was far from the perfect flight that Boeing, and NASA, wanted.
Sometime this spring, astronauts will ascend to the top of a rocket at Kennedy Space Center in Florida and make the trip into orbit. On the surface, that may not be extraordinary. After all, Americans have been making the flight to orbit since John Glenn did so in 1962. But for more than eight years, since the landing of the final Space Shuttle, every single American has made it to space in the same way—on board a Russian rocket. If the American space program has a future, that has to change, but the road to restoring the human spaceflight program has been anything but smooth.
To return America to space, there are actually two programs—and three spacecraft—in the works. One program is designed to provide NASA with a craft that’s designed to take Americans back to the Moon, and possibly even to more distant destinations. That system is the Space Launch System (SLS) carrying the Orion space craft. SLS is a huge rocket, with configurations that bracket the size of Apollo’s Saturn V and the capability to take large payloads beyond Earth orbit. It pairs four of the engines from the Space Shuttle (literally refurbished engines taken from four shuttles) with solid boosters and tops them with a second stage that is itself a large rocket. The Orion capsule is a considerable upgrade over the Apollo era, with both modernized systems, more space, and more duration.
Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft after landing in New Mexico
But not every spaceflight is a major exploration mission to the Moon or beyond. Since the last Apollo mission, no human has gone below low Earth orbit, and boring as it sounds, the majority of flights will continue to be in that well-plowed zone for years, if not decades. To that end, NASA launched the Commercial Crew Program in cooperation with private companies who will essentially run a space taxi service for delivering astronauts to orbit. Right now, there are two companies in that program: Boeing with its Starliner and SpaceX with it’s Crew Dragon spacecraft.
Other companies may be added to this list, but for now these are solid choices. Both SpaceX and Boeing (as part of United Launch Alliance) have been providing supplies to the ISS for years. The two rockets beneath their capsules—Falcon 9 and Atlas V—have terrific records of performance and safety. SpaceX may still seem like a newcomer, but they and Boeing are now some of the most experienced teams when it comes to putting things in orbit, and in working with NASA.
SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft during in-flight abort test.
On paper, it all makes sense—Crew Dragon and Starliner to ferry astronauts around Earth orbit. SLS with Orion to make longer voyages into deep space, including visits to the Moon and possibly Mars. But in practice, rocket science has continued to be rocket science. Nothing has gone as smoothly as anyone wanted. And the whole plan is the result of two decades of political wrangling that seemed design to leave Americans thumbing for rides with Russia.
SLS may be said to have started off in a hole, because in a way it’s a system that was never meant to exist. As the Space Shuttle was being phased out, NASA already had it’s replacement system in the works. That system was the Ares launch vehicle, which was in turn part of a series of systems under the broader Constellation program.
Ares V launch vehicle in 2008
Constellation was a program designed to address a set of ambitious goals laid out in the early days of the George W. Bush administration. It would have included the Aries I rocket for low Earth orbit, the Aries V for deep space exploration, and the Altair lander for taking astronauts down to planetary bodies. It also included the Orion capsule—which turned out to be the only part of the system ever to make it from paper to hardware. Constellation was designed as a multi-purpose system not only capable of taking astronauts to the Moon, but of carrying out a mission that would have seen astronauts visiting an asteroid and travelling on to Mars.
But when President Obama was elected, the new team at NASA dismissed Constellation as over-budget and behind schedule—which it was. The Obama administration was also dismissive of the “Return to the Moon” strategy that had been championed by the Bush team, and instead wanted NASA to focus on looking at systems that would directly support a journey to Mars without the years of building out and developing bases that were included in Constellation/Orion. As a result, and with the economy still suffering from the recession, Obama’s budget cut NASA’s support for the program sharply, then completely left Constellation out of the 2011 budget. In October 2010, Constellation was officially cancelled.
Instead, Obama called for the design of a new Super Heavy Lift rocket that would support a proposal known as the “flexible path to Mars.” That plan called for continuing support on Orion, but putting it atop a new booster. But it set the deadline for the design of that booster all the way out in 2015, leaving half a decade where NASA essentially wasn’t even trying to build a new rocket.
Out of that prolonged process came the Space Launch System. It not only borrows components left behind from the Space Shuttle program, but leans heavily on designs from Constellation. It also borrows the Orion capsule. All this design and redesign left SLS starting from square one, at a time when frustration with the failure to come up with a new system was rapidly growing. Furthermore, some configurations of SLS had to be reconfigured, or dropped altogether, before the system even left testing grounds.
Proposed configurations of the Space Launch System
With Donald Trump moving into office, the focus of NASA returned to the Moon. In fact, Trump seems so Moon-focused that NASA has been under tremendous pressure to put Moon-boots on the ground by 2024. To make that date, NASA has scrapped other planned flights. There is even some consideration that the very first flight of SLS may have astronauts on board, without ever conducting an unmanned test flight. It’s a jaw-dropping proposal, but it appears to be getting some serious attention from an agency that’s being punched from all sides.
If that doesn’t seem bad enough, NASA may now be told to drop the Moon focus. Drop the very far-along-in-development Lunar Gateway space station, drop the planned variety of landers, drop plans for lunar bases and prolonged stay on the lunar surface. That’s because the latest bill introduced in the House strips back the lunar program in favor of a faster transition from the Moon to Mars. How Mars-focused is the new plan? The legislation instructs NASA to conduct the “minimum set of human and robotic lunar surface activities that must be completed to enable a human mission to Mars.”
This is, of course, legislation in development. So it will almost certainly be altered before anyone signature ends up on the bottom line. Still, it shows again how NASA’s inability to meet the achievements and timetables that Americans saw during Apollo is directly connected to political whims, erratic budgets, and lack of any long term goals.
Still, SLS is making progress. At this moment, the first complete version of the first stage is on its way to a testing facility in Mississippi, and it very well could be back at Kennedy to be stacked up with the rest of the system—including Orion capsule—around the end of the year.
Orion Space Craft
In the meantime, both Crew Dragon and Starliner are likely to begin flights this year. SpaceX, which had an issue (in the sense that the whole thing blew up) while testing emergency systems on the Crew Dragon over a year ago, completed a spectacular in-flight abort test last week that appears to have gone off without a hitch. Barring something extraordinary, they could be sending two astronauts on a manned test flight in February (but more like March or April).
Starliner’s recent less-than-perfect test flight may call on Boeing to make do-over before they actually put humans on board. However, that’s not a sure thing. Their next flight could very well send three astronauts to the ISS, though it’s unlikely to launch before summer. (Both Crew Dragon and Starliner can carry seven, but will routinely take four astronauts on regular missions.)
Meanwhile, there are other American astronauts almost certain to fly this year. Both Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin appear months, if not weeks, from putting humans on their sub-orbital test craft. It’s not “real space” in the minds of many purists, but both systems represent interesting ways to collect $250,000 tickets—and Blue Origin is set to unveil a second rocket that’s right in there at Saturn V scale.
Unless things go wrong on every front, Americans will return to space this year from America. Those flights may seem like a throwback to the 1960s. Unfortunately, they’re a very real reflection of where we are in 2020.
NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) first core stage at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi
Saturday, Jan 25, 2020 · 9:57:11 PM +00:00
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Mark Sumner
While I’m in here touching up, I thought i would mention something else that’s back in 2020. That would be me writing about space and science on Saturdays.
I dropped the space topic and cut back on science coverage during 2019 since those posts appeared to be gathering few comments and shares. However, I’ve continued to get questions and requests indicating that for many people those “science Saturday” posts were something they missed. So expect more science of all sorts, and a renewed afternoon bit on space, in the coming weeks.
If you want it to go away, all you have to do is make an arrangement to fly me off planet.