I think the lag in certification partly came from NASA's risk assessment of some of SpaceX's plans. NASA increased focus on the risk of micormeteorite damage to the Dragon capsule while it is docked to the ISS, which has required additional shielding. Also NASA wants to see multiple Dragon flights with identical booster hardware before certifying the platform, and so far SpaceX has been iterating on Falcon a lot. Falcon 9 Block 5 is supposed to be the final iteration, so Dragon V2 certification has also been blocked on that.
Any launch to the ISS involves expending a second stage, and IIRC NASA requires the Dragons to be certified (as much for the safety of the ISS as anything else) in a way that currently requires a new one each time.
I think the CST-100 is actually further along in terms of NASA's qualification milestones than SpaceX's Dragon, funnily enough. (Also, the Dragon V2 that the crewed version will be based on is a brand new design that hasn't been flown yet either.)
Dragon hasn't done an in-flight test with a firing booster, though. They're each ahead and behind the other in different ways. What SpaceX is doing is for the most part more challenging, but I don't mind some competitiveness if it gets everyone pushing for greatness.
To be fair, Boeing is developing a new capsule, while SpaceX is making Dragon 2, drawing on the legacy of Dragon 1, which they were awarded at least $1B for.
This sort of issue would have shown up on the first Dragon 1 flight if SpaceX had it.
One apparent problem is also to get a rocket certified for flying a second time. No one did that so far so there are no procedures for it. Part of the delay is figuring that out.
Dragon 2 is _not_ an iteration on Dragon 1. It’s a completely different vehicle and it was risky for SpaceX to go the route of developing a completely new vehicle. Yet they got it done, cheaper and faster.
I'm sure Lockheed is keeping a _very_ close eye on what SpaceX is doing (despite the PR statement in the article).
Incrementing the successful launcher counter from 0 to 1 is a huge step. Demonstrating the reliability they've shown with Dragon is another huge step. Lockheed is either concerned (and making plans to remain competitive at a much lower price point), or they're stupid (I'd guess it's the former...)
My understanding is, that the Nasa didn't like the idea of propulsive landing. As the dragon capsule is purely for supporting the ISS, SpaceX has no incentive to spend money on anything they are not using for the Nasa missions.
For everything else, they are developing the Starship. If that program goes as planned, the dragon capsule will be used only for a short time, I guess.
And now we wait two years for another “iterative” launch. No wonder it takes NASA 20 years to do anything. And what are they doing in those two years? Certifying the flight computers. I was fearful SpaceX was falling behind but now I see that this was just a publicity stunt to make NASA look competent and effective. When they aren’t.
I suspect this is a result of schedule pressure. The legacy AE firms were falling way behind SpaceX and I'm guessing they felt the need to play catch-up and didn't want to "waste" time on testing.
Eh. The first integrated test was on 17th April '23. With everything that went wrong, including the huge damage to the pad and all of the (slightly hysterical) speculation and outrage that followed, it took them 7 months (almost to the day) to refly.
This time, after a vastly more successful and competent second test, you think it'll take even longer to refly?
SpaceX will likely be ready within a couple of months; then you add the regulatory approvals.
My best guess is that SpaceX did last minute changes to the rocket, either hardware or software, deviating from the documents submitted to the FAA. This could explain why the FAA only reacts now and would make sense with what Musk said about the procedures not being able to cope with the pace of development they have.
They already said they won't rush anything because that's just as dangerous as using the Soyuz again before figuring out the reason for the failure. That said this does open up a visiting vehicle slot that Dragon could use for their unmanned test flight. That'd only push it up about a month though compared to their current estimate and would require SpaceX to be ready to launch earlier than planned.
I think it's likely that SpaceX recognized that FAA approval could take a while, so they started putting more polish into the launch infrastructure, booster, and ship, rather than just trying to iterate on launches as quickly as possible. But that's just a hypothesis from an armchair observer, I'm not sure if they could have rushed launch pad readiness any further. I've also heard rumblings that there may be regulatory issues with the ground storage tanks for fuel/oxidizer that may require changes.
Pretty far along. They have an in process application with the FAA for running tests on a "DragonFly" vehicle which is basically a Dragon 2 capsule designed for testing the landing system (which, according to the permit) they plan to do a lot of tests on.
Also, they will test the in flight abort system in two separate unmanned tests this year. One on the launch pad and another with a full scale launch with the escape system activating at Max-Q (maximum dynamic pressure on the rocket, the most extreme test possible for the system).
Many of the components share engineering heritage with the unmanned cargo Dragon such as the pressure hull, heat shield, RCS thrusters, and so on. Nobody outside SpaceX would know how far along they are in terms of every single component and with integration but every indication is that they are quite far along indeed and most of what they need to do at this point is validate their design through testing and eventually operational flights.
Last accident, Falcon Heavy had a big delay. Apparently SpaceX pulled engineering resources off of FH to work on F9. Given that the 2018 launch window is narrow, it's quite likely that Red Dragon won't launch until the 2020 launch window.
p.s. are you involved with Metaculus in some way? All of your recent postings appear to mention metaculus.com.
It's a bit of a complex interplay. If the FAA were finishing their investigations very quickly, SpaceX could be more aggressive with their testing. But on the other hand, as SpaceX gets a better read on how long the FAA might take, they time their readiness to when the FAA will be done.
For example, here they waited ~1 week between Starship being ready and done with a wet-dress rehearsal. If they knew that the FAA would be finishing earlier, they'd try to get through the WDR earlier. But since there's plenty of other development and testing to do on the ground, they just do that in the meantime.
The FAA delays were more of an issue around IFT-1 because they really couldn't proceed on much without knowing how all the big systems they built would perform, they would've been working blind (and considering how the launch infrastructure needed further strengthening, doing too much more without that data would've probably been a waste of money). That isn't really the case now, while they wait on the FAA they can focus on the payload bays, refining the control systems, building the second launch tower etc.
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