SpaceX hopes to launch first manned commercial rocket

HAWTHORNE, Calif. - Asked what bugs them most about NASA outsourcing the job of flying crew to the International Space Station, some astronauts roll their eyes and say: "Dragon."

That's the name of the capsule being built by SpaceX, the aerospace startup founded by Internet tycoon Elon Musk, a capsule designed to be fully automated.

But with no controls to "fly" their ride, astronauts fear they'll be "Spam in a can" - little more than human cargo. And if they don't pilot a ship, they worry, how can they keep the fleet of T-38 jets that are the symbol of the astronaut corps?

With the United States space program facing a crisis, with nothing to replace the space shuttle when it is retired next year, such worries might seem trivial. But not to SpaceX.

After all, the Mercury Seven - NASA's original astronauts - demanded engineers put a window in the first spacecraft because they were determined to blast off as pilots, not payloads. Now, 50 years later, SpaceX has hired a former astronaut, Ken Bowersox, to make Dragon more astronaut-friendly.

"We're, of course, trying to allay some of those concerns," says Bowersox, the former director of NASA's Crew Operations Directorate. "We'll do what makes sense from the point of view of using humans to increase the reliability of the whole system. To do that, we have to give them displays and controls."

SpaceX's hiring of Bowersox is a clear example of how serious it is about leading a new commercial era in American space exploration. But how that commercial era will take shape is a big question.

If SpaceX and other companies can persuade the White House to allow them to launch humans into space, Dragon could be the next U.S. spacecraft to take astronauts to the space station after the shuttle is retired.

A presidential panel examining NASA's plans said that the agency needs to find cheaper ways to get people into space. Using companies like SpaceX to ferry astronauts to and from the station, the panel said, could free NASA to pursue more-ambitious goals, such as building larger spaceships capable of exploring the solar system.

The idea is favored by senior administration officials who think that NASA's Constellation program - its Ares I rocket and Orion capsule - is too costly and technically challenged. They would prefer to see SpaceX and other companies build and run competing systems for NASA under fixed-price contracts.

But that would represent a major policy shift; for 50 years, all U.S. rockets carrying humans have been government-built.

And not everybody is convinced it can - or should - happen. Astronauts, NASA officials and some members of Congress question how a small company can manage to get crew safely to orbit when NASA is having so many technical and financial challenges with its own rockets. They also point out that SpaceX has yet to prove it can deliver on its NASA contract to take cargo to the station.

But by far their biggest concern is that SpaceX ships are rivals to Ares and Orion, a view SpaceX dismisses.

"People are very worried (our) efforts are a threat to Constellation rather than an enabler," says Bowersox. "We don't want to compete like that. We want to enable. We want to provide a cheap way to get to station so you can spend money to do the exciting exploration things. But they feel that threat."

Despite the doubts, SpaceX is steadily moving ahead.

In a cavernous 550,000-square-foot factory southwest of Los Angeles, teams of engineers are crawling over Dragon's aluminum frame to get it ready for a test launch in Florida tentatively scheduled for Nov. 29.

Nearby, huge welders turn sheets of aluminum into huge tubes to form rocket stages. Behind them are two-story-high machines that make engines for the Falcon 9, a two-stage rocket that will take Dragon into space. Giant ovens bake carbon composites and heat shields that will protect Dragon from the searing heat of Earth's atmosphere on re-entry.

Everything is made in-house to control costs and quality.

Musk created SpaceX in 2002 with the goal of making spaceflight less expensive and more reliable.

Seven years later, the company has a plant in California, testing facilities in Texas and a launchpad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. It employs more than 700, including many who once worked for NASA and its contractors. It has built two rockets, the Falcon 1 and the Falcon 9, and conducted five launches, two that achieved orbit.

A model of Dragon - which will initially be used to haul cargo - has already been put on a test stand and pushed and pulled and shaken. And it has been pressure- and noise-tested as safe for people.

NASA makes no secret that it needs SpaceX after the shuttle is retired. Though humans will initially ride to the station aboard Russian-built Soyuz rockets, about 88,000 pounds of supplies need to be hauled aloft between 2010 and 2015.

In 2006, NASA signed a $278 million agreement with SpaceX to demonstrate it could fly cargo to the station. The company has met 14 of the contract's 22 milestones and has drawn all but $44 million of the funding. Last year, it was awarded 12 cargo-resupply missions for approximately $1.6 billion.

But it's the company's desire to haul people that has grabbed attention and concern.

Even SpaceX supporters in NASA are reluctant for the company to move ahead too fast.

"We always said we want to walk before we run," says Alan Lindenmoyer, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew and Cargo Program Office. "We want to start with the easier objectives of the cargo transportation before we would consider moving on to the more difficult challenge of carrying crew."

But NASA said in a statement this month that while the agency would still prefer to develop cargo capabilities first, it's prepared "to support whatever direction the new administration and Congress gives to the Agency with regard to this issue."

Internal NASA documents show that although the agency has yet to set human-rating requirements for commercial rockets, SpaceX is using 83 of the human-rating and safety specifications that NASA uses on Ares I and Orion for Dragon and Falcon 9.

The capsule's guidance and propulsion systems have a triple-redundancy protection, meaning that every system has three backups, the document shows.

From the beginning, Dragon and Falcon 9 were designed to be man-rated. In the human version, Dragon's cargo racks would be replaced by seven seats, and - with Bowersox's help - monitors and controls.

Much still needs to be done, says Max Vozoff, Dragon project manager. The biggest challenge is creating a launch-escape system that would jettison Dragon off of Falcon 9 in event of a disaster. SpaceX wants to design a liquid-fuel system, like everything else, in-house.

But every step SpaceX makes in meeting NASA requirements for the station brings SpaceX closer to taking people, Vozoff says.

"By virtue of that fact that we're going to station, we already have a lot of the human-rating requirements forced upon us," he says. "So even the cargo vehicle is going to berth with station. They're going to open the hatch and crew is going to come inside. It is a temporarily habitable module on station. So inasmuch as we have to pass the requirements for that, we are already a significant fraction of the way to a full human-rated vehicle."

And as Bowersox notes, the capsule already has a window.

(c) 2009, The Orlando Sentinel (Fla.).

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