SpaceX Completes Two CCICap Milestones
Credit : NASA
NASA Press Release
RELEASE 13-201
NASA Commercial Crew Partner SpaceX Completes Two Human-Critical Reviews
HAWTHORNE, Calif. — Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, Calif., recently completed two milestones for NASA’s Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) initiative, which is intended to make commercial human spaceflight services available for government and commercial customers.
These were the fifth and sixth milestones for SpaceX, a partner in NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP). The company is on track to complete all 14 of its CCiCap milestones by mid-2014.
In a human certification plan review May 7, SpaceX outlined all the steps the company plans to take to certify its system for crewed missions, including testing, demonstrations, analyses, inspections, verifications and training events. This was a key milestone to ensure SpaceX’s integrated Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule will be safe to carry humans to and from low-Earth orbit beginning in the middle of this decade.
At its pad abort test review, SpaceX presented plans for a pad abort test, currently targeted for later this year or early next year from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 in Florida. The review successfully demonstrated the adequacy of the test plan objectives and the pad abort scenario.
“The beauty of having the pad abort test review was it allowed both NASA and SpaceX to start coalescing toward an understanding of what will be tested and how we’ll measure success,” said Ed Mango, NASA’s CCP manager. “We’re really looking forward to seeing SpaceX’s pad abort system take off from along Florida’s Space Coast.”
During the upcoming pad abort test, SpaceX will perform a recovery operation following a simulated Falcon 9 anomaly. Plans call for the company to put one of its Dragon capsules on a launch pad test stand, countdown to T-0, ignite the system’s SuperDraco abort engines and initiate a separation command. At around 5,000 feet, the spacecraft’s parachutes will deploy resulting in a splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean.
SpaceX is one of three U.S. companies participating in NASA’s CCiCap initiative. Future development and certification initiatives eventually will lead to the availability of human spaceflight services for NASA to send its astronauts to the International Space Station.
For more information about NASA’s Commercial Crew Program and its aerospace industry partners, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/commercialcrew
About the Author: Stewart Money
Subscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
What is really interesting about SpaceX (and Elon Musk) is where it will finally lead us. Will we see the start of really cheap space travel? Will we see a boom in space business? Will there be a rush to create other cheap launch systems. For the longest time we were in the doldrums after the Space Shuttle people had decided that it was not possible to make space systems reusable or make them cheaper. Most companies just concentrated on making them reliable.
Now many people will tell you that free enterprise is responsible for innovations but the exact opposite is true. Most companies answer to their share holders and their share holders want one thing, money. For them spending money on innovations is risky and they don`t want that so it is obvious, innovations don`t come from there. What should be obvious is that innovation comes from diversity, the differences in people and the way they think. Elon Musk is such a person. It is exciting just to imagine where he will lead us.