This article comes from the WeChat public account: Fast Company FastCompany (ID: FCChinese) , author: fast company editorial department, title figure from: Flickr user Official SpaceX Photos
It takes about 9 minutes to fly from the Kennedy Space Center to Earth orbit, but it has been nine years since the last time someone flew from here to space.
At 3:22 pm on May 30th, Eastern Time, two NASA astronauts Bob Benken (Bob Behnken) and Doug Hurley (Doug Hurley) carrying the “Dragon Spaceship” built by Space X, launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida International Space Station. The booster of the heavy rocket “Falcon 9” that launched the Dragon spacecraft has successfully returned to the landing ship of “Of Course I still Love You”.
This is the longest manned space launch interval in the history of the United States.
Benken (left) serves as the joint operations commander for the mission, Hurley (right)) Served as the spacecraft commander of Demo-2 [Image source: Flickr user Official SpaceX Photos]
The spacecraft made by NASX, a private company, transports astronauts to and from the International Space Station. This successful launch, in addition to being an important milestone in NASA ’s commercial aerospace manned program, is also the first private operation in the world. The manned flight completed by the space company has rewritten the history of human spaceflight. This will also break Russia’s monopoly on manned transportation on the International Space Station, and greatly reduce the cost of American travel to space.
For SpaceX in Hawthorne, California, the road to the stars is long and rugged.
On July 8, 2011, when the space shuttle “Atlantis” was last launched from the Kennedy Space Center to complete the 30-year “shuttle journey” of the space shuttle era in the United States, it was only nine years old. SpaceX has just tested a cargo version of the “Dragon Spaceship”-it is still a very small company, and invites Twitter fans from time to time to visit its various facilities in Cape Canaveral, Florida, such as When returning to the Earth’s atmosphere, it scorched the bottom Dragon space capsule and the like.
At that time, NASA decided to use a space shuttle made by a private company in the next launch mission of the International Space Station. (Not necessarily a product of SpaceX) .
The key factor that prompted NASA to make this decision was that in 2010, the Obama administration fully adjusted the US space development strategy, canceled the over-budget NASA space shuttle component-based low-Earth orbit rocket project, and instructed NASA Outsource this task to private companies. This is based on an initiative initiated by the Bush administration to deliver commercial cargo to the International Space Station. This initiative brought SpaceX ’s first order to NASA.
SpaceX ’s Falcon 9 carrier rocket and the concept map of the Dragon crew and cargo compartment
When President Obama handed over part of NASA ’s traditional business to private space companies, he did not expect that it would take so long for the next U.S. launch of a manned spacecraft to take off-originally thought that three years would be enough- Such a long gap is simply unbearable.
The crew member Nicole Stout of the Discovery ’s last flight recalled her feeling of exiting the Discovery vehicle after landing on March 9, 2011. She accepted “Company” said in a telephone interview: “ (I thought) Can we recycle this orbiter so that it can be upgraded again soon Empty? “
However, the US Congress has not had sufficient funds to support NASA ’s space launch system heavy rockets and Orion capsule.
Keith Cowan, editor of NASA Watch, a NASA News website, and aerospace industry veteran, (Keith Cowing) sent to The company ’s email stated: “The delays in (space program) due to political reasons are very unreasonable,” she said. Inside, Republicans often oppose NASA ’s request for full funding for the manned and cargo Orion spaceship project. “
Caddy Coleman, another former astronaut (Cady Coleman) pointed out that NASA has warned Congress for many years that the space shuttle needs to be replaced. In a telephone interview with Fast Company on Tuesday, she said: “We don’t have a system that looks far ahead of other countries.”
In September 2014, NASA decided to cooperate with SpaceX and pay it $ 2.6 billion to build the Dragon spacecraft. Its initial mission was to deliver cargo to the International Space Station. At the same time, NASA also paid $ 4.2 billion in cooperation costs to Boeing to build the spacecraft Starliner.
After the dramatic landing of the Falcon 9 rocket, Elon Musk handled all the issues. To this end, NASA ’s Ke Kirk Shireman expressed satisfaction [Image source: NASA]
It is controversial for NASA to hand over the manned space mission to private companies. In the past few decades, NASA has never outsourced this task to private companies. The reason for NASA to make this decision is that they believe that commercial companies can reduce costs and stimulate innovation, which will allow NASA to spend more time exploring the solar system in depth.
SpaceX suffered a setback from the “Falcon 9” explosion a few minutes after its launch in 2015, and encountered another explosion in the 2016 pad test, although it has successfully achieved first-level landing recovery.
In March 2019, SpaceX successfully tested an unmanned dragon spacecraft. Due to a defect in the pipeline system that launched the escape rocket, the space capsule exploded on the ground, causing the test flight to fail.
The accident gave Boeing the last chance to fight back against SpaceX and compete for the “entry ticket” to enter the International Space Station. The company claimed to insert the American flag on the space station during the last space mission. However, due to software failure, Starliner’s unmanned debut in December 2019 failed to reach the International Space Station.
Boeing and NASA ’s Commercial Crew Program (CST) -100 Starliner Spacecraft
At the same time, SpaceX also proved that it is an organization that can meet all the strict requirements of NASA and can quickly solve problems.
“We have done a lot of testing, including dealing with all extreme situations,” SpaceX founder Musk said at the “Satellite 2020” conference in Washington in March this year. He had previously said that he would send spaceX and NASA engineers They “remove their hats”.
Cowing wrote in an email to “Fast Company”: “SpaceX is fortunate to learn the best lessons from NASA and the existing private sector, and then use them with modern continuous improvement concepts in Silicon Valley and elsewhere Combined”.
NASA ’s investment in manned spaceflight now appears to be one of the most cost-effective transactions in government procurement projects. Especially compared to the SLS rocket; in March this year, the NASA chief inspector estimated that if the SLS rocket is expected to launch in 2021, its cost will be as high as 18.3 billion US dollars.
However, SpaceX must first succeed in diverting US attention from KSC ’s 39A launch site