Meaning no disrespect, it’s clear from your response you’re not familiar with space history. And that was my point - a lot of people are jumping in here and making negative comments just because of the Musk association without knowing or caring about the reality.
The space shuttle (the U.S.’ s previous manned “reusable” vehicle) was retired in 2011, and the Crew Dragon was ready in about 2020. NASA was not forced to use Soyuz because of a delay in the Crew Dragon, it was because the Space Shuttle had two previous fatal disasters, was way more expensive than planned, and would be even more expensive to keep running. I didn’t know this until looking at the wikipedia just now, but early safety estimates put the chance of catastrophic failure and death of the crew between 1 in 100 to as low as 1 in 100,000. After those two disasters they re-evaluated and put the risk as high as 1 in 9.
NASA was willing to take a chance on other contracts for commercial vehicles because it had no other options. It awarded contracts both to SpaceX and ULA. The first is doing dozens of uncrewed launches per year and has flown 12 crewed missions. The other is doing like 3 launches per year, has yet to fly Starliner with a crew, and costs more per launch.
The space shuttle vehicle itself was re-usable. The “external tank” was discarded and not re-used. The solid rocket boosters would fall into the ocean, and then would have to be recovered, examined and refurbished. Those tanks/boosters represented a huge portion of the cost. While the space shuttle was slightly more re-usable, other rocket launches would be single use. What SpaceX did that no one else had before was a controlled vertical landing of the booster. In other words, it landed under power and standing up. That’s very difficult, and a game changer since it skipped the recovery step, and they didn’t require the time and cost of examination / refurbishment the way the space shuttle components did.
I like to think that Musks obsession with Twitter saved SpaceX. Thankfully he seems happy to just give them money and do the odd walk around tour during milestones.
They really have turned around our space capabilities.
Meaning no disrespect, it’s clear from your response you’re not familiar with space history. And that was my point - a lot of people are jumping in here and making negative comments just because of the Musk association without knowing or caring about the reality.
The space shuttle (the U.S.’ s previous manned “reusable” vehicle) was retired in 2011, and the Crew Dragon was ready in about 2020. NASA was not forced to use Soyuz because of a delay in the Crew Dragon, it was because the Space Shuttle had two previous fatal disasters, was way more expensive than planned, and would be even more expensive to keep running. I didn’t know this until looking at the wikipedia just now, but early safety estimates put the chance of catastrophic failure and death of the crew between 1 in 100 to as low as 1 in 100,000. After those two disasters they re-evaluated and put the risk as high as 1 in 9.
NASA was willing to take a chance on other contracts for commercial vehicles because it had no other options. It awarded contracts both to SpaceX and ULA. The first is doing dozens of uncrewed launches per year and has flown 12 crewed missions. The other is doing like 3 launches per year, has yet to fly Starliner with a crew, and costs more per launch.
The space shuttle vehicle itself was re-usable. The “external tank” was discarded and not re-used. The solid rocket boosters would fall into the ocean, and then would have to be recovered, examined and refurbished. Those tanks/boosters represented a huge portion of the cost. While the space shuttle was slightly more re-usable, other rocket launches would be single use. What SpaceX did that no one else had before was a controlled vertical landing of the booster. In other words, it landed under power and standing up. That’s very difficult, and a game changer since it skipped the recovery step, and they didn’t require the time and cost of examination / refurbishment the way the space shuttle components did.
What is it you want to say about Artemis?
I like to think that Musks obsession with Twitter saved SpaceX. Thankfully he seems happy to just give them money and do the odd walk around tour during milestones.
They really have turned around our space capabilities.