Main Engine Cut OffIt took a while for this to be announced officially. I talked with Mike Johnson, Chief Designer at NanoRacks, back in September about the airlock project (among a lot of other very interesting topics) and he said on the podcast that they were all set on the NASA side and were about to start finding a launch slot.
Marcia Smith of SpacePolicyOnline.com saw a draft of the 2017 NASA Transition Authorization Act, and it contains some very interesting changes from the 2016 version that bounced around Congress last year. I discuss what some of these changes may mean in the light of Commercial Crew delays, NASA RFIs regarding SLS and Orion, and continued Russian reliability issues.
I previously thought that SLS was more cancellation-prone, but I’m beginning to think Orion holds that title.
Marcia Smith of SpacePolicyOnline.com saw a draft of the 2017 NASA Transition Authorization Act, and it contains three very interesting changes.
CRS-10 has been set as the first SpaceX launch from 39A, with pad renovations taking longer than expected. EchoStar 23 will be launched after CRS-10.
I’m very excited to see how this next test goes. The first flight ended with a failed gear deployment and Dream Chaser tumbling down the runway. The funny thing is that this test is part of the original Commercial Crew agreement—windshields and all—though the results will support the Commercial Cargo variant of Dream Chaser.
SpaceX is off to a strong start in 2017 with a very successful launch of Iridium-1 and a promising next few weeks. I also discuss the very interesting story developing between NASA, Boeing, and Russia regarding Soyuz flights to the ISS.
Energia owes Boeing $320 million plus legal fees. Most recently, Roscosmos sold NASA six Soyuz seats for $81.7 million each. If Boeing were to sell these seats to NASA for the same price, they’d get just over $408 million in payment. It’s a very odd way to get the money they’re owed, but it’ll work.
There’s clearly a split over this topic within NASA and their advisory groups. My guess is that “load and go” is going to win out in the end. If SpaceX can put together a strong, reliable 2017, with the above report from NASA’s Safety Technical Review Board in hand, this issue could be put to bed once and for all.
While we don’t yet have hard details on which direction NASA programs are headed during the Trump administration, we have started to get some hints. The leadership of the Congressional subcommittees that NASA depends on will be largely unchanged, and Boeing and SpaceX were each promised 4 more Commercial Crew flights. I also talk a little bit about how the Air Force One and F-35 situations apply to NASA programs.