In August, House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) called out NASA for allegedly being tougher on Orbital ATK following the failure of that company’s Antares rocket, also on a space station resupply mission, than on SpaceX.
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As for Boeing, we’ve only seen exterior shots of its CST-100 Starliner, revealed at the Grand Opening Ceremony at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center earlier this month. The Starliner is designed to carry seven astronauts, and is expected to make its first flight to the ISS in 2017.
The proposed modified version of the SpaceX’s robotic Dragon cargo capsule consists of a Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV), an Earth Return Vehicle (ERV) a robotic arm, and additional fuel tanks. This week, SpaceX released a host of photos and videos of its manned spaceship.
The spacecraft’s only punch of color other than from its windows is from the flat panel displays of the capsule’s forward-mounted control panel. The capsule also has an advanced emergency escape system (which was tested in May), and all of its functions can be controlled both autonomously, by SpaceX’s mission control on Earth, or by astronauts on board.
The capsule measures about 20 feet tall by 12 feet in diameter, which is not a whole lot of space, considering it’s designed to carry up to 7 astronauts at a time.
APSomeday, Elon Musk just might get humans to Mars. In the event something is going wrong, this safety system will allow blasting the crewed Dragon spacecraft clear of the Falcon 9 launch.
Hence, SpaceX will use its own Falcon 9 two-stage rockets to launch the satellites.
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Similar, big budget projects have been attempted in the past by visionaries including Richard Branson and Bill Gates, but it is Musk’s proposal that is bringing fresh hope, due to the fact that he has the resources to run it independently through SpaceX.
