The marriage of SpaceX and NASA hasn’t been easy—but it’s been fruitful
The commercial crew program is about to bear fruit with the first test flight of a Dragon spacecraft. [credit: Joel Kowsky/NASA ]
On Saturday morning SpaceX will attempt to launch its Crew Dragon spacecraft for the first time, marking the latest step in a relationship between NASA and the California rocket company that has now spanned 13 years. It has been a fruitful relationship for both.
For SpaceX, funding from NASA allowed the company to accelerate development of its world-class Falcon 9 rocket from a single-engine booster. Perhaps more importantly, sustained funding for cargo missions to the station (16 have flown so far) has provided the operational breathing room to continue to improve the Falcon 9 rocket, practice landing it, and make reusable rocketry a reality. Now, with crewed missions nearing, SpaceX may soon become the first private company to ever launch humans into orbit.
NASA, in turn, has gotten a good deal. SpaceX has consistently offered services to the space agency-for cargo, crew, and science experiments-that cost less than competitors and for far less than it would have cost NASA to develop those capabilities independently.
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