Boeing in real trouble

I thought ESA would be an early adaptor of commercial manned spacecraft, but then I also thought, ten years ago, that the destination would be a Bigelow habitat rather than the ISS. I also expect many governments to use commercial manned spacecraft for their own space programs. Several of the world’s governments have long had some form of space program and quite a few more created their own programs after NASA announced commercial manned spacecraft.

Nations can save huge amounts of money when they don’t have to develop their own manned spacecraft or their own launch vehicles. All they have to do is rent space on a commercial space station and on the commercial spacecraft that gets them there. Total cost: a few hundred million dollars per mission rather than developing and maintaining everything that goes into launch and that goes into the space stations. Even landlocked countries can now have their own space programs, manned or otherwise.

Commercial space: benefitting mankind all around the world.

Of course they would. One way is obviously cheaper than round trip.

Ps. A size-14 just dropped over at NASA. Someone figured out that SLS launching every two years, at a couple of billion dollars a pop, might not be affordable! Maybe use a different booster? Ya think?!

Next breakthrough question: can we find a way not to use 30-year old Orion technology? New Shepard – no. Blue Moon – no. Starliner – no.

Gosh, there must be a capsule…

A month-long mission will require more consumables, and presumably some of its own experiments. I wonder how the EPIC will address that? There really isn’t much room in a Crew Dragon to bring up much in the way of additional supplies or gear.