NASA has approved SpaceX’s first Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) milestone. Known as the Certification Baseline Review, the milestone covers SpaceX’s plans for the design, manufacture, integration, launch and recovery of the crewed Dragon – through to her test flight – with the goal of achieving certification to launch NASA astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).
While the near-term importance of returning a domestic crew launch capability to the United States is obvious, the funding to achieve that goal has been placed on a low calorie diet when compared to some of NASA’s more obese flagship projects, such as SLS, Orion and even the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
This is mainly due to the challenging allocation of NASA’s numerous budget lines, within the outlined program of record goals, all of which is heavily influenced by political direction.
This slippage also results in a “Catch 22″ scenario where hundreds of millions of addition dollars is being sent to Russia to cover the ever-increasing gap in NASA’s crew launch requirements.
Soyuz seat purchases are also expected to continue through the early phase of commercial crew flights, providing the contingency of a back up option.
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