SpaceX Running More Than One Year Behind Schedule on Commercial Crew
Dragon Version 2. (Credit: SpaceX)
SpaceX’s commercial crew program is running more than a year behind schedule on the Commercial Crew program it is performing for NASA.
Garrett Reisman, SpaceX’s Director of Crew Operations, said on Tuesday that an automated flight test of the Crew Dragon vehicle to the International Space Station (ISS) has slipped into the second quarter of 2017. (Spaceflight Now has the mission listed for May 2017.) It was scheduled to occur in March 2016 under the contract NASA awarded to SpaceX in September 2014.
The original schedule showed a test flight to the station with crew occurring in October 2016, some seven months after the automated one. Once testing is complete, SpaceX would begin ferrying astronauts to ISS on a commercial basis. The company has been awarded a minimum of six commercial missions.
During an appearance at the Space Tech Expo in Pasadena, Calif. Reisman showed a slide that indicated SpaceX had completely roughly half of the 18 milestones required to complete the Crew Dragon development program..
The table below shows milestones for the CCtCap phase. Two tests on the list — pad and in-flight abort tests — were not completed during SpaceX’s earlier Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) contract. There are also a pair of milestones — post-certification mission 1 initiation review and propulsion module validation testing — that were listed on Reisman’s slide that were not on the original list of paid milestones.
| SPACEX COMMERCIAL CREW MILESTONES |
|||
| NO. | DESCRIPTION | ORIGINAL SCHEDULE |
STATUS |
| 1 | Certification Baseline Review (CBR) | December 2014 | Complete December 2014 |
| 2 | Initial Propulsion Module Testing Complete | April 2015 |
Complete November 2015 |
| CCiCap | Pad Abort Test | December 2013 |
Complete May 2015 |
| 3 | Avionics Test Bed Activation | May 2015 | Complete June 2015 |
| 4 | Delta Critical Design Review (dCDR) | June 2015 | Complete December 2015 |
| 5 | Docking System Qualification Testing Complete | August 2015 | Complete December 2015 |
| 6 | Propulsive Land Landing Test Complete | September 2015 | Complete December 2015 |
| 7 | Launch Site Operational Readiness Review | November 2015 | Complete November 2015 |
| – | Post Certification Mission 1 Initiation Review | — | Complete December 2015 |
| 8 | Flight Test Without Crew Certification Review (FTCR) |
December 2015 | Pending |
| 9 | ECLSS Integrated Test Complete | February 2016 | Pending |
| – | Delta Critical Design Review II (dCDR) | June 2015 | Pending |
| – | Validation Propulsion Module Testing | – | Pending |
| 10 | Flight to ISS Without Crew | March 2016 | Pending |
| CCiCAP |
In-flight Abort Test | April 2014 | Pending |
| 11 | Parachute Qualification Complete | April 2016 | Pending |
| 12 | Space Suit Qualification Testing Complete | May 2016 | Pending |
| 13 | Launch Site Operational Readiness Review for Crew |
June 2016 | Pending |
| 14 | Design Certification Review (DCR) | July 2016 | Pending |
| 15 | Flight Test Readiness Review (FTRR) |
September 2016 | Pending |
| 16 | Flight to ISS with Crew |
October 2016 | Pending |
| 17 | Operations Readiness Review (ORR) | January 2017 | Pending |
| 18 | Certification Review (CR) | April 2017 | Pending |
The pad abort test, which was originally scheduled for December 2013, was not completed until 17 months later in May 2015. Meanwhile, initial Dragon propulsion module testing ended up slipping by seven months from April to November 2015.
SpaceX completed avionics test bed activation in June, only a month late. On June 28, a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon cargo ship to ISS exploded after launch, resulting in a six-month gap until the next flight. SpaceX did not complete another commercial crew milestone until November even though several were scheduled.
The Delta Critical Design Review, which had been set for completion in June, was split into two parts. The first part was completed in December, with the remainder of the review still pending.
SpaceX has a number of crucial milestones to complete in order to fly the two test missions. These include: environmental and life support testing, spacesuit and parachute qualification, and propulsion module verification.
55 responses to “SpaceX Running More Than One Year Behind Schedule on Commercial Crew”
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CRS 7 pushed their schedule back on many things. Go back to bashing Virgin Galactic, your good at that.
Well, yeah. That’s what I said in the story.. Either you didn’t read the story carefully enough or tI wasn’t sufficiently clear in my writing. If it was the latter, thank you for clarifying matters.
But, no matter. It’s a trivial issue.
I’ve written stories for years updating commercial crew with tables like this one. NASA and the companies would regularly trumpet each milestone achieved and how they were on schedule.
They’ve stopped doing that under CCtCap. Given the schedule delays, it’s easy to see why.
Tough crowd.
+1
Let’s also not forget Boeing’s scheduling situation. And they’re getting twice the dollars, are putting in virtually none of their own, and originally wanted a guarantee of flight monopoly to ISS.
Not to mention that doing this sort of development isn’t easy for anyone.
This is merely a story about SpaceX’s schedule delays. It’s mystifying why readers feel the need to jump to the company’s defense by pointing out flaws in Boeing or accusing me of attacking SpaceX.
Here’s an interesting question for ya: if the CRS 7 accident was merely a bad component, and they had an easy fix for it, why did it take six months to get back into flight and why was commercial crew so affected?
Ask SpaceX.
Working on it. I want Charles to work on it as well.
“It’s mystifying why readers feel the need to jump to the company’s defense-“
Did not know you were that completely clueless. Your “readers” are a bunch of NewSpace Musk groupies- the most close-minded toxic mob imaginable. No mystery here.
There’s that “wind beneath their wings” again. You just can’t help yourself, Gazza. 🙂
No mystery here.
Because they had to go through a thorough analyses to find root cause which wasn’t clear and get all parties to sign off on it plus implement the fix.
Cheers
Recently dealt with the Boeing delay here: http://www.parabolicarc.com…
I can agree with your last statement but an experienced analyst like yourself should recognize that your first paragraph is a list or irrelevancies. This enterprise seems to be more difficult than anyone anticipated but the two prime contractors bear ultimate responsibility for meeting both the hardware and time requirements of the contracts they signed.
New target for Doug, that’s nice. I guess the lemon of VG is getting sqeezed dry. So, about that XCOR book…
LOL!
We need 3 to 5 of you to shine a good light upon Elon’s delays, Orbital’s aimless meandering, Boeing’s waste, and XCOR’s dead end and duping of investors and ticket-holders, Blue’s slow-and-furious incompetency, Bigelow’s labor practices. I’m sure even Masten has a few things that he would prefer not mentioned.
I disagree with just about everything you’ve touched on here.
There are plenty of sources for Space-related news, including on each of the companies you’ve mentioned.
SpaceX’s delays have been primarily related to constant modifications to the LV and available funding, and SpaceX is well reported on in many, many places.
Orbital, along with every other long-established launch provider, has been challenged to reduce orbital launch costs, mostly thanks to price pressure from SpaceX. It has been fascinating to watch how various companies and space programs have reacted to this. Orbital-ATK has a well established niche that it still dominates and has at least shown some effort in branching out and improving itself, which is commendable. If that’s what you mean by “aimless meandering,” I think you haven’t taken time to understand why they’re doing what they’re doing.
Boeing is doing what it has always done. It’s a massive company that lives and breathes government contract work, and is also well reported on here and elsewhere.
XCOR isn’t a dead end and they aren’t duping anyone. They are currently building their first test flight vehicle, and the progress on that has been reported on this site and elsewhere. They’ve had several delays and setbacks, but appear poised to be among, if not the, the first to offer regularly recurring suborbital tourism flights.
I’m genuinely curious as to what makes you think Blue Origin is incompetent.
Bigelow’s labor issues are primarily managerial in nature and that has also been well reported on here and elsewhere. Even so, they are still working towards improving the future of spaceflight. The test module on the ISS could be a springboard to very high heights indeed.
Masten has been fairly quiet lately, but they do have several projects that they’re working on.
I am not an apologist for Spacex, or boeing. The truth is the delays we are experiencing can be traced back to the enormous battles inside the 495 several years ago. Congress had to be dragged along with the Commercial Crew and Cargo program.
Specifically, Senators Shelby, Mikulski, and Nelson, along with a ton of House Republicans and Democrats, slow rolled and dragged this out while sending sh*ttons (mT) to SLS.
It sucks Spacex is behind. However, it is not unexpected.
//CONCUR// with Doug that CRS-7 is also an issue.
Frankly I am perfectly fine with this delay considering the political BS we have had to deal with. We have milestones and it isn’t like we are wasting money with the delays. You get paid when you hit the milestone. Period.
“You get paid when you hit the milestone. Period.” I’m not a big fan of Congress, but neither Boeing nor SpaceX can credibly blame them for their slow development. They weren’t entitled to be paid, therefore, they can’t shift blame to anyone but themselves. It would be different if either company claimed that NASA has yet to pay for completed milestones but that is not the case.
If one considers that the funding profile for both Boeing and Spacex to date is equivalent to 1.5 years behind (1.48 Billion short of requests), then we can expect a delay of about 1.5 years till deployment.
I think we’re talking about two different things here.
There’s the historical underfunding of the commercial crew program, which moved the schedules to the right and limited what NASA could fund under different funded phases of the program.
Then there’s been the delay in the schedule since the CCtCap contracts were awarded in September 2014. There were schedules laid out by both companies to complete the final phase of development, flight testing and certification. SpaceX agreed to that schedule with NASA knowing it still had abort tests it had delayed from the previous round.
It’s been 20 months since those contracts were awarded, and SpaceX’s schedule has slipped about 14 months in that period. Boeing’s schedule has slipped by a lesser amount. Both Starliner flight tests had been scheduled for 2017. Now it’s late 2017 and first quarter 2018. We’ll see if that schedule holds.
The question is why the delays have occurred. Boeing has given the following explanation:
“Just this week, Aviation Week reported that Boeing was sticking to the 2017 schedule even though it’s been working through challenges related to the mass of the spacecraft and aeroacoustic issues related to integration with its United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 launch vehicle.
“In a follow-up to Caret’s comments, Boeing spokeswoman Rebecca Regan told GeekWire that those factors contributed to the schedule slip. In addition, NASA software updates have added more work for developers.”
All this makes sense. You start cutting metal and assembling hardware and working through how to fly a new spacecraft on a modified booster, you’re going to get delays. Whether Boeing’s schedule slips further, we’ll see. It may very well.
The reasons for SpaceX’s delays are less clear. They haven’t come out and explained them. Just looking at the schedule, it seems like the combination of the pad test taking up a lot of resources in early 2015, the failure of the Falcon 9, and maybe resource constraints.
IIRC COTS was run as a SAA while CC is now being run under FAR. ‘Nough said.
Cheers
You are right about that & I remember the Senate & House hearings that resulted in them making sure that NASA wouldn’t pull that stunt again. COTS shut out Congress’s favorite pork companies and allowed the rise of SpaceX.
I think that given the funding issues, the contract style, the fact that these are new vehicles then what we’re seeing is not unexpected. What I am happy with is that full funding is in place, 2 providers are still there and the contracts are progressing even if delays to milestones are occurring. Note that these delays also delay payments to the contractors.
What I just love seeing is the hipporacy surrounding delays to SLS and Orion where the silence is deafening. When you consider the billions being spent on those projects, the seemingly endless delays, and all of it taxpayer funds, the mind just boggles.
Cheers
<—This is my Not Surprised face.
Elon can Get-errr-Done, but he is terrible at timelines. I bet when he gets to work after sitting in traffic for an hour, and someone asks him “How long is your drive home” he says: about 10 minutes.
This doesn’t surprise me. It’s not like dragon two was going to be the point where space x magically turns around and starts delivering on time. Though it’s disappointing to hear they are behind by just over a year as if they were trying to hide it until Boeing announced a slip first which is frankly disappointing, but I guess it can’t be helped given congress’s behavior.
Both Boeing and SpaceX’s CCtCAP schedules have slipped by a similar amount. It hasn’t been a secret or anything, periodic reports from NASA have shown milestones being pushed out as time goes on.
Doug, do you have the contacts to get the funding amounts for the milestones? I think that’d go a long way towards dispelling the myth that somehow inadequate funding is to blame for these delays.
No. Those were redacted in the CCtCap contracts that were released. And I don’t have any sources that would break their obligations and tell me that.
The only milestones for which I have figures are for the ones left over from CCiCap. The pad and in-flight abort tests were each worth $30 million — $60 million total.
If SpaceX had completed the milestones on time, NASA would have had enough money in the budget to pay them. I don’t think that’s why they got delayed.
Space X is late for everything. Maybe even over budget. But in the end, they deliver. Unlike the primes, they delay, go over budget, and then .. a lot of times, re-negotiate the contract. Don’t forget how long overdue F-9h is. By my reading, Boeing will be late, and so will Space X. But my money is on Space X being less late, and less over budget.
It’s a very different game. The majors try to claim higher performance numbers to get a win. SpaceX is bidding $/Lb.. That has put them in competition with O-ATK.
It seems that maybe it’s time to stop all the partisan bickering and blaming. So many people on this site howled when NASA purchased Soyuz seats for 2018 convinced that they’d wasted their money because private enterprise was going to ride to the rescue on time. Now it looks like NASA made a wise choice as “old space” won’t fly on time and Elon Musk, for all his engineering brilliance, can’t deliver on time either. No need to blame Congress. Payment wasn’t due for either Boeing or SpaceX until the particular requirements were met. Neither company is entitled to full payment yet and there are a few government contract lawyers that should probably be relieved of their positions if they failed to insert liquidated damages clauses into the contracts. I’m not letting SLS off the hook either. NASA administered an entire Moon landing program from Ham to Apollo 17 in less time than it has taken to build 1 stinking rocket (did somebody lose the plans for the Saturn V?) and a large, economy-sized Apollo capsule.
1) The moon landing program was an enormously well-funded project. It cost $109 billion in 2010 dollars. SLS only gets $18 billion. They are obviously not comparable.
2) To build something as complex as a rocket requires more than just plans. All the obsolete tools and machinery from the Saturn V era would have to be rebuilt in order to manufacture a rocket to those specs again. It’s not a modern design.
A Year Behind ?
Say what you will but I believe this puts it into perspective…
In Less than 4 Years… Simply Amazing !
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
The reusable boosters are great. A tremendous achievement. In terms of the delays with commercial crew, I’m not sure how great they have been. Or SpaceX’s constant upgrades to the rockets. Or Dragon missions to Mars.
Looking at this from NASA’s point of view, the agency wants SpaceX to prioritize commercial crew and cargo over reusable boosters and upgrades. For one, NASA is paying billions of dollars — the vast bulk of the cost — for crew. It’s paying all of the cost of cargo. The faster they can restore domestic crew launch capability, the earlier they can stop paying the Russians and fully make use of its $100 billion investment in ISS.
NASA’s not going to put astronauts, Dragon cargo ships or expensive science satellites on one of SpaceX’s used boosters any time soon. They won’t want to take that risk for many years to come. The USAF is in a similar boat. There’s probably many people in NASA and DOD cheering this on, but they also want SpaceX to focus on finishing commercial crew development and working through its satellite launch manifest.
I would agree and politely disagree with you…
As you pointed out in January in your post “NASA ASAP Concerned About Commercial Crew Safety”
http://www.parabolicarc.com…
Commercial Crew funding has been woefully underfunded while SLS has been Sucking the Life out of Everything! And if I go with the numbers you presented… Commercial Crew has been underfunded since 2009 to the tune of $1,1 Billion or the disparity of what was the Budget Requested as opposed to what was Appropriated.
To me that looks like the answer as to why SpaceX and for that matter Boeing are behind a year and as a percentage of what the Commercial Budget Request has been from 2009 to 2016 or $5.1 Billion ($850 million a year) a $1.1 Billion shortfall would equate to 1.2 years…
As far as SpaceX Prioritizing Commercial Crew over Reusable Boosters I would say that that is solely up to SpaceX and at least as far as I can see the priority for SpaceX has always been Mission 1st.
SpaceX does have goals that aren’t per the typical business model and there is certainly a trade off when you NEED to push tech to achieve the incredibly steep goals of what going to Mars brings!
I know they absolutely need to satisfy their customers no doubt and up and until now they have quite the backlog which speaks to a greater extent the Confidence that the space industry has in SpaceX…
It’s no secret that CRS 7 put a hold on things and SpaceX knows their up against it but if they can keep up their cadence of every other week or so and nothing else goes boom… I believe they will be good…
I do think you have a good point as far having confidence in SpaceX’s continually Morphing Falcon 9 at least from the DoD’s perspective and with SpaceX’s eye’s on Mars I don’t ever see them holding on a design… Soooo the only answer I have is don’t let any more rockets blow up…
This is how it has to be with the timeline they have set for Mars…
You have some good points. Some things have been delayed by the funding. But, it’s still puzzling why CRS 7 slowed things so much. Look at the milestones. How many of them were actually related to the problem they found in the upper stage.
SpaceX has 5,000 people working for it, wouldn’t the company have sufficient personnel to dedicate to commercial crew while also working out the cause of the accident? Couldn’t those two be running in parallel?
Or was it cash flow? Their goal was to launch monthly last year. The sixth one failed, then they didn’t fly for six months. That was a significant revenue hit. They’re also making changes to the booster to deal with the cause of the accident. And upgrading the thrust so they can fulfill their launch contracts and recover the first stage. And their head count is growing. And they’re working on a Mars mission.
There was also a big fat commercial cargo contract that was supposed to be awarded in April. Then June. Then September. And finally January 2016.
So, expected revenues last year go completely messed up. Meanwhile, they have to put out money upfront to perform these milestones and then get paid later.
I also question the comparisons between SpaceX and Boeing in terms of their slips. The task for SpaceX is to upgrade an existing booster and spacecraft — both of which are already flying — to carry crew. Boeing is building a new spacecraft for the first time and launching it on a booster that hasn’t flown that vehicle yet. There was overall less for SpaceX to do to field a crew vehicle. So shouldn’t it be much further ahead in its schedule?
SpaceX had problems with the Falcon launch vehicle. However most of the changes for Commercial Crew are to the Dragon – a different machine, probably with different engineers.
“There was overall less for SpaceX to do to field a crew vehicle. So shouldn’t it be much further ahead in its schedule?”
That may have been true if SpaceX would’ve simply upgraded their Dragon 1.0 or Cargo Dragon vehicle to it’s first crew version. But, even Musk said that Dragon 1.2 was the second generation. Which implies a new design and different features. Another thing is, since, Soyuz crew launches are paid through 2018, it doesn’t make sense to rush things. Use that extra year to ensure that your vehicle & systems perform as expected.
Yes and no. Yeah the crew design was more complex than when Elon was saying give me a like a half billion dollars and I will put an escape system in and life supports and seats. Some of that is NASA. S o me of it is Elon’s practice of continually upgrading the designs of the spacecraft and the booster. I would have to go look but i think the upgrades to booster delayed abort tests they should have finished years ago. I dont think it was congress cutting the requests.
So the delayed pad abort test delays cctcap work then they try to catch up and Falcon 9 fails and that messes up the schedule. Its well known that Elon’s schedules are always optimistic and assume all will go well.
In any event the increase in the Dragon’s doesnt negate the point that Boeing had a different starting point.
Ohhhh… I think you could be correct on every one of your points.
Cash flow is a complete unknown to some extent but you can make inferences based on what SpaceX has on its books and that’s for public consumption… I think their probably good… but ya never know… would make for a nice analysis?
Also, the CRS 7 delays were very short by industry time scales especially seeing that the Falcon 9 is slated to carry astronauts… not to mention having NASA and the Air Force breathing down their necks…. but Elon is fallible and like his resent comments about the Tesla model X maybe having way to much stuff in it… causing delays and so on….
With super cool lox and a lengthened booster amongst others… they probably wanted to get all these things in at restart of flight and bit off way, way to much and at a cost I’m sure.
It IS amazing, however, I think that you would have to agree that SpaceX is spread VERY THIN.
They have so much going on, that it is amazing that they actually do so much.
BUT, Commercial space is being paid by NASA. It should have somewhat of a priority.
In fact, the longer that Boeing/SpaceX take, the longer that it moves private space stations out, as well as keeps us dependent on Russia.
I think it’s a function of what your market will bear as far as SpaceX is concerned and it’s there in huge numbers i.e. Billions! And yep they have a lot going on and with ramping up their launch frequency, commercial crew and cargo… spread to thin is probably an understatement!
There seems to be the attitude that since both SpaceX and Boeing are commercial entities, then it is the “commercial” that is the common denominator that causes their presumed incompetence. However, there is also another common factor in these projects: NASA. Given their substantial involvement, and ultimate control over the rate at which these contracts can progress, a sceptic might be inclined to conclude that when commercial engineers get together with NASA engineers and bureaucrats, that schedules are apt to slip. Also, NASA has been very “wise” to pay for additional Soyuz seats, and low and behold the schedules of the two contractors are both moving in a direction that fully justifies those Soyuz purchases.
I guess I don’t get what all the shouting is about. SpaceX said quite awhile ago that its initial unmanned and manned orbital tests of Dragon 2 would occur in mid and late 2017, respectively. Compared to the original schedule you show, those 2017 dates are, indeed, a year late. But they aren’t exactly new either. Am I missing something here?
Funny, the title of the Spaceflight Now article is “SpaceX on track to launch astronauts in late 2017” : http://spaceflightnow.com/2…
Nobody else is talking about a SpaceX one year delay in the news.
Unlike Mr. Messier, nobody else could be bothered to read the contract table and realize that “on track to launch astronauts in late 2017” is PR-speak for “one year delay.“
(Oh, and if you read the actual article, Spaceflight Now does mention the delay, so good on them.)
This delay has been announced a long time ago. Unlike Mr. Messier everybody knows that.
Oh BTW, 13 days ago Mr. Messier wrote this : “Same thing with the hundreds of millions of dollars NASA is paying for Soyuz seats while Congress under funds commercial crew” but now it seems to be SpaceX’s fault…
I knew about that launch slip for a quite a while, McCheesy.
It’s not clear that SpaceX’s most recent delays were really a function of the funding. Overall commercial crew funding has been close to requested levels over the past two years.
A closer look at the schedule shows they were likely due to losing the Falcon 9 last June. Maybe a function of bandwidth, some technical concerns resulting from the loss, delays from the previous CCiCap contract, and a loss of expected revenues from other sources.
SpaceX has to put up the money to do these milestones and then it gets paid. Musk spoke of the revenue hit that resulted from having Falcon 9 out of service for six months.
You look carefully at the schedule, and here’s what you find:
A scheduled four-month gap in the schedule from the certification baseline review in December and completion of initial propulsion module testing.
What we’re they doing during that period? Probably not propulsion module testing, because that didn’t get completed until November.
They were actually gearing up for the pad abort test, which had been delayed by 17 months from the previous contract. They completed that in May.
Avionics test bed activation went ahead as scheduled in June.
Then Falcon 9 blows up on June 28 and sends a Dragon supply ship to the bottom of the Atlantic.
Then a five-month gap in the completion of any commercial crew milestones. At the end of the year, a cluster of milestones are completed in November and December — most of which had been scheduled for earlier in 2015.
This corresponds with SpaceX completing its investigation and making needed changes in the Falcon 9 to gear up for the return to flight on Dec. 21. There was also a loss of revenues over that period because scheduled launches didn’t take place that Elon Musk specifically mentioned. Also, the commercial cargo contract they were expecting gets delayed from April to June then September and finally January 2016.
My guess is if SpaceX had completed the milestones on time throuighout 2015, NASA would have had sufficient funds to make the milestone payments to them. If the agency had the funds in November and December, they would have had them earlier in the year.
I had previously reported the slip.
http://www.parabolicarc.com…
So no news here. When you report twice the same event (a slip) people have the tendency to believe that there were two slips.
Nooo. Wrong again, McSneezy. This lays out the delay in detail — specifically the length — and shows what got delayed. Nobody’s else did that. Why would anyone think there were two delays when the schedule is the same in both stories.
Doug has done a good job on looking into issues. It is why he is interesting to read. In General, if Doug spots an issue, it means that it will become a problem later.
Esquire had a really good piece on Elon Musk from November 2012 that points out the tensions between what SpaceX (and Tesla) get contracts to do and Musk’s drive to continually innovate and how it causes delays for launches and car deliveries.
Excerpt is below. Here’s the full story: http://www.esquire.com/news…
This conversation takes place in the second week of September. SpaceX has a launch scheduled for October, less than a month away. But what Juncosa is discussing with Musk has nothing to do with the upcoming launch. It has nothing to do with any launch on the SpaceX flight manifest or any rocket that SpaceX currently manufactures. The current SpaceX rocket is the Falcon 9 1.0. It uses nine of Mueller’s Merlin engines, and it’s been to space four times. But Musk doesn’t have engineers like Juncosa and Mueller working on it. Instead, he has them working on the future. He has them working on the Falcon 9 1.1 and the Falcon Heavy, which is meant for deep space.More important, he has them working on making rockets reusable.
“SpaceX has the most advanced rockets in the world,” Musk says, but so far the advances have been “evolutionary” because the rockets are expendable — they end up in the ocean. “The revolutionary breakthrough will come with rockets that
are fully and rapidly reusable. We will never conquer Mars unless we do that. It’ll be too expensive. The American colonies would never have been pioneered if the ships that crossed the ocean hadn’t been reusable.”
This is a compelling idea. But when Musk gets into trouble, it’s not because of
the unifying intensity of his vision. He gets into trouble because of his divisions — because he builds great products he can’t deliver. Tesla is in trouble again, is running short on money again, because it is having difficulty building enough of its amazing Model S sedans for people who’ve already paid for them. And SpaceX does not currently face the challenge of reusability or of going to Mars. It faces the challenge of living up to the faith of guys like Iridium’s Matt Desch, who’s counting on SpaceX to put nearly seventy satellites into orbit over the next five years.
“Elon’s got to make SpaceX a company that will deliver tens of rockets a year and get his costs down much further than they are now,” Desch says. “The technical challenge isn’t getting to space — it’s getting to space twenty times in a row. That’s the really big technical challenge over the next two years. SpaceX knows that we get nervous every time we hear they have a big idea.”
“Nobody understands what’s driving this,” Jim Cantrell says. “Right now, he’s producing rockets at an industry average, and yet his flight manifest is much higher than industry average. It’s exactly like Tesla. He has a rocket that works. But before he even finishes with that, he’s building the next one.”