The Year of the Four Spaceships: A Progress Report
by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor
Back in February, I went out on a limb and predicted that 2020 could be the Year of the Four Spaceships, with SpaceX, Boeing, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic reaching major milestones in human spaceflight. (See 2020: Four Spaceships & the End of America’s Cosmic Groundhog Day)
With nearly half the year over, I thought it would be a good time to review the companies’ progress toward those milestones.
SpaceX
2020 Objectives: fly astronauts aboard Crew Dragon on the Demo-2 flight test to the International Space Station (ISS) and return them safely to Earth; begin commercial flights following the successful test.
Status: so far so good
SpaceX broke a nearly nine-year drought of crewed orbital launches from U.S. soil by launching astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the space station on May 30.
NASA plans to return the astronauts to Earth in August. If there are no serious anomalies to correct, a new Crew Dragon will carry three Americans and one Japanese astronaut to ISS on SpaceX’s first commercial mission. The launch is currently scheduled for Aug. 30.
Boeing
2020 Objectives: conduct a flight test of the Starliner crew vehicle to the space station with astronauts aboard; begin commercial flights to ISS.
Status: ain’t gonna happen
The uncrewed Starliner flight test last December failed to reach the space station and suffering software and communications failures that could have destroyed it on two occasions.
Boeing will fly the mission again later this year at a cost to the company of more than $400 million. The flight is currently penciled in for November, with a second test with astronauts aboard set for spring 2021 should no serious anomalies be discovered.
Blue Origin
2020 Objective: complete New Shepard uncrewed flight test program; fly people aboard for the first time.
Status: we’ll believe it when we see it
After launching New Shepard three times from its west Texas facility in 2019, Blue Origin ended yet another year without following through on its plan to fly people aboard the automated rocket and capsule system.
The care and attention Jeff Bezos’ rocket company has committed to getting it right and flying safely is commendable. A single fatal accident could end Blue Origin’s human spaceflight program for good.
But, after 12 successful flight tests, even the company’s biggest fans were starting to wonder whether Blue Origin should change its Latin motto from Gradatim Ferociter (Step by Step, Ferociously) to Gradatim Denique (Step by Step, Eventually).
Company officials say several more flight tests will be conducted before placing test subjects aboard. They are hoping to achieve that by the end of this year.
Blue Origin’s schedule has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic as several workers tested positive for the virus. Other employees pushed back against plans to fly from company headquarters in Washington State to Texas for a New Shepard flight test planned for April 10 over fears of becoming infected.
The launch was not conducted. Blue Origin has not provided an update on its schedule for future New Shepard flights.
Virgin Galactic
2020 Objectives: complete VSS Unity‘s flight test program; begin suborbital tourism from Spaceport America in New Mexico with Richard Branson aboard the first commercial launch by mid-year.
Status: nope
On Feb. 22, 2019, VSS Unity touched down at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California after its second flight above 50 miles (80.4 km) in two months.
The path seemed clear, after more than 14 years of effort, for Virgin Galactic to complete testing of SpaceShipTwo and begin flying passengers on suborbital joy rides for $250,000 a pop by the end of 2019.
Sixteen months later, Virgin Galactic hasn’t flown a single powered flight. Plans to fly Branson on the first commercial flight in time for his 70th birthday on July 18 have gone by the boards. It’s not even clear if commercial service will begin by the end of 2020.
After its second suborbital flight, VSS Unity was placed in the hangar at Mojave so its passenger cabin could be outfitted with four seats and the vehicle could be improved for frequent reuse.
Those modifications took a long time. It wasn’t until February 2020 that the WhiteKnightTwo mother ship VMS Eve relocated VSS Unity from Mojave to Spaceport America in New Mexico.
A month later, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham ordered all non-essential businesses to close in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Work on the SpaceShipTwo program largely stopped in New Mexico and California, which was placed under a similar order.
On May 1, VSS Unity conducted its first glide flight at Spaceport America. The test was designed to familiarize pilots with flying from the southern New Mexico facility.
Virgin Galactic officials have said the space plane will perform one or two additional glide flights before it resumes powered flight tests. Employees will fill the four seats in the passenger cabin to test the tourism experience before Branson flies on the first commercial launch.
Company officials have declined to predict when commercial service will begin.
Summing Up
With the year nearly half over, it looks very likely SpaceX will accomplish its human spaceflight goals. Boeing is out of the picture. And it is anyone’s guess as to what Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin will accomplish this year.
My batting average on predicting human spaceflight is likely to range from .250 to .750 by the time the clock strikes midnight on the year 2020. Even that lowest figure would be an improvement over my past predictions for U.S. human spaceflight.
And, for the record, I will not be making any predictions about when NASA’ Orion spacecraft will fly. That is the worst bet in space exploration.
32 responses to “The Year of the Four Spaceships: A Progress Report”
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When Virgin Galactic went public last October I thought commercial flights would be happening soon as well, but no. “The path seemed clear…” – for those Tolkien fans reading this the path VG is on seems like it’s running through Mirkwood, a never ending circular trail.
VG should name the first commercial SpaceshipTwo Godot…
The Boring Company named its first boring machine Godot, it’s delivery having been delayed.
It will surely get here any time now.
Or, worse yet, the Paths of the Dead.
I am curious. Why did you decide to leave out the SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy? Unlike the other four, which merely represent evolutionary progress that has been crawling forward for many years, Starship/Super Heavy is the really radical breakthrough in space launch that may happen this year. And IF it works all four of those spacecraft will be as outdated as biplanes…
Probably because the Starship is unlikely to fly people this year.
True. Elon Musk wants to make sure it is very safe before doing so.
BTW SpaceX will be testing the SN7 tank to bursting tonight to check on their calculations on it. So far the tank is refusing to burst.
https://twitter.com/SpacePa…
Instead of blowing the tank only leaked a little….
https://twitter.com/elonmus…
SpaceX reportedly changed the alloy for this test, which could be one reason why it failed in a more benign way. Progress?
I think that a big leak is an improvement over KABOOM! SpaceX is working towards its own stainless steel alloy to use for Starship/Super Booster. Unfortunately, you can’t get that sort of material in quantity, at a reasonable price, without a significant commitment to your supplier(s). I think this is one reason that SpaceX has been using off the shelf alloys for its initial Starship prototypes.
Yes, Elon said it was using 304 Steel instead of the 301 Steel, which is why they leapfrogged it over SN5 and SN6. Since his goal is to mass produce Starships I am sure he will be able to get the cost down by large buys of it. We may finally be seeing the DC-3 of space being built.
Focused on human spaceflight, which Starship seems unlikely to achieve this year. We’ll see where it and other crewed spacecraft are early next year.
Yes, it will be interesting to see if SpaceX is the only one flying astronauts for money this year.
What is really great to see is that the planet may soon have Russian and Chinese capsules flying along with NASA/Orion, SpaceX and Boeing. 24 people at a time.
Meh…not a fan of non-democratic countries. I will, however, be thrilled if and when India flies it’s first people to space.
India isn’t the shining democracy it used to be – particularly if you are a Muslim. Still, I will be excited to see them join the manned spacecraft club.
If Indian Muslims don’t want so much trouble with the Indian government, maybe they shouldn’t dance in the streets when Paki-sponsored jihadis conduct mass-killing attacks against their Hindu countrymen.
India IS a lot less socialist than it used to be…which gives me hope.
24 people at a time? Probably more like 18 at a time.
I’m interested in watching the progress (or lack of progress) of the new Russian, Chinese, and Indian capsules.
Too bad that ESA and JAXA don’t seem interested in capsules of their own.
The Russians have been flying their existing manned capsule forever and will continue to do so as long as they have somewhere to fly to. For the next decade – plus or minus – that will be ISS. After that, nowhere. Their long-promised new Oryol capsule is never going to fly. Even assuming it ever gets built, it needs a Proton or an Angara 5 to put it up the hill. Proton is fading and Angara doesn’t seem to be shaping up to take its place anytime soon, if ever. Either Proton-Oryol or Angara 5-Oryol would be way more expensive than a Soyuz-Soyuz mission.
The Chinese have at least test-flown an actual new capsule – nameless and empty. They don’t seem in any hurry to fly it with people, though. The next few years are scheduled to see more flights of same-old, same-old Shenzhou and their existing cargo capsule, albeit to a spanking new space station in all cases. The Chinese will be categorically ahead of the Russians as a spacefaring nation by the end of 2021.
Orion isn’t going anywhere until at least 2022. In the interim, LockMart has enough time – and Lord knows enough money coming in – that it could add a fully functional ECLSS and a docking port to Orion while perpetual laggard SLS catches up. My default expectation is that this won’t happen. But Kathy Lueders could decide some butt-kicking is in order by way of providing more fall-back options for how to conduct Artemis going forward and apply some long-needed boot to the LockMart fundament.
Boeing most probably won’t fly the OFT-2 do-over unmanned mission until next year. The CFT manned mission may fly in late 2021, but my bet is 2022. Certification and Starliner’s first USCV mission won’t happen for at least two more years – mid-to-late-2022. Commercial Crew will be a nearly all-SpaceX show in the meantime.
SpaceX will land Bob and Doug in late July or early August. The later the landing, the less likely USCV-1 is to launch by the currently penciled-in Aug. 30 target date but it will probably go not much past Labor Day at the latest. USCV-2, 3 and 4 will follow early, in the middle of, and late next year, respectively. One or two of these missions will fly on partly or fully reused hardware. So will, most likely, the first Crew D2 mission SpaceX flies for Axiom. Even the Space Adventures Crew D2 mission might fly next year, though 2022 is probably a likelier bet and there’s a non-trivial probability it won’t fly at all. 2022 will see SpaceX fly at least two more Crew D2 missions to ISS for NASA and a second one – maybe even a third – for Axiom as well.
It would be interesting to see crew fly into orbit on a Starship before either Orion or Starliner flys crew. Progress may seem slow on Starship now, but beware the S Curve it’s capable of because of rapid reuse and not having NASA in the loop in the early development of it. If Elon Musk starts flying Starship weekly the confidence to put a small test crew in could ramp up very quickly.
That’s a shiny little crystal ball you’ve got there.
It amazes me how slow Blue Origin is going, considering they have (by far) the wealthiest backer. Shouldn’t Bezos be able to pay for a bunch of testing and development to be done in parallel?
Now that SpaceX has successfully placed people in orbit, does anyone really care about BO and VG and the world’s most expensive roller coasters.
Is there some kind of spacecraft to go with New Glenn? I haven’t heard anything about one?
To be fair, speed is relative. Blue Origin is no slower than Boeing or NASA.
Which is to say that Blue Origin is being run like a traditional aerospace contractor. This does not impress me, IMHO.
Yes, I expected more from Jeff Bezos. But I guess when you hire your workforce from Old Space firms you move at Old Space speeds.
That is one of the advantages of SpaceX having built their own workforce for Dragon/Falcon with fresh college graduates. And now Elon Musk is building his workforce for the Starship/Super Heavy with the industrial workers from the breaker yards and oil industry in South Texas. Of courses they are leaving a trail of scrap metal and engines behind as they work their way up the learning curve giving pundits something to laugh about. But really it is a small price to pay for not importing the “paralysis by analysis” habits of Old Space into SpaceX.
With the Dragon2 safely at the ISS for a few months, no major launches and Tesla on autopilot, Elon Musk is now free to work full time on Starship/Super Heavy. It will be interesting to see the progress it will make from having his full attention.
Thanks for the update Doug! It is really annoying to see Boeing fall a full year behind because they just can’t seem to get their act together. Perhaps it would be wise to keep their share of the pie rather small until they prove their worthiness. At the rate they’re going, we’ll probably have two functioning space elevators before they get certified.
Orion, hah!
From V-2 rockets dropping on London in 1944 to Apollo 8 orbiting the Moon in 1968, was 24 years. Will we see Orion beat that? Say, 24 years from the Columbia disaster in 2003 to Orion circling the Moon?
How sad that could even be a question…
Looks like Elon Musk understands that it won’t be possible to safely launch a Super Heavy from Boca Chica so he is moving offshore as I predicted he would. He also esimates point to point travel in 2-3 years with Starship. There goes the VG and New Shepard market for thrill seekers linking it to this topic of HSF.
https://twitter.com/elonmus…
This was part of the plan he unveiled years ago. Goes back to at least the Australia presentation, maybe as far back as 2016 in Mexico.