La NASA, and therefore we could say that the entire United States is in luck since the country's famous Space Agency finally and after a long wait has officially confirmed that they will start the Commercial Crew Program. This literally means that the dispatch of astronauts from US soil is reactivated, a program that had been stopped since 2011, the date on which the agency decided to withdraw the Space Shuttle.
On the other hand and as a more than interesting detail, especially for the future of space exploration, with this new program two private companies will be in charge, for the first time in history, of executing this shipment of astronauts into space, currently bound for the International Space Station. A new milestone in history that will finally take shape thanks to the technical advances achieved by companies such as SpaceX y Boeing, which will be in charge of giving shape and support to this new NASA program.
SpaceX and Boeing have been chosen by NASA to transport their astronauts into space
Undoubtedly great news for the entire United States since not only private companies will be able to launch a unique program, finally showing that today they have enough technology to carry out this work. On the other hand, something that is of special interest to the government of the North American country, they will finally stop depending on Russia to carry out this work, something that, as you are surely thinking, has been greatly publicized in the country.
The really interesting data for NASA is that, by stopping using Russian technology to send astronauts to the International Space Station, it will be achieved dispense with an expense of 80 million dollars per astronaut American traveling into space. As an important fact, tell you that another of the great problems of the Soyuz capsule used by the Russians to date is that it, at an architectural level, only has three seats, which greatly limits its use.
Both SpaceX and Boeing's solutions offer the ability to send up to 7 people in a single trip
Going into a little more detail, the new service that both SpaceX and Boeing will offer to NASA will consist of a capsule with capacity for seven crew members. Here we find precisely a detail that we must take into account and that is that this increase in passengers is not such since, as specified, both SpaceX and Boeing reserve at least two seats per launch to be occupied by staff with business purposes.
Continuing with the few specifications of the service that have seen the light, we also know that SpaceX will use the rocket for the launch of its capsule F while, in the specific case of Boeing, the collaboration of the United Launch Alliance and its powerful Atlas v. At the moment some data is unknown, such as the cost that NASA will have to bear for each seat, although it is estimated that it will be a third of what the agency currently pays the Russians.
It is estimated that the services provided by Boeing and SpaceX to NASA will cost one third of what the agency currently pays to Russians
At the moment and in the absence of a specific date for the program to start, something that should be done in the coming weeks, if we know that NASA plans to program two test flights to test the service, one for each of the two companies. Once the test flights have been carried out, two more flights will be carried out, although these last two will finally be destined for the International Space Station. The four flights will have astronauts inside and have already been scheduled to be carried out in 2019.
The first test will be conducted on SpaceX's Dragon capsule at the 2019 spring while for the Boeing test flight we will have to wait until the next summer. During the second half of 2019, depending on the results of the two previous tests, the first missions to the International Space Station will begin.