Announcement Made At NASA Advisory Council Meeting Last Week

SpaceX has made a decision to not to use "flight proven" Crew Dragon spacecraft to carry astronauts to ISS, despite a requirement by NASA to have the option of using commercial crew capsules up to 10 times.

Teslarati reports that SpaceX Commercial Crew program manager Kathy Lueders revealed the company's decision at a meeting of the NASA Advisory Council last week. She specifically stated that SpaceX proposes to use "a new vehicle every time for [NASA], despite the company's regular use of flight proven Dragon cargo spacecraft and boosters to launch payloads for NASA and other customers.

But Teslarati further reports that, according to a recent OIG report, the SpaceX crew capsule can be derived from a slightly-modified Dragon 2 cargo spacecraft, so crew missions may all be flown on a previously-flown spacecraft. While some hardware would have to be changed, many of the modifications are software-based and the change between cargo and crew configurations could be relatively straightforward.

Such a system would bring NASA's costs down considerably, when compared to other crew transport systems, the report suggests. NASA could benefit from the lower costs even if each Crew Dragon spacecraft only flies once in the manned configuration.

(Image from file)

FMI: Source report