Small Space News Story Roundup 44

It has been a surprisingly slow news week in the space sector.  The sites I go to regularly didn't have much to talk about with most of the articles talking about small things, and lots of coverage of Hurricane Helene. Following are some stories extracted from that, starting with the most interesting story of the week, 

When NASA nearly gave Boeing ALL the funding for private crew missions

It's an article on the history of how in the process of awarding the two contracts to Boeing for Starliner and SpaceX for Crew Dragon, there was a point where NASA was going to give the contract entirely to Boeing and nothing to SpaceX. 

Let me just say that I haven't heard this story before. I know that SpaceX bid and was awarded a contract for $2.6 billion while Boeing's contract was for $4.2 billion, 60 percent more than SpaceX's. I hadn't heard that going into the last day of decision making at NASA, SpaceX had been shut out.  

The "establishment" at NASA were all there through the Space Shuttle program, and some had been there longer. The only real newcomer was Phil McAlister, director of commercial spaceflight at NASA at the time.

The decision was to be made on August 6, during a meeting at NASA headquarters. The agency's head of human spaceflight, Bill Gerstenmaier, convened his top human spaceflight advisors in the agency's "Space Operations Center" at headquarters. This secure room was built after the Columbia accident in 2003 for high-level strategic meetings. Gerstenmaier and about 20 senior officials at NASA sat around a large, rounded table, discussing the source evaluation board scores with the aim of picking a winner.

The room was presented with a literal report card for the two companies. Like a report card, frequently, the grades gave the impression of one being clearly better than the other, but in reality, the differences were modest. To stretch the report card analogy, asked whether the company could meet NASA's requirements and actually safely fly crew to and from the station lets' say Boeing received an "excellent" rating, above SpaceX's "very good;" or essentially an A versus a B. In reality, that might mean Boeing's A was the very bottom score for an A and SpaceX's B might have been the highest possible score for a B. One or two points difference at most. 

Because of the significant difference in price, McAlister said, the source evaluation board assumed SpaceX would win the competition. He was thrilled, because he figured this meant that NASA would have to pick two companies, SpaceX based on price, and Boeing due to its slightly higher technical score. He wanted competition to spur both of the companies on.

Well, you know "the rest of the story" (as Paul Harvey would say) so you know they eventually did award two contracts and the rest of the article is a closer look at how that happened.  During the long meeting, McAlister pointed out things in the two "report cards" that backed the eventual decision to award the two companies their contracts. It's still an interesting story.  Now imagine if they had awarded the contract only for Starliner and it turned out like it has. There would be no way to the ISS except by the Russian Roscosmos.  No Polaris Dawn or Inspiration4; no Axiom flights 1 through 3.  What else?

Crew-9 is go for Saturday's Launch

That is, it's go with a 45% chance of violating weather rules. The launch is still set for the same time as shown in Tuesday's post:  Saturday, 9/28, 1:17PM EDT.  SpaceX reports: 

The instantaneous launch is at 1:17 p.m. ET, with a backup opportunity available on Sunday, September 29 at 12:54 p.m. ET if needed.

A live webcast of this mission will begin about one hour prior to liftoff, which you can watch here and on X @SpaceX. You can also watch the webcast on the new X TV app.

The Dragon spacecraft supporting this mission previously flew the Crew-4, Ax-2, and Ax-3 missions to and from the International Space Station. Following stage separation, Falcon 9’s first stage will land on Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

They don't mention the booster's number or if it has a history. SpaceX tends to fly newer boosters on crewed flights, first through maybe fifth flight.

Blue Origin static fires New Glenn upper stage

On Monday (Sept. 23) Blue Origin successfully static fire tested the upper stage of their planned first test flight vehicle.  

Blue Origin said it test-fired the second stage of the New Glenn on the pad at Cape Canaveral’s Launch Complex 36 Sept. 23. The two BE-3U engines in the upper stage fired for 15 seconds in the test.

The test firing “marked the first time we operated the vehicle as an integrated system,” the company stated, testing interactions among various vehicle systems and ground equipment. It also provided practice for the launch control team.

Since the second stage of these launch vehicles tend to burn longer than the first stages, and those tend to burn on the order of two to three minutes, it's hard for me think that a 15 second static firing is anything but a test to verify everything is hooked up right and responding to commands properly.  It seems to be among the shortest tests that might mean anything.  I assume that stage was fired for the full duration of a typical mission at some other time and place. 

You'll remember that this vehicle was intended for the ESCAPADE mission to Mars, which required launching during a narrow window between this October 13 and 21. NASA scrubbed that mission on September 6th, expecting that Blue couldn't get the vehicle ready to launch that soon. Getting this stage into test on Sept 23, over two full weeks after the scrub, seems to reinforce NASA's decision. Blue Origin will instead use the the first New Glenn mission to test technology for its Blue Ring orbital transfer vehicle. That launch is scheduled for as soon as November.  Considering everything they talk of getting done before it's ready to fly, I read that as "late November." 

Blue Origin test-firing the upper stage of its New Glenn rocket Sept. 23. Credit: Blue Origin