NASA-SpaceX: A partnership in spaceflight like no other

You need to have teamwork, and you need to have precision—

Having launched their ninth operational crewed spaceflight today, the working relationship between NASA and SpaceX’s share is running like a hose—it just works. As an eager fan of spaceflight, it is simply amazing to witness.

Crew-9 is headed to the International Space Station with a limited crew of two for the first time since Bob and Doug flew in May 2020 on the first crewed flight of Dragon. SpaceX is on the verge of flying its 31st Cargo Dragon mission to the orbital outpost, bringing refreshments of food, water, and new science experiments to NASA's astronauts living and working there.

I began following SpaceX in January 2014. As a high school senior and an eager future engineer and hopeful astronaut at the time, the first mission I remember tuning into the live webcast for was SpaceX’s second flight to GTO and Falcon 9’s eighth orbital mission: Thaicom 6.

At the time, Falcon 9 was nearly brand new. This was the second flight of SpaceX’s upgraded “1.1” version of Falcon 9 with a circular engine configuration, stretched stages, and payload fairing.? Landing legs were not even installed yet. That wouldn’t come until the very next launch: CRS-3, NASA/SpaceX’s third commercial resupply services mission to the ISS with Cargo Dragon 1.

Legs wouldn’t come until the ninth launch of Falcon 9: CRS-3, NASA/SpaceX’s third commercial resupply services mission to the ISS with Cargo Dragon 1.

Teaching one another

SpaceX and NASA have been through many ups and downs together. SpaceX has grown up quickly, with a fail-fast mentality tamed by NASA’s risk tolerance and careful reserve. NASA has learned quickly too, taking pages from SpaceX’s book while sharing many of its own with them along the way.

From CRS-7 failing in June 2015, to a Falcon 9 fueling failure in 2016 destroying SLC-40, to Crew Dragon exploding on the test stand in April 2019, and then turning around a year later to successfully launch and return Bob and Doug on Crew Dragon.

Now, back to the present day. Crew-9 comes at a time for NASA where their Commercial Crew Program is both singing along smoothly and also fledgling. Boeing's Starliner spacecraft recently launched NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams to the ISS, only to return to Earth empty-handed .

When SpaceX unveiled Dragon 2 (V2 at the time) in 2014, it was slated to land back on a concrete landing pad in Cape Canaveral, just like the first stages of their rockets. In 2017, it was announced that NASA preferred parachute-assisted landings mainly to avoid complexity and schedule slippage. For a while, propulsive landings of the Crew Dragon spacecraft were no more.

Until yesterday, when during a prelaunch press conference, NASA's Steve Stich announced that propulsive landings are back:

"We can land with one 'chute out, we can land with other failures in the 'chute system, but this is only in the case where all four parachutes just do not operate. In that case, the capsule detects that there's a problem and it fires essentially the [Super]Draco thrusters at the very end and then provides a tolerable landing for the Crew."

In sharing this, it was also noted that it was a "deep contingency" but NASA's philosophy is that if they have a system they're not currently using to enhance crew safety, they might as well.

Additionally, it was shared that this configuration had also been flown on several non-NASA crewed missions; NASA was just adopting it for its crewed launches for the first time. Impressive stuff.

Crew-9 also is notable because it is the first crewed mission to take place from SLC-40, SpaceX’s battle-tested, original launch pad in Florida. They began leasing LC-39A in 2014 and first conducted Falcon 9 missions from it in February 2017 with CRS-10.

Falcon Heavy

Since then, SpaceX has turned LC-39A into its Crew and Falcon Heavy launch pad. As cadence has ramped up, it became necessary to have more tools at their disposal for conducting all types of launches simultaneously.

SpaceX has now installed a Crew Access Arm, Tower, and associated safety equipment (emergency slides, etc.), and SLC-40 is now a crew-capable launch pad.

Europa Clipper, NASA’s huge probe to study the Galilean moon Europa through a series of low-flybys while in orbit around Jupiter, is launching aboard Falcon Heavy here in October from LC-39A. Falcon Heavy requires quite a different configuration than Falcon 9, and this takes a decent amount of time to switch between the two. Without SLC-40 being crew-capable, Crew-9 (or any other crewed arrow in SpaceX’s quiver: Axiom, Polaris Program, etc.) would have to wait until after high-priority missions like Clipper aboard Falcon Heavy fly.

SpaceX’s Bill Gerstenmaier said it best:

“I think having these two pads tying these things together, being able to do multiple missions, being able to work as one big team really allows us to do amazing things as we move forward in space. You have to be agile. You need to have teamwork. Bringing pad 40 on is a tremendous advantage and a nice tool to have in our toolbox that we're going to use in pretty innovative and creative ways going forward.”

Aside: it is still interesting to use ‘SpaceX’s Bill Gerstenmaier’ and not “NASA’s Bill Gerstenmaier”. He moved over, excitingly, to the private sector launch company in early 2020, after leading NASA’s human spaceflight directorate for quite a number of years.

I’m sure, at times, the relationship between SpaceX and NASA has been strained. SpaceX wants to innovate as fast as humanly possible and thinks anything in the way of that is a hindrance to humanity’s exploring the stars. NASA and other government partners want to ensure the safety of their astronauts and the public above all. Picking up former-NASA folks like Gerst and Kathy Leuders, I’m sure, has been incredibly beneficial in these efforts.

Both SpaceX and NASA have learned massively from one another and both are better off because of it.

The FAA

Recently, SpaceX and the FAA have been publicly quarreling back and forth about similar hindrances to Starship flights.

SpaceX has posted a blog about how Starships are meant to fly. The FAA has levied time and cost penalties against SpaceX for various alleged actions or inactions. SpaceX responded to this. The FAA testified that… I find the Crew-9 launch and this public dispute a very interesting juxtaposition.

Sharing the situation with the FAA only for context to the question, I asked a panel of NASA, SpaceX, and other ISS participants at the Crew-9 post-launch news conference to comment on or share what some of the things SpaceX and NASA do or have done that have resulted in so much mutual success.

Ken Bowersox shared that he thinks SpaceX and NASA’s success has come about due to them being complementary to one another.

SpaceX pushes NASA on things sometimes where it feels it needs to, and NASA caters to these where appropriate. Other times, NASA says they’d really appreciate it if we slowed down a bit and SpaceX entered an active listening mode.

Bill Gerstenmaier said it well yesterday, prelaunch.

“You need to have teamwork, and you need precision.” -SpaceX's Bill Gerstenmaier

Ken Bowersox added onto it with great clarity, saying SpaceX and NASA have served to be “great counterbalances” of one another on various things that come up.

As an eager fan of spaceflight, I couldn’t agree more. You don’t just need to have teamwork; more deeply, you need to know when to push and when to go into an active listening mode.

It’s my hope that SpaceX can soon navigate to a similar working relationship with the FAA as they have with NASA for many years now. When they do, the future of American spaceflight will truly soar.

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