House SS&T Hearing on Commercial Crew, January 2018

House SS&T Hearing on Commercial Crew, January 2018

The Space Subcommittee of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee held a hearing to get an update on NASA’s commercial crew program to take astronauts to and from the International Space Station using Boeing and SpaceX spacecraft.  Boeing’s Starliner and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon systems are being developed as public-private partnerships (PPPs) with NASA.

The hearing illuminated a number of safety, reliability and cost issues, but the overarching concern is that the new systems will not be ready before the end of 2019.  By then, NASA will have exhausted its contracted “seats” on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft, the only way NASA astronauts get to and from ISS.  NASA has not had the ability to launch astronauts into space since it retired the space shuttle in 2011.

SpacePolicyOnline.com published a summary of the hearing on January 17, 2018.  Witnesses were:

  • Mr. William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator, Human Exploration and Operations Directorate, NASA
  • Mr. John Mulholland, vice president and program manager, Commercial Programs, Boeing Space Exploration
  • Dr. Hans Koenigsmann, vice president, Build and Flight Reliability, SpaceX
  • Ms. Cristina Chaplain, director, Acquisition and Sourcing Management, U.S. Government Accountability Office
  • Dr. Patricia Sanders, chair, NASA Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel