After Dragon’s historic docking, America has more new spaceships on the way

SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft made history for the second time on Sunday.

On May 25, 2012, a Cargo Dragon was grabbed by the ISS. It became the first private spacecraft to visit the International Space Station. On Sunday, when Dragonship Endeavour docked with the station 15 minutes ahead of schedule, above the border of China and Mongolia, it became the first private spacecraft to fly crew there (or anywhere in orbit, for that matter).

After the docking, the spacecraft’s commander, NASA Astronaut Doug Hurley, was complimentary after he and Bob Behnken spent some time flying Dragon manually. “It flew just about like the sim, so my congratulations to the folks at Hawthorne,” he said, referring to SpaceX’s headquarters in California, where the astronauts spent many weeks practicing in a flight simulator. “It flew really well, very crisp. We couldn’t be happier about the performance of the vehicle.”

This bodes well for NASA, which is counting on the Crew Dragon vehicle to begin ferrying four-person crews to the International Space Station as soon as the end of August. Endeavour will now remain attached to the station for several weeks at least, depending on the performance of its solar panels in orbit. NASA would like the crew to remain on orbit for as much as three months, to conduct several spacewalks for space station maintenance.

Dragon’s flight will be declared a success only when Hurley and Behnken strap back into Endeavour, return through Earth’s atmosphere, and splash down safely in the ocean. This will complete the first crewed flight of a new orbital vehicle to launch from the United States since 1981. But it is very likely not the last. As many as four more vehicles may follow in the future.

Here’s a look at the status of each, with an estimate of when the vehicle will fly with humans for the first time.

Starliner (1-2 years)

As part of the commercial crew program, NASA paid SpaceX (Crew Dragon) and Boeing (Starliner) to develop spacecraft to carry humans to the space station and back. Boeing completed an aborted, uncrewed test flight of its Starliner vehicle in December, but the spacecraft was nearly lost on two occasions due to software issues.

Boeing has agreed to make a second test flight of Starliner, without astronauts, to ensure the safety of the spacecraft and demonstrate its capability of docking with the space station. This flight could occur by the end of 2020, and with about six months of data review, it’s possible a crewed mission could take place a year from now. But that would require nearly flawless execution—and as long as Dragon is flying safely NASA has no reason to rush a back-up provider along.

Orion (3-4 years)

NASA’s large deep space capsule has been under development since 2006 and made an uncrewed test flight in 2014 to demonstrate its ability to return at high velocity. Since then development has continued, but the capsule has largely been waiting for Boeing to complete the core stage of the Space Launch System rocket. When that rocket is ready, it is due to launch another uncrewed Orion on the Artemis I mission in late 2021 or 2022.

Only after this flight will NASA fully outfit Orion with life support for the Artemis II mission, which will carry a crew of astronauts around the Moon. Sometime in 2023 is probably the earliest reasonable expectation for this mission to take place.

Starship (4-8 years)

SpaceX is making progress on development and testing of its Starship vehicle (Friday’s fiery explosion, not withstanding). Eventually, this large vehicle will come in two basic forms, a cargo variant for payloads, and a crew vehicle that can take humans to the Moon, Mars, or elsewhere.

Starship timelines are always aspirational, but SpaceX does move fast, and it has built a factory in South Texas that should allow for accelerated production. Although the company has learned a lot about human spaceflight from its Crew Dragon experience, developing a complex vehicle like Starship will still take time. Our estimate of four to eight years is a blend between optimistic SpaceX schedules and the magnitude of the challenge the company faces.

Dream Chaser (5-10 years)

Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Dream Chaser was originally part of the pool of candidates NASA considered in the commercial crew program before the space agency opted for Dragon and Starliner. However, NASA is still funding a cargo variant of the vehicle to deliver supplies to the International Space Station. The vehicle could make its first launch on a Vulcan rocket by the end of 2021 or in 2022.

Meanwhile, the company says it remains committed to developing a crew version of Dream Chaser. It is not clear whether NASA will fund this, as the space agency has its low-Earth needs accounted for with Dragon and Starliner. There is a lot of public desire to see a winged vehicle like Dream Chaser, which evokes memories of the space shuttle, enter service. But it is not clear there is a commercial or government customer to support it at this time.