NASA was not satisfied with the launch of SpaceX's new rocket

SpaceX successfully built Crew Dragon, a cruise ship capable of sending people to space first, yet they never let Crew Dragon into the air and there were people sitting in it. Yet last week, SpaceX announced a larger ship, even sparkling under the flash of the press: the Starship is made of stainless steel, can accommodate up to 100 people.

NASA was not very pleased with Elon Musk's debut and promises.

SpaceX announced the Starship is made of stainless steel, can accommodate up to 100 people.(Illustration).

The reason is simple: Crew Dragon, a joint project between SpaceX and NASA to research and assemble cargo compartments and crews, will be on the Falcon Heavy rocket to fly, still in the development phase. development, by this time it is already behind schedule . SpaceX received this contract in 2014, promising that Crew Dragon will bring astronauts to the air in 2017, but in March, SpaceX successfully completed a driverless flight.

SpaceX and NASA plan to conduct manned missions by the end of 2019, but when the Crew Dragon capsule exploded last April, they had to delay indefinitely. On September 30, Elon Musk promised Crew Dragon would be ready in 3-4 months, but because NASA director Jim Bridenstine was not satisfied with a simple promise, NASA intended to 'hitch a ride' on Russian spacecraft.

Mr. Bridenstine has softly criticized on Twitter:

' I'm still looking forward to the launch of SpaceX's new project. But meanwhile, the Commercial Crew project is behind schedule for years. NASA expects its partners to be as enthusiastic about the old project as it is about to launch, hoping that they will focus more on American tax-funded investments. Now is the time for you to fulfill your promise . '

In theory, Crew Dragon would be the least expensive and efficient space travel option possible.

Why did SpaceX have to build two types of cruise ships, and why would there be a tense relationship with the world's leading space agency?

Crew Dragon was a project to replace the space shuttle program which was killed by NASA in 2011. At that time, NASA was not available to send astronauts into the air, and had to rely on Russian cruise ships to board. down to the International Space Station.

Starship , meanwhile, is a project that carries a completely different goal: it serves Elon Musk's purpose of settling Mars. It will not serve any NASA mission, nor will it fly from any NASA facility (or at least not yet).

When there were no more ships to go to space, NASA contracted with private companies like Boeing and SpaceX. Meanwhile, they poured technical resources into the Space Launch System (SLS) project , to build a new pillar in the future; this pillar will carry all missions to low orbit (satellites and space stations), contributing to the construction of the Moon Station as a stepping stone to Mars and nearby asteroids.

Painter sketching SLS of NASA.

Then SLS has also been stagnant for many years, SpaceX has not yet completed Crew Dragon, NASA is in a state of confusion when most likely, they will have to rely on Russian ships again.

In theory, Crew Dragon would be the least expensive and efficient space travel option possible. The main reason: NASA can reuse this ship, and it can send orbit up to 7 astronauts / trip; The cost of sending people to space will be significantly reduced. But it is not Musk's only goal.

Incident of Crew Dragon's explosion.

In the past, many times SpaceX's CEO mentioned the dream of a giant rocket, sending hundreds of people to Mars, more or less similar to NASA's SLS. Then Musk officially launched Starship, a ship that will perform every mission like SLS, on a larger scale.

If the Crew Dragon project was on schedule, we would not have seen a little annoyed Jim Bridenstine before the Starship debut. However, on October 3, Bridenstine said on Twitter that he 'had a phone conversation' with Elon Musk, preparing to visit SpaceX headquarters on Thursday. It seems things have calmed down.

Musk himself said that SpaceX still focused on the Crew Dragon project, adding that Starship accounted for only 5% of SpaceX's total resources.