Determination, Resilience, Endurance and Freedom. These are the names of the four Crew Dragon manned space capsules made by SpaceX, with the last one being built. These will also be the only ones since Elon Musk’s American company does not plan to build others, we learned on Monday March 28 from Reuters, who spoke with a company executive. SpaceX will be satisfied with this modest fleet to transport people between Earth and the International Space Station (ISS).
The American company thus wants to preserve its resources to move forward on other projects, in particular the Starship mega-rocket which is to succeed the Falcon 9 rocket and its new generation spacecraft program. SpaceX nevertheless leaves itself the opportunity to build other copies of the manned capsules if the need arises in the future.
The reuse of spacecraft
This decision to stop their production is not surprising when you know that Elon Musk’s business model is based on the reuse of material. After each flight, the ships are refurbished at facilities in Florida, which the company calls “Dragon Land.” It is the same strategy for its Falcon 9 reusable rocket and its more powerful Falcon Heavy version since they are designed to be used more than once.
In principle, according to Numerama, each Crew Dragon ship must be able to be used at least 5 times, which means at least 20 round trips between Earth and the ISS. Functional Crew Dragon capsules have already carried five crews of astronauts into space since 2020, Reuters recalls. They have indeed imposed themselves with NASA, the American space agency, for space transport at a time when Boeing’s Starliner capsule was accumulating delays in its test flights. NASA has funded $3.5 billion to develop and use the capsules for six flights to the ISS.