The marriage of SpaceX and NASA hasn’t been easy—but it’s been fruitful

The commercial crew program is about to bear fruit with the first test flight of a Dragon spacecraft. [credit:
Joel Kowsky/NASA ]




On Saturday morning SpaceX will attempt to launch its Crew Dragon spacecraft for the first time, marking the latest step in a relationship between NASA and the California rocket company that has now spanned 13 years. It has been a fruitful relationship for both.
For SpaceX, funding from NASA allowed the company to accelerate development of its world-class Falcon 9 rocket from a single-engine booster. Perhaps more importantly, sustained funding for cargo missions to the station (16 have flown so far) has provided the operational breathing room to continue to improve the Falcon 9 rocket, practice landing it, and make reusable rocketry a reality. Now, with crewed missions nearing, SpaceX may soon become the first private company to ever launch humans into orbit.

NASA, in turn, has gotten a good deal. SpaceX has consistently offered services to the space agency—for cargo, crew, and science experiments—that cost less than competitors and for far less than it would have cost NASA to develop those capabilities independently.
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