“Tell me that I don’t have to worry about the distraction at Twitter,” he mentioned to Shotwell as they walked into the storage at the awards ceremony collectively.
“I assure you — you don’t have anything to worry about,” Nelson, in an interview with The Washington Post, recalled Shotwell replying.
That trade eased Nelson’s concern about Musk and his stewardship of SpaceX — a minimum of for now. But with the completion earlier this month of its Artemis I mission — a flight of NASA’s Orion capsule round the moon with out astronauts on board — the area company will more and more be seeking to SpaceX to assist it obtain its aim of returning people to the floor of the moon.
Last yr, NASA made a giant guess on Musk’s firm, awarding it a virtually $3 billion contract to make use of its next-generation Starship spacecraft to land astronauts on the lunar floor by 2025. Since then, SpaceX has received one other contract, value $1.5 billion, for a second lunar landing.
The firm has been operating an intense testing program at its personal launch and manufacturing facility in South Texas, transferring shortly to get what could be the largest and strongest rocket ever flown up and operating. The firm is already constructing a launch tower for it at the Kennedy Space Center, the place it launches its Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon spacecraft.
While Musk has been at Twitter, SpaceX has saved up its quick tempo, finishing three launches in 34 hours final week, together with one which was the fifteenth flight of its reusable Falcon 9 booster, a document.
All of which has turned Nelson, as soon as a SpaceX skeptic, right into a believer.
“Remember what everybody said? SpaceX was pie in the sky,” Nelson, a former senator from Florida, mentioned in the interview. “As we say in the South, the proof’s in the pudding.”
Gesturing to a mannequin rocket on show in his workplace, he added: “And look what they’ve done with that one right there, the Falcon 9.”
Still, Musk’s foray into social media and the method it has consumed his time has fearful Nelson, different leaders at NASA and the area neighborhood as a complete.
When pressed about what Musk’s takeover of Twitter would possibly imply for NASA, Nelson mentioned: “I have a great deal of faith in Gwynne Shotwell. And I also have faith that Elon trusts Gwynne and has turned the reins of SpaceX over to Gwynne.”
When it involves SpaceX’s day-to-day operations, that has been true for a while. But SpaceX continues to be very a lot Musk’s firm; he’s not solely the chief government, but additionally the chief engineer. He units the imaginative and prescient and the ethos for its greater than 10,000 staff. And Starship, a completely reusable spacecraft that he needs to make use of to get folks to the moon and Mars, has been the venture that has consumed most of his time and vitality at SpaceX.
Concerned about its progress, Musk final yr wrote an electronic mail to SpaceX staff lamenting how lengthy it was taking to ramp up manufacturing of the next-generation Raptor engine that powers Starship. “The Raptor production crisis is much worse than it seemed a few weeks ago,” he wrote. He mentioned the firm confronted a “genuine risk of bankruptcy if we cannot achieve a Starship flight rate of at least once every two weeks next year.”
The electronic mail was largely seen as a method for Musk to inspire his workforce to work quicker. But Starship nonetheless hasn’t flown this yr, not to mention at such a quick cadence. The firm is now seeking to fly someday in the first a part of subsequent yr.
But it’s nonetheless not clear when. This yr, the firm received preliminary approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to fly the automobile to orbit, however that approval got here with an inventory of greater than 75 actions the firm should full which are designed to guard the atmosphere and scale back the influence of SpaceX’s actions on a close-by public seashore and wildlife protect.
The FAA mentioned final week in an announcement to The Post that the time-frame to finish these milestones varies. “Some measures must be completed prior to launch, while others are designed to occur during post-launch activities or following a major mishap,” the assertion mentioned. “The FAA will ensure SpaceX complies with all required mitigations.”
It didn’t say when SpaceX would possibly launch. SpaceX declined to remark for this text.
Earlier in the improvement program, SpaceX despatched Starship prototypes a number of miles into the air, the place they hovered after which descended towards their landing pad. Several crashed and blew up. But after just a few makes an attempt, the groups figured it out and landed the spacecraft safely. Since then, the firm has been centered on constructing the launch tower, full with a pair of arms that might catch the booster because it descends, and getting the entire automobile prepared for an orbital launch try. In current months, it has carried out engine assessments, together with one final week.
Pam Melroy, NASA’s deputy administrator, mentioned at a current occasion that the firm is making progress. But she didn’t supply a timeline for when the orbital launch try would possibly come.
“They’ve got the design ready to go. Do some serious hardware testing and they’re beyond the we’re-going-to-probably-blow-up-the-pad phase,” she mentioned.
As a former appearing deputy affiliate administrator at the FAA, she mentioned she is aware of “how hard it is to develop a new location to launch rockets from. … It’s very challenging to set up a new location, and I think they’re just experiencing some of those things.”
In the interview, Nelson mentioned he’s continuously asking for updates on the firm’s progress. “And I am continuously told they are on schedule, they are meeting every milestone, and in some cases, they are exceeding their milestones,” he mentioned. “And, you know, look at SpaceX’s history. They launch and sometimes they blow up. But in the end, they keep it going.”
NASA will want them to. After it efficiently flew the Artemis I mission, it’s wanting towards Artemis II, which might ship a crew of astronauts in the Orion spacecraft to orbit round the moon, maybe by 2024. Then for the lunar landing try, Starship would meet up with Orion in lunar orbit, ferry the astronauts to the floor and again to Orion once more, which might take them house.
That’s scheduled for 2025 — an bold, maybe quixotic timeline, contemplating Starship has but to fly to Earth orbit, not to mention to the moon. The mission can also be sophisticated by the indisputable fact that SpaceX must refuel Starship in Earth orbit with a number of tankers earlier than it may fly to the moon.
Nelson conceded that there’s a good probability the mission may slip to 2026, particularly since the area company has to get its new spacesuits prepared and pull off a profitable Artemis II mission as nicely.
“There’s a lot riding on it,” he mentioned. “SpaceX has to be ready.”