Boeing, SpaceX look beyond NASA for space customers

CAPE CANAVERAL – It will be two or three years before Boeing or SpaceX launches NASA astronauts from Florida to the International Space Station, but they're already looking to what comes after the station.

NASA has only committed to operate the station through 2024, and not all its international partners have agreed to do that yet.

"Our business may be based on a NASA flight for crew, but it's all about fostering a market for commercial passengers," said Pete McGrath, director of business development for Boeing's Space Exploration Division. "There is a finite date on station, so fostering a market that can extend beyond that and get the benefits of microgravity research is important."

"Post-space station, we do need additional destinations to go to," added Barry Matsumori, SpaceX's senior vice president for sales and business development. "There's a lot of development work to do, but it's certainly a demand that exists."

Both discussed their programs developing rockets and spacecraft to fly astronauts under NASA's Commercial Crew Program, which is led from Kennedy Space Center, at Tuesday's meeting of the National Space Club Florida Committee at the Radisson Resort at the Port in Cape Canaveral.

NASA hopes to begin flights to the ISS by late 2017. SpaceX has targeted a test flight with a crew early in 2017, and Boeing by middle of that year.

McGrath and Matsumori agreed that even if Congress fully funds NASA's $1.2 billion budget request for the program in 2016, flight schedules probably couldn't be accelerated by more than a few months.

Bigelow Aerospace figures to play a major role in both companies' opportunities for commercial crew flights to destinations other than the ISS, and for customers other than NASA.

Bigelow and NASA this week are hosting an event at Bigelow's North Las Vegas headquarters to show off an experimental module the company is preparing to ship to Florida for launch.

SpaceX's Dragon cargo capsule is expected to fly the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, up to the ISS later this year for tests that will inform designs of larger habitats that would fly independently.

Countries without national space programs, drug companies and wealthy space tourists are among the potential early customers for commercial orbital flights.

One company, Space Adventures, has already flown space seven tourists to the ISS on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft.

Boeing is developing the CST-100 capsule, and SpaceX is upgrading its Dragon, which has already visited the ISS six times without people on board, for crewed flight.

SpaceX is targeting late this month or early April for an important test at Cape Canaveral called a pad abort, which will test Dragon thrusters' ability to rocket the capsule away from a rocket in an emergency.

Boeing says hardware is arriving at Kennedy Space Center, its CST-100 assembly site, for a test version of the capsule.

Lisa Colloredo, associate manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, who moderated the Space Club's discussion, applauded both partners' commitment and progress.

"It's a big job, it's difficult, it's never been done before," she said. "This is a hard job and they have stepped up in a big way. They're making a lot of progress."

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 or jdean@floridatoday.com. Follow him on Twitter at @flatoday_jdean